“A POWERFUL INFLUENCE IN DETERMINING COLONIAL RESISTANCE”: RARE FIRST EDITION OF SHARP’S FULL-LENGTH DECLARATION, 1774
SHARP, Granville. A Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature, Which is the Fundamental Principle of the British Constitution of State. London: Printed for B. White, 1774. Octavo, period style full speckled calf gilt, red morocco spine label, raised bands. $4800.
First edition combining the sheets of Sharp’s 1774 pamphlet with text substantially expanded by him to highlight the effect of slavery on America’s struggle for independence, one of a very small number “printed for private distribution only.”
British abolitionist Granville Sharp first became "involved in the struggle for the liberation of slaves in England" in 1765. When the British court handed down its "momentous" 1772 decision on slavery, "this first great victory in the struggle for the emancipation of slaves was entirely due to Sharp… This question did not exhaust Sharp's benevolent energies… His sympathies were easily enlisted on behalf of the American colonies, and in 1774 he published A Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature" (DNB). It was here that Sharp persuasively addressed what was seen as a contradiction in colonial claims of "the natural and inalienable rights of mankind… in the face of domestic slavery" (Bailyn, 241). "A powerful influence in determining colonial resistance" (Howes S331), Sharp's 1774 pamphlet "was reprinted four times in the colonies before the year was out" (Bailyn, 241). Sharp's defense of the people's right to a legislative voice fundamentally altered a changing tide of public opinion, and "it was no accident that Americans in Philadelphia in 1775 formed the first anti-slavery society in the world… The Revolution in effect [would] set in motion ideological and social forces that doomed the institution of slavery in the North and led inexorably to the Civil War" (Wood, 186-7). This rare first edition contains the sheets of Sharp's 32-page pamphlet along with his added Preface, "Extract of a Letter on the foregoing subject" (33-46), and his "Declaration… Part II" ([49]-244). One of a very limited number "printed for private distribution only" (Sabin 79816): as noted in a 1775 Monthly Review article stating, "We are… sorry to find that but a small impression… has been made, for the purpose only of being given among the Author's friends" (Adams, American Controversy 74-72b). With single blank leaf (G4), often lacking (Sowerby 3069). Goldsmith 11209. See Adams, American Controversy, 74-72a. See Sweet & Maxwell I:148.
Beautifully bound.