Ta Tsing Leu Lee; being the Fundamental Laws;: and a Selection from the Supplementary Statutes, of the Penal Code of China; originally printed and published in Pekin, in various successive editions, under the Sanction, and by the Authority, of the several Emperors of the Ta Tsing, or Present Dynasty.

FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF A CHINESE TEXT - 'A WATERSHED IN MODERN SINOLOGY'
first edition large 4to. (31 x 26 cms.) [4], lxxvi, 581, [1 (errata)], [2 (advts.)]pp., 1 frontispiece plate (reproduction of the title-page of the 1805 Chinese edition of the Qing code), high quality and very handsome modern half rich tan diced calf, spine panelled by broad raised bands each of which is highlighted by double gilt fillets and has a design composed of three gilt fillets and gilt ornaments on the top of the band, one panel direct gilt lettered, old marble on sides, skilful restoration at gutter margin of 2 early leaves, few leaves little dusty at edges, few leaves lightly foxed or locally toned, else a nice fresh and broad margined copy in a very attractive binding.
Very unobtrusive and rather attractive early stamp of 'Belfast Library / founded 1788' at head of first page of text.

Cordier Bibliotheca Sinica. 546-7 Löwendahl China Illustrata Nova, 748 Lust Western Books on China, 715
Staunton, (1781–1859), Sinologist and politician, was the only surviving child of the Irish diplomat Sir George Leonard Staunton (Galway, 1737 – 1801). "His father imposed peculiar educational notions on the boy; he was educated at home under his father's eye and lived entirely in adult society, developing precocious abilities at languages and natural history. In 1792 he attended the turbulent national assembly in Paris while accompanying his father to Naples to recruit Chinese interpreters. He was instructed in Chinese by two native missionaries, these lessons continuing on his voyage with his father later in 1792 as part of Lord Macartney's diplomatic mission to China. Staunton, who was nominally a page to the ambassador, was able to write Chinese characters, and was the only member of the embassy who could speak Chinese to the emperor. .... [His father] obtained his ... appointment as a writer in the East India Company's factory at Canton (Guangzhou) (1798). Staunton returned to China in 1799 to endure the two gloomiest years of his life. He inherited his father's baronetcy in 1801, and advanced to be supercargo (1804) and chief interpreter (1808) at Canton. He was the first Englishman at the factory to have studied Chinese. The climate, business life, and his companions were all irksome to Staunton, but he devised for himself constructive avocations. He translated into Chinese and printed George Pearson's treatise on vaccination (1805) and translated China's penal code (published London, 1810)" [O.D.N.B.]. Following a period as chief of the Canton factory and further diplomatic missions to Peking he was delighted to return to England in 1817 "having accumulated a competent fortune in addition to my patrimonial inheritance ... at the early age of six-and-thirty" [Staunton Memoirs (1856), p.73–4]. He was a M.P. 1818 to 1852 initially as a liberal tory but he disagreed with the Tories, probably arising from his Irish background, on Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform and from 1830 gave independent support to the Liberals. "He had inherited 1200 acres at Clydagh in Galway, but seldom visited Ireland, and bought Leigh Park in Hampshire in 1819. He added a 'gothick' library to the house, and constructed hothouses for his rare flowers and exotic fruits. ... Staunton was F.R.S. (1803) .... sometime foreign secretary of the Royal Academy, parliamentary trustee of the Hunterian collection, and vice-president of the British Association of Science. In 1823 he was a founder of the Royal Asiatic Society, to which he presented his collection of 3000 Chinese volumes" [O.D.N.B.]The book is "a watershed in modern Sinology in particular and modern Orientalism in general, not simply because it was the first English translation directly from a Chinese text, but more because it signalled a fresh point of departure for Westerners to decode and essentialize Chinese law and society in a far more professionally "authoritative" and systematic fashion" [Li Chen Law as the Decoding Machine and Cultural Translation for Colonial Control: Staunton's Ta Tsing Leu Lee and its Historical Legacy (conference paper, 2007, online resource)].