Enquiry Concerning Political Justice: and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness... In two volumes. Vol. I. [II.]

London: G.G. & J. Robinson, 1796. Second edition. Two octavo volumes (8 1/16 x 5 1/16 inches; 207 x 131 mm). xxii, [2, errata], 464; ix, [1, errata], 545, [1, blank] pp. Half-titles present in both volumes.

Full contemporary tree calf. Spines with red morocco spine labels, lettered in gilt. Spine numbers in gilt on onlaid morocco lozenges. Edges speckled red. Minor old ink notation on front pastedown of both volumes. Some minor rubbing to spines and edges. Corners slightly bumped. Internally very clean. Overall an almost fine set.

"The Enquiry was, and remained, the work by which [Godwin] was best known. It was one of the earliest, the clearest, and most absolute theoretical expositions of socialist and anarchist doctrine. Godwin believed that the motives of all human action were subject to reason, that reason taught benevolence, and that therefore all rational creatures could live in harmony without laws and institutions. Believing in the perfectibility of man, he thought that ‘our virtues and vices may be traced to the incidents which make the history of our lives, and if these incidents could be divested of every improper tendency, vice would be extirpated from the world'. All control of man by man was intolerable and ‘government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of original mind'. The time would come, he maintained, when every man, by doing what seemed right in his own eyes, would also be doing what was best for all men, because all, through discussion, would be guided by purely rational principles...Godwin's passionate advocacy of individualism, his trust in the fundamental goodness of man, and his opposition to all restrictions on liberty, have endured' (Printing and the Mind of Man, regarding first edition).

Kress B.2529. Goldsmiths' 15825. Printing and the Mind of Man 243 (regarding first edition). Rothschild 1016. Pforzheimer 1: 9-20.

HBS 68568.

$2,200.