MABLY (Gabriel Bonnot de). Observations on the Government an - Lot 45

MABLY (Gabriel Bonnot de). Observations on the Government and Laws of the United States of America. Amsterdam: J. F. Rosart & comp. 1784. In-12, (2 of which the second is blank)-213-(one blank) pp., paperback in dust jacket; spine worn with trace of handwritten label, some marginal wetness, a few leaves creased. Several editions were printed in Holland in 1784, without it being possible to determine which was the original. A WORK PUBLISHED WITH THE ACTIVE PARTICIPATION OF JOHN ADAMS. The work consists of the open letters that Abbé de Mably addressed in 1783 to the future President John Adams, then U.S. Minister Plenipotentiary in Holland and responsible for negotiating the General Peace (signed in September 1783). John Adams played an underhand role in its publication: he tried to pressure the Count de Vergennes, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, for permission to print it, but the Count, who had been at odds with him since 1780, sent it back to the Director of the Librairie to follow the normal censorship procedure. John Adams then decided to have the Observations published in Holland, and asked the publicist Antoine-Marie Cerisier (based there) to correct the handwritten version of the text recopied by Abbé Chalut, then to send the proofs to Abbé de Mably for correction. AN EULOGY OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, FOUNDED ON "THE DIGNITY OF MAN" AND "THE WISEST PHILOSOPHY". Abbé de Mably expresses great admiration for the Constitutions of the United States, even though he is in fact basing himself on a limited examination of those of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Massachusetts: "While almost all the nations of Europe ignore the constitutive principles of Society, & regard the citizens only as the cattle of a farm which is governed for the particular advantage of the owner; one is astonished, one is edified that your thirteen Republics have at once known the dignity of man, & have gone to draw from the sources of the wisest philosophy, the human principles by which they wish to govern themselves" (p. 2). BUT WITH CONCERNS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE NEW REGIME: abbé de Mably is also critical, questioning the ability of this young democracy to guard against populist excesses that could lead to the emergence of hereditary authoritarian power (he observed the American revolution in the light of the Dutch experience of the 17th century), corruption and interfaith tensions, and denies the value of a constitution in limiting the legislator's freedom. THE BOOK LED THOMAS JEFFERSON TO REACT. In Europe from the summer of 1784 and ambassador to Paris from 1785 to 1789, Thomas Jefferson solicited his friends to respond to Abbé de Mably's observations on the point of concern, This led to the publication of articles on the United States by Jean-Nicolas Démeunier in volumes II to IV of Économie politique et diplomatique (1786-1788) in the Encyclopédie méthodique, and to the publication of Filippo Mazzei's Recherches historiques et politiques sur les États-Unis de l'Amérique (1788). AN IMPORTANT HISTORIAN, MORALIST AND ECONOMIST OF THE LUMIERES, L'ABBE DE MABLY (1709-1785) moved towards intransigent republicanism in the political sphere, and tempered proto-communism in the economic sphere.