Influential and impassioned defense of Jay's Treaty by Robert Goodloe Harper (1765-1825), a lawyer and politician. The work is also of maritime interest, because of the exhaustive treatment of French, British and American positions and policies on impressment, privateering, and neutral ships and cargoes. First published in Philadelphia as Observations on the dispute between the United States and France it turned out to be an extremely popular work, which had already gone through 19 editions in 1799. The present edition is one of three published translations into Portuguese. Harper, who used to be extremely pro-French when he lived in South Carolina, had changed position when he moved to Philadelphia.
In the present treatise he calls for countermeasures to French attempts to suppress American trade. He does not even exclude a war. It was France who had tried to violate American neutrality, when they tried to involve the United States in the French dispute against England and Spain. Harper argues that, by permitting British ships to seize French goods found on American vessels, the United States had not violated its 1778 treaty with France.
Although Harper was considered in his time as a pompous dandy, he did contribute his share to history. As a member of the Ways and Means committee he introduced the modern idea of balanced sectional representation. Until then every state was represented, but Harper moved to reduce the number of members to nine. Also, Harper was one of the founders of the American Colonization Society, and he is credited with suggesting the name "Liberia" for its African settlement.
Binding rubbed, with some wormholes and some loss of material around the foot of the spine, occasionally very slightly browned, otherwise a good copy. Cf. Eberstadt 114: 256 (1st ed. 1797); Leclerc 891 (3rd Engl. ed. 1797); Sabin 30430-30436 (Engl. & Am. eds).