"BE ENCOURAGED, ALL YE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM… TREMBLE ALL YE OPPRESSORS OF THE WORLD!"
(AMERICAN REVOLUTION) PRICE, Richard. A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, Delivered on Nov. 4, 1789… to the Society for Commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain. With an Appendix… London: T. Cadell, 1790. Octavo, disbound; pp. 51, (1), 34, (2). $1800.
Third edition, the scarce first expanded edition of Price's controversial work, issued only one year after the first edition, documenting progress in human rights from England's Glorious Revolution to the American and French Revolutions, sparking Burke's refutation in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and Wollstonecraft's endorsement in Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790).
Richard Price, a close friend of Franklin and John Adams, was "the most influential British advocate of American independence" (Howes P586). In November 1789, within months of the French Revolution, Price stood before a London meeting of the Society for the Commemoration of England's 1688 Glorious Revolution and, with this controversial Discourse in praise of revolution, triggered a war of words that sparked Burke's incendiary refutation of Price in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), and prompted a ringing endorsement from Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790). In this Discourse Price triumphantly traces the course of human rights furthered by revolution—from England's Glorious Revolution to the American and French Revolutions. "Be encouraged, all ye friends of freedom," he writes. "Behold, the light you have struck out, after setting America free, reflected to France… Tremble all ye oppressors of the world!… You cannot now hold the world in darkness." Above all, Price's Discourse remains a powerful and eloquent "essay on patriotism, its true nature, its rights and duties"(Thomas, 150). Third English edition, preceded by the 1789 first edition (London): this expanded edition with substantial additions to the separately paginated Appendix that contains a printing of the French Declaration of Rights. Published same year as the first American edition. With rear advertisement leaf. Goldsmith I:14554. ESTC T10660. See Goldsmith I:14055; Kress B1697; Evans 22814.
A fine copy.