"THIRTY YEARS BEFORE LEXINGTON… HE DEVELOPED AND TAUGHT A THEORY ABOUT THE RIGHT OF RESISTANCE TO THE POLICIES OF THE MOTHER COUNTRY, LONG BEFORE FRANKLIN'S PLAN OR THE TROUBLED REIGN OF GEORGE III"
HUTCHESON, Francis. A A System of Moral Philosophy… To which is prefixed Some Account of the Life, Writings, and Character of the Author, by the Reverend William Leechman, D.D. Glasgow: 1755. Two volumes.
First edition of Hutcheson's seminal work, assembling his famed Glasgow lectures, many attended by Adam Smith, together in book form for the first time, defending "the right of resistance to government" and attacking slavery in "a new political and social vision that went far beyond Locke… the vision of a 'free society,''' his writings a pivotal influence on Jefferson in the Declaration, with a core chapter of this rare work seized upon by rebellious Americans to be reprinted in a 1772 issue of the Massachusetts Spy. $12,500.
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