THE DANGERS OF OUR NATIONAL PROSPERITY; AND THE WAY TO AVOID THEM. A SERMON, PREACHED BEFORE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT, AT HARTFORD, MAY 12TH, 1785.
Hartford: Printed by Barlow & Babcock, 1785. 4to. 38pp, but lacking the half title and final blank. Bound in attractive modern half brown morocco and marbled paper over boards, gilt-lettered spine title. Light foxing, Good plus.
Wales, Professor of Divinity at Yale, discourses learnedly on the state of the nation, and the difficulties which the Constitutional Convention would attempt to solve two years later in Philadelphia.
"We have been often delivered in a most signal manner, both from the secret stratagems and the open assaults of our enemies." Echoing an emerging theme, he asserts that God has singularly blessed this country. But we have not sufficiently discharged our "obligations to those who have voluntarily taken an hazardous or an expensive part, in effecting our late happy revolution." At very least, the bondholders should be paid, and not in depreciated currency, which is destroying the country. Moreover, we should become self-sufficient, and not hanker "after British gew-gaws and foreign luxuries."
He views with alarm the tendency toward factions and rivalries among the States.
Evans 19359. Trumbull 1559. ESTC W37838. Item #41843
Price: $1,250.00