Beschreibung:

UNITED STATES, CONSTITUTION, BILL OF RIGHTS]. Congress of the United States...The Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added...Articles in addition to, and amendment of, The Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution ... [Philadelphia: Childs & Swaine, 1792]. Folio (13 7/16 x 8 5/16 in.). 11pp. (minor browning to fore-margins of title and last page). Stabbed and sewn, uncut, AS ISSUED in thin blue paper protective wrappers (minor wear and slight soiling at edges). Provenance : Samuel Johnston (1733-1816) of South Carolina, with his signature ("S. Johnston") on titlepage and bold inscription on front wrapper "Confirmation of Amendments by several states S. Johnston." THE BILL OF RIGHTS BECOMES THE LAW OF THE LAND: JEFFERSON'S OFFICIAL FIRST PRINTING OF THE NEWLY RATIFIED AMENDMENTS COMPRISING THE BILL OF RIGHTS ONE OF ONLY FIVE EXTANT COPIES OF THIS HISTORIC EDITION AND THE ONLY COPY IN ORIGINAL CONDITION The first official edition of the ratified Bill of Rights, ten amendments to the newly adopted Constitution that have come to constitute a critical and fundamental bulwark of American liberty. This exceedingly rare official imprint of the Bill of Rights with the ratifications of 11 states was printed at the direction of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson after Virginia, his home state, had voted on December 15, 1791 to ratify the amendments, becoming the 11th state to do so and thereby confirming the Bill of Rights as the supreme law of the land. It is known that Childs and Swaine, printers to Congress, were paid for having printed 135 copies of this edition. Evidently two copies were transmitted to each state Governor under Thomas Jefferson's circular letter of March 1, 1792, which forwarded the Post Office act, a fisheries act and "the ratifications, by three-fourths of the legislatures of the several States, of certain articles in addition to & amendment of the Constitution of the United States as proposed by Congress" (for a photograph of Jefferson's circular letter to the Governor of Maryland, see Bill of Rights , Milestone Documents in the National Archives, Washington, 1986, p.25). "A GOOD CANVAS": PERFECTING THE CONSTITUTION Even before the Constitutional Convention had finished drafting the new Constitution, a conviction grew in certain quarters that it failed to adequately protect fundamental individual liberties against the power of the new Federal government. As Virginia's George Mason wrote in his 1787 Objections to this Constitution : "There is no declaration of rights, and the laws of the general government being paramount to the laws and constitutions of the several States, the declarations of rights in the separate States are no security. Nor are the people secured even in the enjoyment of the benefits of the common law...There is no declaration of any kind, for preserving the liberty of the press, or the trial by jury in civil cases; nor against the danger of standing armies in time of peace." Mason and many others argued that the Constitution should not be ratified unless a Bill of Rights was adopted. Writing from Paris on December 20, 1787 to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson also voiced concern at "the omission of a bill of rights, providing clearly, and without the aid of sophism, for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction of monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land, and not by the laws of nations. Let me add that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or partic