De jure regni apud scotos. Or, A Dialogue, Concerning the Due Privilege of Government, in the Kingdom of Scotland, Betwixt George Buchanan and Thomas Maitland, By the Said George Buchanan, and Translated Out of the Original Latin into English by Philalethes

Philadelphia: William Steuart, 1766. First Edition. Good. Bound with (as usual) The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women...To Which Is Added, The Contents of the Second Blast and a Letter...to the People of Edinburgh, Anno 1571 by John Knox.

The Oxford Dictionary of National (UK) Biography describes this book as "a dialogue between the author and Thomas Maitland which defended a kind of constitutional monarchy in which bad kings could be legitimately deposed... giving the De jure something of the character of a literary exercise after the manner of Plato. Nevertheless, it provoked contemporary opposition ... and in 1584 it was condemned by act of parliament, though it still had considerable influence on political thought in the seventeenth century."

This 18th century edition was published in the American colonies when ideas about resisting the monarchy were just beginning to take hold, and a full decade before the Declaration of Independence. As such, it is a key text in American Revolutionary political theory.

Following Buchanan's work, the printer William Steuart added several sixteenth-century tracts by John Knox offering opposition to queens in particular. "To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire, above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature, contumely to God, a thing most contrarious to his revealed will and approved ordinance, and, finally, the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice" (p. 15).

Thus, in one volume we have the cornerstones of the American political system-opposition to kings and the power of the people to remove bad leaders and a profound opposition to women in the top job. This book makes it not so surprising that in the 250 years since this first publication in America that the United States still has not elected a woman as president.

viii, 112, 64 pages. 12mo (3-1/4 by 5-1/2 inches). Bound in contemporary sheep with a scalloped border blind stamped parallel to the spine. Preliminary leaves cracking; old ink marking at the front and back including several ownership signatures of a Thomas Cooper dated 1795. Text block lightly stained and trimmed close in places.