iv, 364pp. ESTC T46576, Todd 53f.

[Bound with:] BURKE, [Edmund]. A letter from Mr. burke, to a member of the national assembly; in answer to some objections to his book on french affairs. Paris, printed, and London re-printed for J. Dodsley, 1791. Second edition. [2], 74pp. ESTC T37900, Todd 54e.

[And:] [MACKENZIE, Henry]. The letters of brutus to certain celebrated political characters. Edinburgh. Printed by Stewart, Ruthven, and Company, 1791. First edition. [4], 91pp, [1]. ESTC T38504.

8vo. Contemporary gilt-ruled half-calf, marbled paper boards, contrasting black morocco lettering- piece. Rubbed, surface loss to boards, lettering-piece chipped. Inked ownership inscription to head of title of first mentioned work: 'W. Rooke Nov. 20. 1790', with occasional annotations in his hand.

The third edition (printed in the same year as the first) of Irish born politician and philosopher Edmund Burke's (1729/30-1797) definitive polemical defence of the eighteenth-century British polity against revolutionary politics. It found an immediately receptive, conservative audience at home and abroad, and was reissued within a day of its initial publication, and many more times before the end of the eighteenth-century, by which time developments in France had made Burke’s work seem remarkably prophetical.

Bound with the cornerstone work of Conservatism is Henry Mackenzie's (1745-1831) The letters of Brutus to certain celebrated political characters, a collection of satirical articles lampooning contemporary figures in government initially published in the Edinburgh Herald.

Provenance: Grand Tourist William Rooke's (1750-1833) copy, with his ownership inscription.