Elucidations Respecting the Common and Statute Law of Scotland. This item is unavailable.Elucidations Respecting the Common and Statute Law of Scotland

Edinburgh: Printed for William Creech, 1777. First Edition of Kames's Last Major Legal Work [Kames, Henry Home, Lord (1696-1782)]. Elucidations Respecting the Common and Statute Law of Scotland. Edinburgh: Printed for William Creech, 1777. xvi, 421, [2] pp. Includes two-page publisher list of other titles by Kames. Octavo (8" x 5"; 20.3 x 12.7 cm). Contemporary full calf, spine with raised bands framed in gilt, contrasting lettering piece, blind tooling to board edges. Light rubbing to boards, somewhat heavier wear along extremities, small area of faint residue near head of spine, corners bumped. Early ownership signature of Charles Scott to front free endpaper; early ink markup ("nt") to front pastedown. Text block crisp and clean. A handsome, unrestored copy. $950. * First Edition. Lord Kames's final major legal treatise, written as an analytical critiquing mechanism rather than a traditional digest: "As my intention is only to give examples of reasoning, free from the shackles of authority, I pretend not to say what our law actually is, but what it ought to be" (p. xiii). A central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, Home served as a judge on the Court of Session and exerted a profound influence on contemporaries including David Hume, Adam Smith, and James Boswell. Issued by William Creech, the preeminent Edinburgh publisher of the Enlightenment. A second and final edition appeared posthumously in 1800. English Short-Title Catalogue T32628.…