Two Tracts on Civil Liberty, the War with America, and the Debts and Finances of the Kingdom: With a General Introduction and Supplement

Richard Price was one of the most influential political philosophers of the eighteenth century, and these two tracts, written in 1778 as the American Revolution unfolded, contain his most urgent arguments for civil liberty. He makes the case that legitimate government must rest on the consent of the governed, contrasting systems founded on popular consent with those claiming divine right. Price's defense of the American colonists is passionate and philosophically rigorous: he argues that their cause is just, that taxation without representation is tyranny, and that Britain's attempt to subjugate them will ultimately fail and corrupt the very principles of liberty Britain claims to uphold. The second tract turns to the financial wreckage left by the war, examining how imperial overreach destabilizes a kingdom. Written by a Dissenting minister who knew firsthand what it meant to be excluded from full citizenship in England, these tracts pulse with personal conviction and intellectual courage. For anyone interested in the origins of modern democratic thought or the philosophical arguments that animated the American Revolution, Price's work remains essential.