[STEVENS (John). Examen du Gouvernement d'Angleterre, compar - Lot 56

[STEVENS (John). Examen du Gouvernement d'Angleterre, comparé aux Constitutions des États-Unis [...] par un cultivateur de New-Jersey. À Londres ; et se trouve à Paris, chez Froullé, 1789. In-8, viii-291 pp, tortoiseshell basane, smooth cloisonné spine decorated with lyres and gilt small irons with garnet-red title page, triple gilt fillet framing the boards, marbled edges; binding a little rubbed with worn corners (period binding). FIRST EDITION OF THE FRENCH TRANSLATION by the lawyer, future magistrate and politician Louis-Joseph Faure, of this text originally published in New York in 1787, also anonymously. It was long wrongly attributed (notably in Joseph Sabin's bibliography, no. 41646) to the American lawyer, polemicist and politician William Livingston (1723-1790), signatory of the Federal Constitution of 1787, Republican and unconditional supporter of George Washington. AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION TO POLITICAL REFLECTION ON FEDERALISM. John Stevens was hostile to a differentiated institutional representation of the orders of society, and in favor of a regime where a Constitution would make every individual an equal citizen, regardless of social class. He published the present Examen to counter the federalist ideas of future president John Adams, who, in his Apologie des Constitutions des États-Unis d'Amérique (Philadelphia, 1787), endorsed the principles of the English political system, defended the idea of a centralized state with counterpowers, based on bicameralism to balance national representation. John Stevens was also responding to the Genevan Jean-Louis de Lolme, who, in his Constitution of England (Amsterdam, 1771), set out to demonstrate the qualities and durability of that country's liberal constitution, and criticized the inanity of popular sovereignty in a republic. A NEW JERSEY MILITARY OFFICER AND HIGH OFFICIAL, JOHN STEVENS (1749-1838) was the son of a landowner and politician. He practiced law before taking part in the Revolutionary War, which he finished as a colonel in the U.S. Army. For a time Treasurer of New Jersey (1777-1783), he returned to private life: he devoted himself to managing the vast land he owned on the banks of the Hudson (today more or less Hoboken) and to developing steam locomotion for ships and trains. EDITION ENRICHED WITH IMPORTANT NOTES BY NICOLAS DE CONDORCET, PIERRE-SAMUEL DUPONT DE NEMOURS, and Jean-Antoine Gauvin-Gallois and others, probably including Filippo Mazzei, on despotism and the Federal Constitution of 1787 (pp. 67 to 287). These thinkers criticize Jean-Louis de Lolme for excessively extolling the merits of the English constitutional system, and John Adams for his penchant for an aristocratic, monarchist regime. A WORK THAT EXERTED GREAT INFLUENCE ON POLITICAL THOUGHT IN FRANCE IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE REVOLUTION. Its success led to numerous reprints, and Abbé Sieyès praised its merits in the third edition (1789) of his libelle Qu'est-ce que le Tiers État? IN APPENDIX, A FRENCH TRANSLATION OF THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (1787), then only in the process of ratification by the States.