A LETTER TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF HILSBOROUGH, ON THE PRESENT SITUATION OF AFFAIRS IN AMERICA. : IN WHICH THE ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF THE COLONIES, ARE PLACED IN A NEW POINT OF VIEW, AND THEIR RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES ARE INCONTESTIBLY DEMONSTRATED ON CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES, SUPPORTED BY UNANSWERABLE ARGUMENTS DRAWN FROM THEIR ANCIENT ORIGINAL CHARTERS, AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING THEIR FIRST SETTLEMENT. TOGETHER WITH A SERIOUS AND IMPARTIAL CONSIDERATION OF THE CONSEQUENCES WHICH MUST NECESSARILY RESULT FROM THE EXERCISE OF COERCIVE MEASURES, TO COMPE THEM TO A SUBMISSION TO THE LATE ACTS OF PARLIAMENT. ALSO AN APPENDIX IN ANSWER TO A PAMPHLET INTITULED, THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT OF GREAT-BRITAIN TO TAX THE COLONIES. (Followed

LACKS TITLE PAGE Octavo, 8" x 5." This edition, published in Boston by Edes and Gill (Printers to the Honourable House of Representatives), is a reprint of the London edition, issued earlier in 1769 in London by George Kearsly. The first leaf shows ragged-edges, spotting and toning; remainder shows light toning throughout. Several names scribbled, ink-blotted out, pen trials to page 3, and verso of p. 55. A detailed treatise outlining the defense of colonial rights and privileges based on constitutional principles, original charters, and the consequences of coercive parliamentary measures and cruel legislative and fiscal enforcement. This letter is sometimes misattributed to Samuel Adams but said misattribution, perhaps issuing primarily from Joseph Sabin, is considered by some historians to be insufficiently evidence-based. For one thing the first printing of this pamphlet was in London, while at the time, Samuel Adams was in Boston, stirring the proverbial revolutionary pot. Hutchinson (History of Massachusetts) believes this "anonymous" author was James Bowdoin. An informative and important foundational document, outlining, point-by-point, the unsound reasoning and lack of fairness in British policies regarding the colonies. Quite scarce on the market. (Evans 11310; Sabin 31912). NOTE: LACKS TITLE PAGE. An important letter addressed to Wills Hill, the1st Earl of Hillsborough, then Secretary of State for the American colonies. Hill was "viewed by colonists and their sympathizers as a chief proponent of strict parliamentary taxation and military coercion" and a leading champion of economic oppressions levied upon the American colonists by Great Britain. Famously, in order to extract itself from debts incurred from the Seven Years War, the British Parliament imposed a direct tax upon American colonists; said "Stamp Act", set to begin in the fall of 1765, stated that all legal documents and printed materials must bear a tax stamp provided by commissioned distributors who would collect the tax in exchange for the stamp. This law applied not only to official documents such as wills and deeds, but extended to newspapers, pamphlets and even playing cards and dice." Further, a provision of the act stated that violators would not be eligible for a trial by jury. After vocal and at times violent colonial resistance to the Act, it was repealed in 1766. However, the Stamp Act was supplanted by The Declaratory Act, which essentially reaffirmed presumptions that the British Parliament wielded the power to pass any laws regarding the colonists, which they so desired. The issues evinced by these acts simmered for ten years and had much to do with the events comprising the American Revolution. (in part, from History Dot Calm 11/09/09). …