Discourses concerning Government. de SIDNEY, Algernon - 1698: Published from an Original Manuscript of the Author.

London: printed, and are to be sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster,, 1698. One of "the intellectual foundations of the Declaration of Independence" First edition of this major text of republican theory, rejecting the divine right of kings and asserting the right of the people to choose their own leaders. The treatise was a major influence on the US Founding Fathers, and was identified by Thomas Jefferson as one of the intellectual foundations of the Declaration of Independence (Lutz and Warren, p. 56). "The Discourses places Sidney alongside Milton as the master of republican eloquence. It is the power of its prose, as much as any aspect of its content, which helps to account for the work's exceptional subsequent impact in Britain, continental Europe, and America. Polemically a refutation of Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha (1680), the practical purpose of the Discourses is again to argue for armed resistance to oppression... for subsequent influence in Enlightenment Britain, America, the United Provinces, Germany, and France, he had no seventeenth-century rival except John Locke" (ODNB). Thomas Jefferson was one of many influenced by Sidney's ideas. In 1804, he wrote of the Discourses: "They are in truth a rich treasure of republican principles, supported by copious & cogent arguments, and adorned with the finest flowers of science. It is probably the best elementary book of the principles of government... which has ever been published in any language" (Sowerby III: J6). The work was written between 1681 and 1683 and originally circulated as a manuscript, prior to its present first publication in 1698. While still unpublished, the Discourses was used against Sidney in his trial and subsequent execution for his complicity in the Rye House Plot, the indictment citing sentences saying that the king is subject to law, is responsible to the people, and may be deposed, as a "false, seditious, and traitorous libel" (Complete Collection of State-Trials, vol. III, 1730, p. 711). With the bookplate of Gerald E. Aylmer (1926-2000), a leading historian of 17th-century England, professor of history at the University of York from 1963 until 1978, afterwards master of St Peter's College in Oxford until 1991. Folio (306 x 197 mm). Contemporary panelled calf, rebacked and recornered with new endpapers to style, red morocco label. Contents crisp and clean save for minor browning and finger-soiling to a few leaves, some marginal worming at foot of 2D-2F. A very good copy. ESTC R11837; Lowndes, 2394; Marke 953; Sowerby 2330 (edition of 1763); Wing S3761. Donald S. Lutz & Jack D. Warren, A Covenanted People, 1987.