They address then-pressing topics: tariffs, protectionism, development of domestic industry, and European foreign policy.

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 49095; Clarkin, Mathew Carey Bibliography, 1133. Recent quarter tan cloth with paper sides in the style of the era. Ex-library with stamp on title-page; paper brittle and age-toned. One page torn and repaired.

Click the image for an enlargement.

The Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Internal Improvements in the Commonwealth was established in Philadelphia, in December 1824, to disseminate information on the latest improvements in the development of transportation systems including roads, railways, canals, bridges, etc.; William Strickland, Mathew Carey, Richard Peters, Jr., Joseph Hemphill, Stephen Duncan, and Gerard Ralston were among its members.

•  Shoemaker 15654, 21855, 19953, 19955, & 19949. Light blue paper–covered boards, spine with printed paper title-label. Light age-toning and spotting, more pronounced in last few leaves. Final (blank) leaf with early inked ownership signature; child’s pencilled drawings on one blank page.

•  Folded as issued; with a small rust stain in the upper margin of the first page.

•  Not in Palau who notes only later compilations. Wrappers. Some worming in margins.

•  Briseño, I, 294. Not in Palau. Modern wrappers. Small brown stain on last few leaves. A very good copy.

•  NSTC 2C42639; Goldsmiths’-Kress 26080; not in Maggs, Bibl. Asiatica. On Crawfurd, see: Dictionary of National Biography. Publisher’s dark green cloth, blind-stamped, spines with gilt-stamped title; spines very slightly sunned and showing faint traces of now-absent paper labels, cloth lightly rubbed at corners and spine extremities. Hinges cracked (inside). Front pastedowns rubber-stamped (no other institutional markings). Title-pages with pencilled owner’s name in upper margins; contents pages with inked owner’s name dated 1865. Frontispiece, plates, and a few pages in proximity to plates lightly to moderately foxed; one plate in vol. II torn from inner margin, tear not touching image. Absorbing reading, evocative images.

In reference to the present work, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England quotes Sweet as noting that the author, “notwithstanding some errors on antiquarian points of little importance, cannot be too highly praised for the philosophical accuracy and elegance with which he has treated a subject that most writers contrive to render extremely obscure and repulsive.”

The chapter headers are “History of the introduction of the feudal system into Great Britain,” “History of tenures,” “History of the alienation of land property,” “History of entails,” “History of the laws of succession or descent,” “History of the forms of conveyance,” “History of jurisdictions, and of the forms of procedure in courts,” and “History of the constitution of Parliament.”

“Great Britain,” here, is England and Scotland; Ireland is scarcely mentioned.

•  ESTC T143530; Goldsmiths'-Kress (suppl.) 9336.2-1; Sweet & Maxwell, I, 444.5. On Dalrymple, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Contemporary calf framed in blind, rebacked, spine with blind-ruled raised bands; totally plain with no labels; corners and edges moderately rubbed. Title-page with early inked ownership inscription in upper portion; errata crossed out in ink, reading not much hindered. First third of volume with early inked underlining and occasional marginalia; one lower corner torn away, affecting catchword.  (24331)

Institutional holdings of this constitution seem to be few: A search of NUC Pre-1956, OCLC, RLIN, and Shaw & Shoemaker turns up copies at only the Library of Congress, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and Cambridge University (England).

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 4066. Housed in a modern quarter dark red morocco tray case. Sewn, with original blue-green paper wrappers; wrappers torn with small loss. Faint stamp on front wrapper. Uncut copy and margins chipped. Light foxing in a few places. Withal, a remarkable survival of a rare item.

The volume opens with an oversized, folding map of the city, with a note that the map is a specimen of a new type of plate printing. An advertisement on the back free endpaper mentions that Dickinson has “sold out his extensive Printing Office . . . [and] will now apply his whole attention to his favorite business, the manufacture of Printing Type,” providing stereotyping and music printing as well as “more than 120 different kinds of Job Type.”

Binding: Signed by Damrell & Moore of Boston, with their blind-stamp on the back cover: Brown cloth embossed with foliate designs, front cover with gilt-stamped decorative title.

•  Binding as above, covers with small, fairly unobtrusive spots of discoloration, cloth a bit rubbed over corners and edges and chipping over spine extremities. Map with small holes to two corners; pages clean, with memoranda leaves unused.

•  19th-century quarter sheep over paper-covered boards, worn and abraded with small discolorations; spine leather chipped, with remnants of gilt-stamped leather title label. Edges untrimmed. Some offsetting and a very few spots to pages; small area of worm damage in upper margins.