Author: Dawson, George [1637 - 1700]
Title: ORIGO LEGUM: Or A Treatise on the Origin of Laws, and Their Obliging Power: as Also of Their Great Variety and Why Some Laws are Immutable, and Some not; but May Suffer Change, or Cease to be, or be Suspended, or Abrogated. In Seven Books
Description: London: Printed for Richard Chiswell, 1694. 1st edition (Lowndes, p. 604; Marvin, p. 257; Wing D-459). Early full brown calf, with a modern respining to style. Dark maroon gilt-lettered leather title label to spine second compartment. [28], 168, T.p. printed in red & black. Printed glosses. "Chap. X" begins new pagination & register, though text continuous. Folio. ^4 a - b^4 c^2 A - X^4; 2^A - 2D^4 2E^2. 32.5 cm x 20.5 cm. Stain to text-block lower corner gradually diminishing, with minor worming, primarily in the stained portion, affecting margins only. Lower outer margins of first few leaves neatly restored. Some other odd soiling, nothing obtrusive. A solid VG copy of an uncommon title. Per the DNB, Dawson "an English jurist, educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1658-9, M.A. in 1662, and was presented by his college to the vicarage of Sunninghill, Berkshire, where he died in 1700, aged 63." This his only known published work. Termed by some as 'ambitious, it have been described as "one of the most interesting, but now completely forgotten, treatises on natural law to be printed in late-seventeenth-century England. Despite its many qualities, the treatise was published, albeit very handsomely by Richard Chiswell, in a very limited edition.. and it simply failed to reach the relevant audience", a circumstance which, no doubt, accounts for its scarcity in the modern antiquarian law market.

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