A scarce first edition complete with its engraved map, preserving the attractive armorial binding of the Signet Library and presenting a forceful contemporary attack on a controversial parliamentary payment.

Bibliographic Details

Author: James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale (1759–1839).
Title: An Inquiry into the Practical Merits of the System for the Government of India, under the Superintendence of the Board of Controul.
Place: Edinburgh.
Publisher: Archibald Constable & Company.
Date: 1809.
Edition: First edition.
Pagination: ix, [3], 260 pp., complete with half-title.
Illustrations: Engraved map of India.
Binding: Contemporary polished calf, professionally re-backed, retaining the original endpapers.
Provenance: Ex-Signet Library, with gilt armorial covers, shelf label and ink inscription.
Format: Octavo.
Size: 21.8 × 14 cm.
References: Goldsmiths' 19844; Kress B.5526.

Condition

Very Good to Good. Contemporary polished calf professionally re-backed with modern spine, retaining the original endpapers. Binder's glue marks visible around the pastedowns as often encountered. Light general age-toning. Tiny paper flaw to one blank fore-edge. The engraved map has only a couple of small foxing spots, with two similarly tiny spots to the title page; the remainder of the text is notably clean. Please examine the gallery photographs carefully or request a fuller condition report.

Description

A scarce first edition of James Maitland's influential critique of British administration in India and its financial relationship with the East India Company. The work was written to oppose Parliament's proposed payment of £1.5 million from public funds to the Company, which Lauderdale argued was being approved without adequate evidence that the debt genuinely existed. His attack became an important contribution to debates surrounding government accountability, imperial administration and the proper scrutiny of public expenditure.

Complete with its engraved map of India and half-title, this copy also carries the attractive provenance of the Signet Library, retaining its gilt armorial binding despite professional re-backing. Lauderdale was one of Britain's most original economic thinkers and later became associated with the celebrated Lauderdale Paradox, a concept that influenced subsequent economic theory. Recorded by both Goldsmiths and Kress, and with very few institutional holdings, this is a desirable work for collectors of the East India Company, political economy and British imperial history.

Notes

James Maitland's earlier work, An Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth (1804), introduced what later became known as the Lauderdale Paradox, examining the relationship between public and private wealth. His economic ideas anticipated aspects of later macroeconomic theory and remain of lasting historical importance.