A Treatise on the Law of Homicide, and of Larceny at Common Law

1799. armorial bookplate of Cadwallader David Colden. armorial bookplate of Cadwallader David Colden. Owned by New York Mayor and Legal Reformer Cadwallader David Colden Bevill, Robert [1770-1824]. A Treatise on the Law of Homicide, And of Larceny at Common Law. London: Printed for W. Clarke and Son, 1799. [xiv], 287 pp. Octavo (9" x 5-3/4"; 22.8 x 14.6 cm). Contemporary calf, blind fillets to boards, lettering piece and blind fillets to spine. Light rubbing and some minor nicks and scuffs to boards, moderate rubbing to extremities with some wear to spine ends and corners, rear joint cracked. Armorial bookplate of Cadwallader David Colden to front pastedown, annotation in his hand to front free endpaper, Colden's signature in pencil to head of title page. Moderate toning and light foxing to text, faint dampstaining in a few places. A nice copy of a scarce title. $2,500. * First and only edition. Bevill was a barrister of the Inner Temple who sought to synthesize disparate common law rulings into foundational legal principles. Writing in his preface, he notes: "I have collected everything to be found in the books which appeared to be material; and I have endeavoured to extract all the principles by which the law, as to these offenses, is governed..." [iii-iv]. Published at the close of the 18th century, Bevill's work represents an early era of criminal law specialization. At this time, practitioners typically relied on broad, multi-subject encyclopedias like Blackstone's Commentaries. This dedicated volume reflects a critical shift toward specialized legal textbooks. This copy boasts an exceptional transatlantic legal provenance. It belonged to Cadwallader David Colden [1769-1834], a member of a distinguished New York family who served as Mayor of New York City (1818-1821), a U.S. Representative (1821-1823), and a New York State Senator (1825-1827). Beyond his political career, Colden was a prominent elite legal mind, serving as District Attorney for New York County and pioneering early American juvenile justice reforms. The volume illustrates how early American architects of law relied heavily on contemporary English texts to construct the post-Revolutionary United States legal framework. Colden's manuscript note on the front free endpaper provides a direct window into this conceptual evolution. It reads: "Murder is a killing of malice-/ Malice is where there is a felonious and deliberate intent/ to do bodily harm by.