8vo. [8], xx, 458pp, [2]. With preliminary note by the translator, and terminal note by the author. Contemporary polished calf, contrasting morocco lettering-piece, gilt. Rubbed and marked, chipping to head and foot of spine, splitting to joints. Some marking to bottom edge. Small marginal hole to Ee5, bookplate of Robert J. Hayhurst to FEP and early ink inscription of 'Dr. White, York' to head of title.

The first English edition, translated by English philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97), of a significant justification of the centrality of religion and morality to the actions of the individual, the community and the state as a whole by Jacques Necker (1732-1804) Swiss-born French Protestant politician and finance minister to Louis XVI until the French Revolution.

The first of her four published translations into English and appearing only a year after her Thoughts on the education of daughters (London, 1787) was issued, also by Joseph Johnson, Wollstonecraft completed this work apparently on her own initiative after reading the French original (also London, 1788). Critical rather than passive in execution, a translator's advertisement notes that 'In rendering this Work into English, some liberties have been taken by the Translator, which seemed necessary to Preserve the Spirit of the Original'; a contemporary review in Johnson's Analytical Review, considered to be by Wollstonecraft herself, is similarly free with criticism of Necker's original.