MACERONE, Francis.

Defensive instructions for the people: containing the new and improved combination of arms, called foot lancers; miscellaneous instructions on the subject of small arms and ammunition, street and house fighting, and field fortification.

London, J. Smith, [1832]. 8vo (230 x 140 mm), pp. 8, 72, with five hand-coloured and one un-coloured folding plates (the first reinforced along fold and the last with a closed tear); original cloth-backed boards; extremities rubbed and corners bumped; paper label on spine; slightly chipped. First edition. A rare account encouraging ‘the people’ to use physical force to push the Reform Bill through the House of Lords. Popular agitation in 1832 never developed into revolution but the threat of violence was sufficient to ensure that the Wellington-Sutton government was rejected and the Bill passed through the Lords. Brock notes that Macerone’s radical manual ‘enjoyed a large sale’, that the Times and the Morning Chronicle devoted much space to it and that most of the Poor Man’s Guardian, 11 April 1832, was taken up with the Defensive instructions (see Brock, The Great Reform Act p. 307, 383). The Great Reform Act ‘was a recognition of an altered social balance. The agitation which accompanied its passage diffused political awareness. It was a precedent for further changes. In these ways its tendency was democratic’ (Brock, The Great Reform Act p. 335).Macerone, a Manchester-born soldier and mechanical inventor, had been aide-de-camp to Joachim Murat in Naples during the Napoleonic Wars, associated with Gregor MacGregor in raising troops in England and Europe to aid General Bolívar in the struggle for Colombian independence, and had also served in Spain under General Pepè meddling in Spanish and Neapolitan politics. During the latter period he had founded a company, self-styled the ‘Atlantic and Pacific Junction and South American Mining and Trading Company’, which had collapsed in the commercial panic of 1825. ‘About this time Maceroni designed “the best paddle-wheel in the world”, some improved rockets, a design for an armoured ship, and other military and naval inventions which were never patented. He also wrote Hints to Paviours (1827), in which he advocated asphalt paving. In 1829 he went to Constantinople on receipt of £1000 to assist the Turks against the Russians, and returned two years later “poorer than he went”. At the time of the first Reform Bill he published a physical-force pamphlet, entitled Defensive instructions for the people, containing new and improved combination of arms, called foot lancers (1832). The combination was a fowling piece and a 10 foot lance for street fighting. Maceroni says that he had great difficulty in finding a printer for the pamphlet, which he published without any return when he and his children were in great poverty’ (Oxford DNB). In it he explained that ‘It is essential for a free people to be armed. To hope that liberty and justice can be preserved with all the means of power and coercion, existing in the hands of the governing minority, is an infantine delusion! In the United States, every man has his rifle, and knows well how to use it. An armed people cannot be subdued by any faction. They require no paid army to protect them; and none can coerce them. Arm, then, oh, British people, and you will be safe!’ (p. 7).The Defensive Instructions for the people was one of the earliest works on street fighting and defence of property in cases of civil unrest. It includes sections (and illustrations) on the lance, the rifle, and ball and buckshot cartridges, as well as chapters on ‘necessary preparations by the people of villages or towns on how to organise themselves and the town for defence’, ‘on the mode of defending a house, a church, or a public edifice’, ‘on the defense of a village or a town’ (this includes sections on movable barricades, hand-grenades, and burning acids), ‘a few brief hints on field fortification’, and ‘incendiary composition for shells’.Abbey, Life 367.

• GBP 900.00 > otras divisas
• nº de pedido: T2182

• librero: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)