HOLBACH, Paul-Henri Thiry, baron

Natural Politics. or Discourse on the True Principles of Government. By a former magistrate. London, unnamed, 1773. 2 volumes in-8 (209 x 123 mm) of VII, 2332 pp. for volume I; 2 ff.n.ch., 280 pp. for volume II. Marbled calf, spine ribbed and decorated, red edges (period binding). Vercruysse, 1773, A2; INED, 2288. First edition. "Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d'Holbach, is undoubtedly one of the most radical thinkers of the Enlightenment. D'Holbach, or the baron, as Diderot sometimes calls him in his correspondence, is well known for his atheism and system thinking... The question of democracy in d'Holbach is equally complicated. Without a democracy, he explains in the Politique naturelle, sovereignty resides in the whole society; but the confusion that soon set in made it mostly a modified anarchy. This criticism of democracy, already present in Plato's work in a slightly different way, is one of the favourite arguments of the antidemocrats" (Charles Develennes, D'Holbach Radical). Nice copy. Provenance: unidentified library mark and ex-libris of the XVIIIth century.