The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts

CONDITION: Flaws include some fading/scratches to the gilded page edges, the books are otherwise new.

The importance of this work goes far beyond its rarity. It was the first printed compilation of the laws of any English colony, and served as the model for similar efforts elsewhere and subsequent revisions in Massachusetts. It was the first - and a lasting - response of colonial oligarchy to a basic, grass-roots, agitation that can only be characterized as "democratic." It was a document which reflected an English past, but promised an American future.