Recent Acquisitions - Richard C. Ramer Old & Rare Books

special list 165 43
50. COSTA, Claudio Adriano da. Do contrabando dos cereaes em Portugal,
por C.A. da Costa. (Setembro.) 1854. Lisbon: Typographia de José
Baptista Mornado, 1855. 8°, disbound. Typographical vignette on title
page. A very good copy. 63 pp., 3 folding tables, numerous additional
tables in text. $100.00
FIRST and ONLY EDITION. The author gathers and presents impressive statistics
relating to cultivation and trade in wheat, barley, oats, rye, and corn to buttress his argument
that the government should allow free trade in grains from Spain to neighboring
Portuguese provinces. He concludes that only smugglers gain from the high duties, while
free trade would result in lower prices, which would prove generally beneficial.
Claudio Adriano da Costa (1799-1866), a native of Lisbon, was a businessman and
sometime newspaper editor and proprietor who published a number of works on political
and economic subjects. He was the son of José Ignacio da Costa, who had been Ministro
dos Negocios da Fazenda in 1821.
j Innocêncio II, 75-6 (without collation, and wrongly attributing publication to
the Imprensa Nacional); on the author see also IX, 71. OCLC: 82995002 (a microform
copy at the European Register of Microform and Digital Masters). Porbase locates a
single hard copy and a microfilm copy, both in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. Not
located in Copac.
Bahian Author’s First Generally Known Book
51. COSTA, Vicente José Ferreira Cardoso da. Elementa juris emphyteutici
commoda methodo juventuti academicæ adornata …. 2 works in 1 volume.
Coimbra: Typographia Academico–Regia, 1789. 8°, contemporary
decorated wrappers (a bit frayed; spine defective). Woodcut vignette on
title-page. Woodcut arms of dedicatee, D. Francisco Raphael de Castro,
Archbishop Patriarch of Lisbon, on recto of second leaf. Woodcut initial.
Typographical headpieces. Woodcut tailpiece. Some soiling, especially
to title page. Some small, light stains, especially at the beginning and
toward the end. A good copy. xvi, 71 pp. Without the errata leaf sometimes
encountered. 2 works in 1 volume. $200.00
FIRST and ONLY EDITION of the author’s first generally known book, a textbook
on emphyteusis for use of students at Coimbra Univerisity. Ferreira’s first published work
was an apparently unrecorded defense of his thesis on emphyteusis (Coimbra 1785). With
origins in Roman law, emphyteusis involved contracts by which extended or perpetual
rights were granted for the use of agricultural land, subject to rental payments and the
grantee’s obligation to keep the land in cultivation. Ferreira’s analysis was immediately
attacked in three theses defended at Coimbra during 1789.
Ferreira Cardoso da Costa (1765-1834) was born in Bahia, took his law degree at
Coimbra University in 1785, and was appointed to its faculty in 1788. With a profound
knowledge of ancient and modern law, he became a noted jurisconsult, serving as magistrate
in Portugal for some years. In 1810 he was rounded up with others accused of Jacobinism
and collaborating with the French (the “Setembrizada”), and deported to Ilha Terceira.
There he married into a wealthy family and spent the rest of his life in the Azores. He
was a corresponding member of the Real Academia das Sciencias de Lisboa.
j Borba de Moraes (1983) I, 223 (without mention of the errata leaf); not in Período
colonial. Innocêncio VII, 428 (without publisher or collation). Sacramento Blake VII, 363