BURKE, Edmund.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, originally presented to The Right Hon. William Pitt, in the month of November, 1795. First edition, second impression, of Burke's last work of political economy, a sustained defence of free market economics in the face of the 1795 famine in England. This copy is signed "Thomas Haviland Burke" on the title page: this may be Burke's great nephew (1795-1852).The Thoughts and Details was originally produced in several manuscript copies for key members of the Pitt administration, including the Prime Minister himself. This edition was published three years after Burke's death in 1797: the editors observed that England was again facing similar food shortages to those discussed by Burke in 1795. This second impression is identifiable by the printer's imprint at the foot of page 48 and by the positioning of signature B beneath the "r" of different.This copy subsequently passed into the seminal collection of 18th-century material acquired by Robert Borthwick Adam (1833-1904), with his leather bookplate on the front pastedown.

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