About this Item
Folio (12.5 inches). 18 George II, Chapter 17. Caption title, page 68. In the whole volume of: An Abstract of all the Acts Passed in the Fourth Session of the Ninth Parliament of Great Britain, and in the Eighteenth Year of the Reign of our Most Gracious Sovereign Lord King George the Second. 109 pages + 1 page (Table of Contents). Recent blue paper wrappers, with title block mounted on cover. Spine slightly askew. This volume of Abstracts was published as an accompaniment to the Parliamentary Acts for 1745 (18 George II), and conveyed the essence of each law passed that year, complete with marginal references to the page numbers of the first edition Acts. Of particular interest is the Abstract for the Act in which Parliament offered a prize of GBP 20,000 for the discovery of a North West Passage through the Arctic regions. A shipping route to the Orient through a northern passage would have saved considerable travel time and expense, and had long been desired by British merchants. Arthur Dobbs, an Anglo-Irish politician, believed that a North West Passage existed, and invested heavily in private expeditions to the Hudsons Bay region to search for the elusive shipping route. Dobbs also insisted that the Hudsons Bay Companys charter should have been revoked on the grounds that they had not lived up to obligations to promote and support exploration and discovery in the Arctic and had not actively looked for a North West Passage. When Captain Christopher Middleton returned from an expedition in 1741 stating that no such passage existed, Dobbs accused him of misleading the public and concealing positive results. Heated arguments between Dobbs and Middleton led to a series of published exchanges (known as the Dobbs-Middleton controversy) and resulted in a formal investigation by the British Admiralty. In the end, Dobbs was successful in persuading Parliament to pass the 1745 Act offering a GBP 20,000 reward for the discovery of a North West Passage specifically through Hudsons Streights. The volume also contains other Abstracts of interest on a variety of financial, legal, military, gaming, and commercial topics, together with the curiously interesting Abstract of an Act for making the Surgeons of London and the Barbers of London Two Separate and Distinct Corporations (pages 60-62). Seller Inventory # 151
Contact seller
Report this item
