• 3 • “I HAVE BEEN… WITNESS TO TWO OTHER REVOLUTIONS… I SEE THE ARDOR FOR LIBERTY CATCHING AND SPREADING… THE DOMINION OF KINGS CHANGED FOR THE DOMINION OF LAWS…”: 1789 FIRST EDITION OF PRICE’S DISCOURSE ON THE LOVE OF OUR COUNTRY, FAMOUSLY ATTACKED BY BURKE AND DEFENDED BY PAINE AND WOLLSTONECRAFT 03PRICE, Richard. A Discourse on the Love of Our Country, Delivered on Nov. 4, 1789… to the Society for Commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain. With an Appendix. London, 1789. Slim octavo, period style half brown calf and marbled boards. $7500 First edition, first impression, of one of Price’s most important and famous works, his controversial and incendiary sermon on the revolutionary progress of human rights from England’s 1688 Glorious Revolution to the American and French Revolutions. The first edition sold out within days and ignited the British pamphlet war over the French Revolution known as “the Revolution Controversy.” The work provoked Edmund Burke’s strong attacks on Price in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) and eloquent defenses of Price in Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and Paine’s Rights of Man (1791). Political philosopher and minister Richard Price (17231791), a close friend of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, was “the most influential British advocate of American independence” (Howes P586). His 1776 work Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the War with America was one of the most important and frequently reprinted works of the period. In November 1789, within months of the start of the French Revolution, Price stood before a London meeting of the Society for the Commemoration of England’s 1688 Glorious Revolution and, with this provocative Discourse in praise of revolution, triggered a war of words that sparked Edmund Burke’s incendiary refutation in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which prompted defenses of Price in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), the first part of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791), and notable works by Catherine Macaulay, Joseph Priestly, William Godwin, and others. First impression, with “Marmontel” on page 14, line 6 (corrected to “Fenelon” in the second impression). Copies of the first edition are quite scarce; though many are held by prominent institutions in the UK and US, copies rarely appear on the market or at auction. Complete with scarce half title and rear ad leaf promoting other works by Price; appendix page [4] is blank as issued. ESTC T31992. Thomas, Stephen, and Jones, A Bibliography of the Works of Richard Price, 38a. Kress B1697. Goldsmith I:14055. Text fresh with only light scattered foxing. A fine wide-margined copy, handsomely bound.
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