73 B a u m a n R a r e B o o k s “Civil Liberty Was The Great Object Of Ferguson’s Enterprise”: Exceptional First Edition Of Adam Ferguson’s Magnum Opus, Essay On The History Of Civil Society, 1767, A Seminal Work Of The Scottish Enlightenment 94. FERGUSON, Adam. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Edinburgh, 1767. Large quarto, contemporary full brown calf. $15,000. First edition of Ferguson’s authoritative work, drawing on a Machiavellian “understanding of virtue” and positioned “between Montesquieu and Tocqueville” in its profound influence, with Jefferson owning a personal copy and Madison, who purchased his own copy in 1775, naming the Essay, with Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, as essential “for the use of the U.S. in Congress,” a handsome widemargined copy, very scarce in contemporary calf. Ferguson and Adam Smith, known as the “two Adams,” were born the same year and stand at the center of the Scottish Enlightenment. This first edition of Ferguson’s Essay, his magnum opus, “appeared between the publication of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (1757) and Wealth of Nations in 1776” (Weinstein, Two Adams). Ferguson “formulated a theory of civil society which focused exclusively on the intrinsic and potentially fatal flaw of modern commercial society: corruption. His theory of politics and society was the precursor of Tocqueville’s Democracy” as well (McDowell, 537-8). ESTC T76205. Small bookplate. Early owner signature to title page. Text very fresh with trace of foxing, faint rubbing, tiny bit of expert restoration to spine head. An excellent near-fine copy, exceedingly rare in handsome contemporary calf. “Nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.”
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