THE INDEPENDENT WHIG.
London: Printed for J. Peele, at Locke's Head, 1721. Contemporary paneled leather boards [some wear, rebacked in calf]. lii, 444, [20- Index] pp. Lightly foxed, inner hinges strengthened, else Very Good. The first printing in book form of the 53 papers comprising this classic of political and religious liberty.
These two radical Whigs profoundly influenced the revolutionary generation, which was increasingly at odds with their English rulers. "More than any other source this disaffected Whig thought fused and focused the elements that shaped the colonists' conception of the English constitution and English politics" [Wood: The Creation of the American Republic 17].
"The writings of Trenchard and Gordon ranked with the treatises of Locke as the most authoritative statement of the nature of political liberty and above Locke as an exposition of the social sources of the threats it faced" [Bailyn: Ideological Origins of the American Revolution 36]. The two men "joined forces to produce, first, the weekly Independent Whig to attack High Church pretensions and, more generally, the establishment of religion, fifty-three papers of which were published in book form in 1721" [Id.].
The work was also highly critical of the Church of Rome. Americans read it voraciously; in 1724 the first American printing occurred, and "John Peter Zenger's famous New York Weekly Journal was in its early years a veritable anthology of the writings of Trenchard and Gordon." Id. at 43. This is its first printing in book form.
FIRST EDITION. ESTC N7172. Item #39844
Price: $1,250.00