8vo. Two volumes bound as one. [2], xlix, [3], 523pp, [4]. With an engraved portrait frontispiece of the author and a divisional title to volume II. Contemporary gilt-tooled calf, contrasting brown morocco lettering-piece. Rubbed and marked, remnants of lettering-piece. Light staining to endpapers and title of vol. I, scattered spotting throughout.

An early eighteenth-century French translation of German jurist, political philosopher, economist, statesman, and historian Baron Samuel von Pufendorf's (1632-1694) De officio hominis et civis (1682), a compendium of political theory which 'seems to have functioned as an academic primer for the study of natural law at Cambridge University' (Baldwin, G.P., 'The Translation of political theory in early modern Europe', in Burke and Hsia, Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, 2009. p.107.)