[Webster, Pelatiah]:

$4,500 · Offered by William Reese Company

A DISSERTATION ON THE POLITICAL UNION AND CONSTITUTION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES, OF NORTH-AMERICA: WHICH IS NECESSARY TO THEIR PRESERVATION AND HAPPINESS, HUMBLY OFFERED TO THE PUBLIC, By a ... The most important work by noted Revolutionary-era political economist Pelatiah Webster, sometimes called the first American political economist. This is the second edition, following the Philadelphia edition of the same year; no other editions would follow. Webster advocated supporting the Revolution by taxation instead of loans, free trade, and the reduction of the issuance of paper money. In the present work he expresses his faith in a stronger union, and thus became an early advocate of the Constitution. It was on the basis of this work that Hannis Taylor later claimed that Webster was the true author of the Constitution. Although there is no concrete evidence that the 1787 Constitutional Congress used his model as a blueprint, his Dissertation reportedly influenced James Madison's thinking.Born in Connecticut in 1726 and trained in theology at Yale, Webster later moved to Philadelphia and became a very successful merchant. A strong proponent of the Revolution, he was imprisoned multiple times by the British authorities for speaking out. Webster was already an older man by the time he began to write extensively, not publishing until the war. He produced a number of important political tracts in the Confederation and Federal periods, most of them arguing for principles of free

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