Seven Letters to the Lords of the Privy Council, on the Police: pointing out the causes of the depravity of the lower orders of the people: - why such numbers are constantly put to death every Sessions, and remedies for the same: with some observations on the impolicy and inhumanity of our present mode of arrests, and the keeping of debtors in prison: - the corrupt state of our gaols, and how much evil they are productive of.

[5], vi-xiii, [1], 15-64pp. 8vo. A wide-margined copy bound in contemporary marbled wrappers; head of backstrip sl. cracked. The first edition of Dornford's work, which deals predominantly with imprisonment and punishment as a check on the depravity of the 'lower orders'. It may have been written partly in response to poor-law reformer Thomas Gilbert's 1781 pamphlet, A Plan of Police, which advocated policing as the means to keep people in work and out of both crime and subsidized poverty. Dornford was in favour of the certainty of punishment to deter criminality, and argued that criminals were capable of weighing up the consequences of their actions. He was however in favour of less severe punishments, and was also concerned with the poor state of the prisons. In another pamphlet published this same year he wrote that 'I am shocked at the poor mean wretched provision made for prisoners. I beg you will enquire whether the gaols are kept clean, and white washed twice a year, according to Act of Parliament'. (An Answer to the Report from the Committee Appointed by the Court of Common Council, 1785).…