Political Essays on the Nature and Operation of Money, Public Finances, and Other Subjects: Published During the American War, and Continued Up to the Present Year, 1791.

WEBSTER, Pelatiah.

$4,000.00

Item Number: 133510

Philadelphia : Joseph Crukshank, 1791.

First edition of these influential essays concerning the finances and government of the fledgling United States by Webster, who took a strongly-laissez-faire position economically, and was a proponent of what would become the Constitution of the United States. Octavo, bound in full morocco, gilt titles to the spine, marbled endpapers. In very good condition. First editions are rare.

"The collected works of an influential political economist of the period who was often consulted by members of Congress on finance and taxation" [Howes]. The book "presents the reasoning which governed the states in their fluctuating finance from 1776 to the adoption of the Constitution. The author is a very severe critic of the issue of paper money, although he admits that some of the disastrous consequences which he anticipated were not realized. He covers the topics of taxation and paper money," with a discussion of "the nature of the political union of the thirteen states, the establishment of the national capital in which the author favors Philadelphia." Webster argues "in favor of the adoption of the constitution," and he gives "a short history of the Bank of North America. The last essay treats of the extent and value of the western unlocated lands. In the appendix are given four scales of appreciation of Continental money by months" (Larned). Howes W211. Evans 23972. Larned 2904. Kress 2235. ESTC W28926.