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[CHASTELLUX, François Jean, marquis de]
An essay on public happiness, investigating the state of human nature,
under each of its particular appearances through the several periods of history, to the present times.
First edition in English of Chastellux's first work, De la félicité publique (1772), the most popular statement of Enlightenment historical optimism until Condorcet, which Voltaire in a fit of exuberance elevated above Montesquieu's De L'Esprit des Loix. Chastellux (1734-1788), a member of France's ancient military nobility, had served as an army officer since the age of thirteen, and he believed that religious hatreds no longer had sufficient power to provoke large-scale warfare. Alliances among the European powers had become so strong, and modern weaponry had made warfare so difficult and expensive, that the age of conquest had passed - most states were too sunk in debt even to attempt it. Even the powerful tensions developing in the early 1770s between Britain and its American colonies could not possibly lead to open war, still less American independence. The failure of this prophecy was soon brought home to him at first hand when he fought as third in command of the French forces at Yorktown. After independence he travelled around America and wrote what has been called "the first trustworthy account of life in the United States" (Voyage … dans l'Amérique Septentrionale dans les années 1780, 1781 & 1782; Paris 1786). He was friendly with Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and others of the Founding Fathers. In the present work Chastellux was of course making a contribution to the long eighteenth-century debate over the politics of happiness. Although the celebrated phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is not traceable to him directly, Chastellux is the writer on the political and economic preconditions of happiness much the closest in date and in person to the events of 1776. The anonymous English translator (who marks his notes "K") likely had an American connection: the translation is dedicated to "Edmond Jenings, Esquire", a relation of the Maryland Justice Thomas Jenings (d. 1759).
2 volumes, octavo (201 × 120 mm). Contemporary tree calf, red morocco lettering-pieces, green morocco numbering-pieces, smooth spines with double gilt bands, pale green edges. Engraved title vignettes, engraved arms of the dedicatee at head of sig. A3, vol. I. Early 19th-century bookplates of John Clucas, Ballakilley, Rushen, the Isle of Man. Rubbed, some slight surface wear to vol. I numbering-piece, a very good copy.
