"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: Printed by George Stafford for T. Cadell, 1789. Slim octavo, modern gray paper boards, renewed endpapers; pp. [iv], [1]-51, [52], [1], 2-3, [4], 5-13, [iii]. Housed in a custom folding box. $2500.

Second edition, published shortly after the same year's first edition, of Price's incendiary work on human rights from England's Glorious Revolution to the American and French Revolutions, sparking Burke's fiery refutation of Price in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and an eloquent endorsement from Wollstonecraft's 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 of Price in Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790). Here 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). Preceded the same year by the first edition. With rarely found appendix, rear ad leaf; Appendix containing a printing in English of the French Declaration of Rights. ESTC T31993. See Kress B1697; Goldsmith I:14055. Early owner signature to title page. Bookplate to inner front cover of folding box.

Text fresh with only lightest scattered foxing, minor soiling to half title, rear ad leaf. A scarce near-fine copy.