"Liberty and American Experience in the Eighteenth Century presents new essays on central themes of the American Founding period by some of today's preeminent scholars of American history." "In ten essays, these writers explore various specific aspects of the zeitgeist, among them Burke's theories on property rights and government, the relations between religious and legal understandings of liberty, the significance of Protestant beliefs on the founding, the economic background to the Founders' thought on governance, moral sense theory contrasted with natural rights, and divisions of thought on the nature of liberty and how it was to be preserved."--Jacket.