TUCKER, Josiah (1713-1799)

Cui Bono? or an Inquiry, what Benefits can arise either to the English or the Americans, the French, Spaniards or Dutch, from the Greatest Victories or Successes in the Present War

Gloucester: R. Raikes for T. Cadell, 1781. 8vo. (7 5/8 x 4 3/4 inches). 141pp. With rear advertisement leaf.

Expertly bound to style in half 18th-century russia over 18th-century marbled paper-covered boards, the flat spine divided into six compartments by gilt fillets and roll tools, red morocco lettering-piece in the second compartment, the others with repeat decoration in gilt.

First edition of Tucker's economic argument for American independence in which he insisted "it would be to England's interest to let her colonies go" (Connor, 85).

Josiah Tucker, the Dean of Gloucester, was a Welsh clergyman known as an economist and a political writer on the subjects of free trade, Jewish emancipation and American independence. As early as 1749, Tucker asserted that the American colonies would seek independence, arguing with prominent thinkers such as Edmund Burke and John Wilkes and taking a distinctive stance on the American War of Independence. Though he believed that separation was inevitable, Tucker was critical and skeptical of the idea of independent colonies. Tucker wrote a long series of tracts, extending over a period of ten years, in which he advocates the peaceful separation of America from the Crown. His views, which now appear thoroughly sagacious, were considered at the time as visionary and exasperating. In this work, Tucker held that the supposed advantage of the colonial trade to the mother country was a delusion, urging that it was in Britain's interest to grant America its independence. Tucker's position is backed by economic principles. Anticipating Adam Smith's theory of the invisible hand, Tucker denies the economic benefit of possessing colonies, maintaining that trade would still occur as long as British goods remained competitive. With the disciplinary defining notion later cemented by Smith that actors in a given economic market acts according to their self-interest, Tucker saw the separation of the colonies from Britain as an eventuality given the Colonies' rapid economic growth and dislike of regulation. In Letter VII of the present publication titled "A Plan for a general Pacification; with Remarks." (pp. 121-139), the Postscript contains the news of Cornwallis' surrender whereupon Tucker remarks: "To congratulate my Country on being defeated is contrary to that Decency which is due to the Public. And yet, if this Defeat should terminate in a total Separation from America , it would be one of the happiest Events, that hath ever happened to Great Britain."

Kress B. 432; Sabin 97334; Howes T-382; Adams, American Controversy; 81-71a; Cornish, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Connor, Josiah Tucker 85; Lock, Edmund Burke, I:388.

Item #40130

Price: $1,500.00