Translation of The Penal Code In Force in the Philippines

Boards in three-quarter calf with brown cloth sides; two leather spine labels with gilt lettering. Boards and spine scuffed and heavily rubbed. ''Bassett / Office Attorney General'' hand-written on front cover. From the Library of the Philippine Commission (as identified on leather spine label, paper label on front pastedown, and a few rubber-stampings). Internally generally clean except for two pages which are soiled with what looks like orange paint (here there is a bit of blemished text, but all words can still be parsed). 155 pages. English translation of Spain's penal code as amended by the codification commission of the Colonial Provinces, designated to be published in and put into effect in the Philippine Islands in 1884. This copy belonged to Arthur Bassett (1878-1962), Assistant Attorney General for the Philippines. After earning his law degree at Washington University (St. Louis), he was appointed by the Philippine Commission to be the Assistant Attorney General for the Philippine Islands, an office he held between 1903-1906, working with the first Attorney General, Lebbeus R. Wilfley. The two had been associated back home in Missouri and, in 1906, they each relocated to Shanghai when they were appointed to the United States Court in China, Bassett as first district attorney and Wilfley as a judge. Bassett followed this with a short stint working as counsel for the British-Amerina Tobacco Co. in Shanghai. Upon the U.S.'s entry into the First World War, he joined the Army and served as judge advocate general in North China, 1917-1919, with the rank of major. Between the World Wars he was chairman of the Red Cross Committee in China. Bassett, the ''old China hand,'' returned to the United States in 1941 and settled in San Francisco.…