• 9 • “THE RIGHT OF THE MOTHER COUNTRY TO IMPOSE SUCH A DUTY UPON HER COLONIES… CANNOT BE QUESTIONED”: RARE FIRST EDITION OF WHATELY’S REGULATIONS LATELY MADE CONCERNING THE COLONIES, 1765 09(STAMP ACT) (WHATELY, Thomas). The Regulations Lately Made concerning the Colonies, And the Taxes Imposed upon Them, considered. London, 1765. Small octavo (4-1/2 by 7-1/4 inches), modern tan paper boards; folding portfolio. $4500 First edition of the anonymously issued Regulations by secretary of the Treasury Whately—an “arch-foe” of American patriots—proclaiming Britain’s right to tax Americans in the same year’s infamous Stamp Act, also importantly drafted by Whately, here sparking colonial outrage and a key opposing work by America’s Daniel Dulany, putting the “colonies on the road to revolution.” The Stamp Act sparked “the beginning of the end of British America” (Schama, 457-8). It was Thomas Whately, trusted secretary of the Treasury under Grenville, who was given “the task of drawing up the Stamp Act” (Morgan & Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, 240). He never deviated from his declared opinions, and consequently many Americans in London came to see him as their arch-foe” (ODNB). “Virtually all historians writing about the early stages of the American Revolution have taken note of… Regulations Lately Made Concerning the Colonies.” For with this rare and pivotal work, Whately signaled and substantiated the Stamp Act in a widely applicable, “methodical and cogent… defense of British colonial policy” (Christie, “Vision of Empire,” in English Historical Review). In Regulations Whately declared: “the Right of the Mother Country to impose such a Duty upon her Colonies, if duly considered, cannot be questioned” (104). On the issue of taxation without representation, he contended the American colonies “were ‘virtually represented in Parliament.’ This was because ‘every Member of Parliament sits in the House, not as Representatives of his own Constituents, but as one of that august Assembly by which all the Commons of Great Britain are represented’… The fact that the colonies had their own assemblies did not, according to Whately, affect Parliament’s right to levy taxes on them…" (Yirush, 226-27). Although Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, ultimately “the only way for the American colonists to solve their differences with Great Britain was to tear away from it completely. Doing that meant war” (Hayes, 166). With half title. “Despite the attribution to Grenville on the title page of the ‘Third Edition’… we know that Whately was the author” (Adams, American Controversy 65-27a). From the library of James Strohn Copley with his bookplate in the custom half morocco folding portfolio by Atmore Beach. Copley, a widely respected journalist, newspaper publisher, philanthropist and collector, was publisher of the San Diego Union, the San Diego UnionTribune and the San Diego Evening Tribune from 1947 until his death in 1973. Copley’s “astonishing collection” of some 2000 items created “a documentary survey of the American past” (New York Times). Text bright with tiny gutter-edge pinholes from original stitching, lightest scattered foxing. A handsome about-fine copy with a distinctive provenance.
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