< Back

Robison, John.
Proofs of a Conspiracy Against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies.
Publisher: Printed for T. Cadell jun. and W. Davies, Strand; and W. Creech, Edinburgh, London;
Date of Publication: 1797
Stock Code: 14958
Second edition, with additional postscript. Octavo, pp., [4], 531, [1] blank. Half calf over marbled paper boards; spine on 5 raised bands, ornamented in gilt to compartments, titled in gilt to black morocco spine label; triple fillets in blind to boards; marbled end-papers; edged sprinkled red. Armorial bookplate of Frederick Henry Buckmaster to front paste-down; Buckmaster’s ownership inscription in pencil to title-page. Spine capably re-backed, corners and extremities rubbed. Contents clean and quite bright. A very good copy. A controversial and excorciating attack on secret societies, which argues that the French Revolution was orchestrated by freemasons. Despite the inflammatory title, Robison’s attack on materialism and atheism won him honorary LLD degrees from Princeton (1798) and Glasgow (1799). John Robison (1739-1805) was a Scottish philosopher, inventor, and scientist. A friend of James Watt and Joseph Black, Robison devoted his career to the systematic study of chemistry. He became increasingly concerned with the philosophical implications of scientific study, leading him to write this condemnation of the French philosophes. A curious volume of anti-revolutionary and anti-Masonic polemic, by a celebrated Scottish natural philosopher.

£750.00