Beschreibung:

UNITED STATES, CONSTITUTION]. LEE, Arthur (1740-1792). Ten autograph letters signed ("Arthur Lee"), nine to SIR WILLIAM PETTY, FIRST MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE, AND SECOND EARL OF SHELBURNE, (1737-1805), one to Sir William Jones New York, Alexandria ("Potomack River, Virginia"), "Lansdown Plantation, on Rappahanoc," 3 July 1769, 22 July 1786-10 May 1792, and n.d.. Together 50 pages, 4to (size varies slightly), with one original envelope, a few minor defects, but generally in excellent condition. A VIRGINIA GENTLEMAN'S 25-YEAR CORRESPONDENCE WITH ONE OF ENGLAND'S MOST INFLUENTIAL POLITICAL FIGURES, WITH DETAILED COMMENTARY ON THE NEW CONSTITUTION AND SENDING A PORTRAIT OF WASHINGTON An exceptionally rich, entirely unpublished series of letters, ranging in date from the early agitations against the Stamp Act, through the troubled period following the peace treaty of 1783, the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention, the debates over ratification and the implications of the French Revolution. Arthur Lee of Virginia, the younger brother of Richard Henry Lee and Henry Lee, had been educated in Britain, attending Eton College and later Edinburgh University, where he studied medicine. An early supporter of American independence, he was sent with Benjamin Franklin to France as U.S. representative in 1776-1779 and carried out several secret missions on behalf of his country. Shelburne had long moved in the highest circles of the British ministry since the 1760s; a friend of Pitt, he had attacked the Stamp Act and as Secretary of State for the southern department from 1766, urged conciliatory policies toward America. Forced to resign in 1768 he spend the next 14 years in opposition to the nation's policy on America. Brought back into the government in 1782, he backed the Treaty of Paris which acknowledged American Independence but was driven from office the same year. 3 July 1769: on Lansdowne's offer to fund scholarships in the colonies: "Before I left London, I consulted with Dr. Franklin, concerning your benevolent & generous intentions towards the Colonies...eight or ten Scholarships were what your Lordship fixed upon; & as it happens, there are just eight Colleges on the Continent. We therefore thought that a Scholarship for each College, would bid fairest for answering the purpose of the foundation...The Colleges are Harvard...Rhode Island College, Yale College...New-York College [Kings, College], New Jersey College,...Philadelphia Col., William & Mary College...Bethesday Col. Georgia." Lee makes suggestions for the awarding of Lansdowne's scholarships, at the request of Dr. Franklin, inquires about some lands in Pennsylvania granted to Lansdowne, and sends "papers from Virginia, relative to the conduct of the Late Assembly, which I hope your Lordship will think has acted becoming a free people aggrieved & insulted" (probably referring to the Assembly's resolutions on the Townshend Acts). 22 July 1786: An important letter stating the American position on British infringements of the Treaty of 1783. Lee criticizes "the whole tenor of the conduct of the British Administration since the peace"; which lacks "acts of graciousness & liberality" for "reattaching those who were detached by Treaty and reanimating those cords which naturally drew the two people together." How, he charges, can the Prime Minister "really believe us such children as to suppose, that maintaining strongholds garrisoned within the acknowledged territory of the U.S., is in truth because some states have passed laws which delay the payment of British debts?" Britain, he contends, has infringed "the Article which respected the Negroes" (Britain's obligation to compensate American owners of slaves seized by the British during the Revolution), and complains that "the King's Minister does not seem to understand the actual situation of the British debt in Virginia." Britain, he writes, "should remember that she is an old, opulent & great nation; & that it does not