A Series of Answers to Certain Popular Objections, Against Separating from the Colonies, and Discarding Them Entirely: Being the Concluding Tract of the Dean of Glocester, on the Subject of American Affairs.

[TUCKER, Josiah].

$975.00

Item Number: 127150

London: Printed by R. Raikes and Sold by T. Cadell, 1776.

First and only edition of this important Revolutionary tract in which Tucker advocates granting the colonies independence. Octavo, bound in paper wrappers. Sabin 97360. In very good condition with restoration to the extremities of the first few leaves.

Welsh churchman Josiah Tucker's assertion as early as 1749 that the American colonies would seek independence as soon as they no longer needed Britain has brought him to the attention of American historians. He consistently wrote in favour of American independence through the American Revolutionary War. As early as 1766, he thought a separation inevitable. But he was also hostile to the Americans. He maintained in pamphlets that a separation from the colonies was desirable. He held that the supposed advantage of the colonial trade to the mother country was a delusion. On the other hand, he maintained that the colonies turned adrift would fall out with each other, and be glad to return to political union. The policy pleased nobody in England, and Tucker, though his views were approved in later years by many of the laisser-faire economists, was for a time treated as a Cassandra, a name under which he published in the newspapers. The most popular of his American tracts was Cui Bono? in the form of letters addressed to Jacques Necker (1781), arguing that the war was a mistake for all the nations concerned.