Books and Manuscripts

The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as Altered and Amended by the Convention For that Purpose freely chosen and assembled, and by them Proposed for the Consideration of their Constituents
Philadelphia: Printed by Zachariah Poulson, 1790. First edition. 8vo. (ii), 28 pp.; lacking rear blank. Three-quarter brown morocco over marbled paper-covered boards, stamped in gilt, rubbing to boards, spine, and extremities; top edge gilt, other edges untrimmed; book-plate of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania on front paste-down (with their deaccession stamp to same); edges of first leaf repaired, repair in center of same affecting two letters on verso; contemporary inscriptions on recto of first leaf, with the ownership signature of Jacob P. Jones; Jones's signature at head of title-page; foxing to text. Evans 22760; Sabin 60017; ESTC W30513; Reese, The Revolutionary Hundred 32

Scarce first edition Pennsylvania's second constitution. Ratified in 1790, it replaced the state's first constitution, passed in 1776, taming what was considered the world's most democratic charter and its most egalitarian features. In comparison to the first, the second constitution divided the General Assembly into two chambers: the House and the Senate, and vested the previously weak governor with more robust powers, such as veto power. The Convention to revise the constitution met in the late fall 1789 into the winter of 1790, and was heavily influenced by the Federal Constitutional Convention and state debates on ratification that had taken place the previous year.

Jacob P. Jones is likely the same Jones who was born in Philadelphia in 1802, and became an iron merchant, and who in 1836 formed the iron and steel firm Morris and Jones, later Morris, Wheeler, & Co. Jones was also a director of the Bank of North America, the Pennsylvania Company for the insurance of Lives and Granting Annuities, the Westmoreland Coal Company, benefactor of Haverford College, and manager of the Pennsylvania Hospital. He died in May, 1885.

Evans and Sabin both note another printing of this text, also by Poulson in 1790, but with a shortened title-page. Priority between the two has not been established.