WORTMAN, Tunis.

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A Treatise Concerning Political Enquiry, and the Liberty of the Press. First edition of this foundational text of American libertarianism, a systematic defence of the freedom of speech, and an oft-cited development of Jeffersonian philosophy. Wortman has become widely accepted as "one of the ablest spokesmen for the Jeffersonians" (Sisson, p. 388), while the Treatise has been characterized as "the book that Jefferson did not write but should have" (Levy, p. 283)Tunis Wortman (d. 1822), a New York lawyer and Jeffersonian democrat, appears to have been of the generation immediately following the Revolutionary War: he is recorded as serving in the New York militia from 1794-7, and as a legal clerk from 1801. His political philosophy seems always to have been democratic-republican rather than federalist: he was the first secretary of the New York Democratic Society and a member of the Tammany Society. The Treatise Concerning Political Enquiry was written in the shadow of Federalist president John Adams's Sedition Act of 1798, which criminalized "false, scandalous, and malicious" statements concerning the federal government. In response, Wortman contends that the freedom of speech is "indispensably requisite to the perpetuation of Civil Liberty" (p. iv), linking it with individual innovation and empowerment.John Chapman Hunter's ownership signature appears on page [iii], probably the general of that name (1762-1849), who served with the Virginia militia in the Revolutionary War an

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