Public Good, Being An Examination into the Claims of Virginia de [PAINE, Thomas] - 1780

1780. [PAINE, Thomas]. Public Good, Being An Examination into the Claims of Virginia to the Vacant Western Territory, and of the Right of the United States to the Same. To which is added, Proposals for Laying off A New State, to Be Applied as a Fund for Carrying on the War, Or Redeeming the National Debt. By the author of Common Sense. Philadelphia: Printed by John Dunlap, 1780. 38pp., including in-text diagrams. Modern boards, paper spine label. Light foxing to titlepage, leaf 35/36 professionally conserved, last leaf supplied in expert facsimile, else good. GIMBEL 31. STREETER SALE 1301. EVANS 16920. HOWES P30, "aa." SABIN 58237. ANB 16, pp.925-28. REESE, REVOLUTIONARY HUNDRED 66. One of the rarest and least known, yet most interesting and significant, works in Thomas Paine's oeuvre. In the colonial era it was not unusual for colonies to claim all the lands to their west as part of their territory - in fact this right was written into many colonial charters. "When Virginia claimed the territory now known as West Virginia for herself, Paine immediately wrote and published [PUBLIC GOOD], in which he argues that the territory, having been won through the joint effort of the thirteen states, should benefit all. Naturally, this did not endear him to Virginia, and later, when the legislature of that state was asked to recompense Paine for his wartime activities, it refused to do so" - Gimbel. Paine argues that the unsettled west should be "a national fund for the benefit of all," and insisted that his views were not influenced by the fact that he owned 300 shares in the Indiana Company, which stood to profit if Virginia's claims were disallowed. Paine's argument was not solely self-interested, as he continues in PUBLIC GOOD the same arguments for a strong federal union and the warnings against the dangers of state sovereignty that he made in COMMON SENSE. He also calls for the convening of a "Continental convention" to draw up a new federal constitution with a strong central government. Paine also calls for the creation of a new state to the west of Virginia, with the land to be sold and the proceeds used to fund the war effort and defray Revolutionary War debt. We have been able to trace only two copies (one of them the Streeter copy) as having appeared at auction in the past forty years. Rare and desirable, touching on.