1791 Edition of The Weekly Entertainer Periodical — Feat. Edmund Burke & John Locke Debates

Title: The Weekly Entertainer; or, Agreeable and Instructive Repository (Volume XVII — 1791 Annual Compilation)
Publisher: Robert Goadby and Lerpiniere, Sherborne, England.
Edition: 1791 Original Annual Compiled Issues (Full Year Run)
Genre: English History, Politics
Key Historical Content: Critical contemporary responses to the French Revolution, featuring extensive extracts from Sir Brooke Boothby’s historic letters rebuking Edmund Burke; additional essays discussing John Locke's American colonial constitutions.
Unique Feature: Hand-written contemporary ink marginalia throughout.
Provenance & Lineage: Features the early ownership signature of "Wm Peter at Blazy Gate" on the flyleaf.
Condition: Good.

The Weekly Entertainer
Or Agreeable and Instructive Repository
Containing A Collection of Select Pieces
Both in Prose and Verse, Curious Anecdotes,
Instructive Tales, and Ingenious Essays on Different Subjects

Monday, April 4, 1791
Further extracts from Sir Brooke Boothby's Letter to the Right Hon. Edmund Burke

"It is of the essence of power to increase by its own force; wherever the greatest quantum is found to that all inferior quantities will gravitate as to a common centre. For this reason Mr. Locke when he gave a form of government to one of the colonies in America limited its duration to an hundred years. To fabricate eternal machinery either physical or moral belongs only to the hand of God. Not so far has God himself condescended to the versatility of his creatures that he has already given us two dispensations differing considerably from each other. The very regulation of time by which everything else is regulated has been found subject to error and requiring change. To the Julian has succeeded the Gregorian system, and to that another must succeed if the world should so long endure. Our poor little institutions like our watches require to be periodically wound up and frequently repaired. They all contain in their very essence and original concoction latent principles of destruction. It is the best office of the collective wisdom of the times to mark the decay and retard its progress, and when the day comes, as come it must sooner or later, that the machine ceases entirely to answer the purposes for which it was constructed, to direct the formation of a new one if possible on a better principle and of more durable materials."

The Weekly Entertainer, owned by Robert Goadby and published 1783 - 1819, was one of the most beloved and widely circulated regional periodicals of late 18th-century England. Far more than a simple repository of local anecdotes, this 1791 compilation serves as a real-time mirror of a world in geopolitical upheaval. Printing houses outside of London used compilations like this to bring the roaring philosophical debates of the Enlightenment straight to provincial readers.

This specific volume catches the height of the "Revolution Controversy" in British intellectual history. It features deep, multi-page layout extracts of Sir Brooke Boothby actively countering Edmund Burke's famous attack on the French Revolution, utilizing the mechanical political philosophies of John Locke to argue the inevitable decay of rigid, unchanging human governments. Combined with the charming, organic presence of a 19th-century reader's penciled answers to the era's popular riddles and charades, this volume offers a double-layered look at both the macro-politics and micro-daily lives of the Georgian public.

Inscription: "Blazy Gate" almost certainly refers to St. Blazey Gate, a historic village settlement in Cornwall, England (located right near the major shipping ports of the south). The book's owner, William Peter, was likely a member of the Peter family, notable landowners and gentry in Cornwall during the 18th and 19th centuries.

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Condition: Good. Lacks dust jacket, as issued. Marbled wood cover boards with brown leather backstrip: Heavy wear and rubbing, front and back, with a section of paper missing on the lower right of the front cover; mild to moderate wear along the edges; corners are bumped; crackling of the backstrip, and bumped at the head and tail; cracked at the back endpapers, at the bottom of the gutter; headband at the tail of the spine is unraveling and needs repair. Previous owners' names on front fly leaf, including possible original owner; name in light pencil on back paste-down. Text block is square and tight, with a small brown stain on the fore edge. Some foxing else pages are undamaged and complete.