Early printing of the Constitution of the United States.- Wilson (James) and Thomas McKean. Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States of America, first English edition, with errata f. and index (often lacking), the title from the 1788 Philadelphia first edition (titled Debates on the Convention of the State of Pennsylvania), followed by the American divisional title f. with dedication to verso, lacking half-title and gathering H, title and 2 other ff. with marginal repairs and restoration, errata f. with portion of restoration with partial loss to 6 lines of text, spotting and soiling, modern half morocco, [ESTC T138356; Sabin 104627], 8vo, for J. Debrett, J. Johnson, and J.S. Jordan, 1792.

⁂ The rare first English edition of Wilson and McKean's speeches in favour of the Constitution. The speeches were recorded by the reporter Thomas Lloyd for publication, first in Philadelphia in 1788. The sheets leftover sheets were then sent to England at which point the American preliminaries and pp.20-23 were replaced with English cancels. This process however appears to have been somewhat haphazard, seemingly with no two copies quite the same. Here both the title leaves from the first edition have been retained and gathering H seems to have never been included making this a curious hybrid of the two editions.