A Fragment on Government, Or, A Comment on the Commentaries, Being..

1823. Early Printing of Bentham's Fragment on Government Bentham, Jeremy [1748-1832]. A Fragment on Government; Or, A Comment on the Commentaries: Being an Examination of What is Delivered on the Subject of Government in General, In the Introduction to Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries: With a Preface, In Which is Given a Critique on the Work at Large. London: Printed for E. Wilson, Royal Exchange: And W. Pickering, Lincoln's-Inn Fields, 1823. xii, lii, 143, 32 pp. Main text folloed by 32-page publisher catalogue. Octavo (8-3/4" x 5-1/2"). Recent quarter calf over existing paper-covered boards, untrimmed edges, endpapers renewed. Moderate rubbing to boards, heavier rubbing to board edges with wear to corners. Moderate toning to interior, light foxing in places, faint dampstaining and a few minor stains to title page, a few repairs along its gutter. $125. * Second edition, enlarged. With the preface of the first edition. First published in 1776, Bentham's trenchant analysis of contemporary legal and political ideas offered the first significant criticism of Blackstone. As Montague notes: "If it were nothing more, it would have no interest for later generations, which do not regard Blackstone as an authority upon speculative questions of politics or history, and therefore do not need to have Blackstone's theories corrected or disproved. But in criticizing Blackstone's views, Bentham necessarily expounds his own. As Bentham is one of the few English writers of mark upon the theory of political institutions, and as his doctrine forms a link in the chain of English political philosophy, we still read the Fragment of Government in order to see, not how far Blackstone was wrong, but how far Bentham was right." Montague, "Introduction" in Bentham, A Fragment of Government (Oxford, 1891) 59. Sweet & Maxwell, A Legal Bibliography of the British Commonwealth 2:27. Laeuchli, A Bibliographical Catalog of William Blackstone 578.