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View of the Constitution of the United States with Selected Writings

As professor of law at the College of William and Mary, St. George Tucker in 1803 published View of the Constitution - the first extended, systematic commentary on the United States Constitution after its ratification and later its amendment by the Bill of Rights. View was originally part of Tucker’s “Americanized” or “republicanized” edition of the multivolume Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William Blackstone. Generations of American law students, lawyers, judges, and statesmen learned their Blackstone - and also their understanding of the Constitution - through Tucker. As Clyde N. Wilson notes, “Tucker is the exponent of Jeffersonian republicanism … in contrast to the commercial republicanism of New England that has since the Civil War been taken to be the only true form of American philosophy.” In addition to the entirety of View, the Liberty Fund volume includes seven other essays from Tucker’s renowned edition of Blackstone. These include “On the Study of Law,” “Of the Unwritten, or Common Law of England,” and “Of the Several Forms of Government.”

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Tyranny Unmasked

John Taylor of Caroline (1753-1824) was one of the foremost philosophers of the States’ rights Jeffersonians of the early national period. In keeping with his lifelong mission as a “minority man,” John Taylor wrote Tyranny Unmasked not only to assault the protective tariff and the mercantilist policies of the times but also “to examine general principles in relation to commerce, political economy, and a free government.” Originally published in 1822, it is the only major work of Taylor’s that has never before been reprinted. As an early discussion of the principles of governmental power and their relationship to political economy and liberty, Tyranny Unmasked is an important primary source in the study of American history and political thought.

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The Claim of the American Loyalists

Having lost his valuable estate in Pennsylvania during the American Revolution, the Loyalist Galloway spent the rest of his years in exile in Britain lobbying the government for compensation and writing books like this one to justifying his position.

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The Divine Feudal Law: Or, Covenants with Mankind, Represented

The Divine Feudal Law sets forth Pufendorf’s basis for the reunion of the Lutheran and Calvinist confessions. This attempt to seek a “conciliation” between the confessions complements the concept of toleration discussed in Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society. In both works Pufendorf examines the proper way to secure the peaceful coexistence of different confessions in a state.

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Essays (Glamorgan Pamphlets)

These economic fairy tales and parables published by Jane Marcet in the 1830s charm with their light-hearted wit. In language less difficult than that of Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and Mill, she illustrates such topics as the economics of wages and income distribution. The John Hopkins series reprinted and expanded on the popular earlier Glamorgan Essays. Marcet originally earned her fame by writing about chemistry for the layman (in the process influencing Michael Faraday), and branched out with equal success to other fields, including primarily economics.

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Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (LF ed.)

The Liberty Fund edition of this work. Impugning John Stuart Mill’s famous treatise, On Liberty, Stephen criticized Mill for turning abstract doctrines of the French Revolution into “the creed of a religion.” Only the constraints of morality and law make liberty possible, warned Stephen, and attempts to impose unlimited freedom, material equality, and an indiscriminate love of humanity will lead inevitably to coercion and tyranny.

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An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections (1742, 2002)

The first half of the work presents a rich moral psychology built on a theory of the passions and an account of motivation deepening and augmenting the doctrine of moral sense developed in the Inquiry. The second half of the work, the Illustrations, is a brilliant attack on rationalist moral theories and is the font of many of the arguments taken up by Hume and used to this day.

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