The Bankrupt Law of America, Compared with the Bankrupt Law...
An Important Early American Treatise on Bankrupt Law Written During the Author's Imprisonment Cooper, Thomas [1759-1839]. The Bankrupt Law of America, Compared with the Bankrupt Law of England. Philadelphia: Printed by John Thompson, 1801. xix, [1], 399, [1], xciv, [2], xxxii, 10 pp. Octavo (8" x 5"; 20.3 x 12.5 cm). Modern cloth, gilt fillets, title and date to spine, endpapers renewed. Browning (somewhat significant in places) and light foxing to interior, ink underlining to a few pages in final appendix. A notably scarce title in commerce. $1,000. * First edition. Cooper's work was intended to assist lawyers in their dealings with the first Federal bankruptcy act, which was enacted in February 1800. Intended to encourage economic risk and supersede the patchwork of debtor laws in force in the different states, it was modeled on the bankruptcy law of the world's leading commercial power, Great Britain. Its appendices draw further comparisons to the bankruptcy laws of France and Spain. Cooper, a chemist and lawyer by training, was a polymath who published books on law, political science, economics, medicine and the natural sciences. A friend of Joseph Priestley and Thomas Jefferson, he was a professor of chemistry at Dickinson College and the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the faculty of South Carolina College in 1819 and became its president in 1820. Convicted in 1800 under the Sedition Act for libeling President Adams in a 1799 handbill, Cooper wrote The Bankrupt Law during his imprisonment. He refers to his situation in the preface and says it was an honor to be punished for "exposing some few among the errors of a weak, a wicked and a vindictive administration" (Preface v). Cohen, Bibliography of Early American Law 2477.
Price: $1,000.00
Book number 83157