RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND THE LAW: PRIESTLEY'S ANSWER TO BLACKSTONE'S COMMENTARIES, 1772 FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

(BLACKSTONE, William) PRIESTLEY, Joseph. An Interesting Appendix to Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. Philadelphia: Robert Bell, 1772 [-73]. Octavo, contemporary calf boards sympathetically rebacked in early calf, gilt lines and red morocco label, later plain endpapers. $6000.

First American edition (published only one year after the first) of this primary source on religious toleration in the context of English common law, with rebuttals, replies, arguments and defenses.

In his Commentaries, Blackstone classified religious non-conformity as a crime, intimating that Protestant "dissenters" were disloyal citizens and that the Church of England should be the ultimate authority. First published in Dublin (1769) and in Philadelphia (1772), this work consists of a refutation of Blackstone's argument by liberal theologian and defender of religious freedom Joseph Priestley, who notes that "the manner in which Dr. Blackstone has treated the Dissenters, is such as I should not have expected from a person of a liberal education… who being so perfectly skilled in the laws of his country, should have been better acquainted with the inhabitants of it." The Appendix additionally contains not only Blackstone's reply to Priestley's remarks, but also Priestley's answer to Blackstone's reply, Philip Furneaux's letters to Blackstone, the argument of Justice Foster in the case of Evans v. Harrison, and the speech of Lord Mansfield in defense of Evans. Aside from being the first complete collection of works on the controversy, the American editions of Priestley's Appendix presented the issue of religious tolerance at a crucial period in American history. His arguments served to temper Blackstone's tremendous influence on early American law, and undoubtedly affected the debate over the separation of Church and State. Additional title pages for each section. Issued simultaneously in a quarto (or large-paper) format to match the four-volume quarto first American edition of the Commentaries, also published by Bell, though these are rarely seen (Laeuchli). Although the separate title page for Furneaux's Letters to the Hounourable Mr. Justice Blackstone states that it is a second edition, it is the first American edition, which reprinted the expanded English second edition of 1771. Laeuchli 615. Evans 12328. Sabin 5697. Marvin, 589. Sweet & Maxwell I, 29-30. Harvard Law Catalogue II, 394. NYU, 34-35.

Text expertly cleaned and resewn, contemporary calf binding expertly restored.