Preface to the Collection Essays Addressed to Volunteers
The following articles were originally written for The Volunteer Journal for Lancashire and Cheshire, and are now republished, in their present shape, at the desire of the Proprietors of that paper, who seem to consider them worthy of a larger circulation among the Volunteers, than could be given to them in a periodical of a more or less local character. Whether this opinion be correct, remains for the public to decide.
It will hardly be necessary to premise that the facts contained in articles such as those on the Rifle, on French Light Infantry, &c, are neither new nor original; on the contrary, such articles are necessarily, to a great extent, compilations from other sources, which it will, however, not be necessary to enumerate; the only portion of these papers which may be considered original, are the conclusions at which the author arrives and the opinions he expresses.
F. E. Manchester, March 9th, 1861
ESSAYS
ADDRESSED TO VOLUNTEERS.
[RBPRIKTKO FROM THE "VOLUNTEER JOURNAL FOR LANCASHIRE AND CHESHIRE."]
LONDON :
W. H. SMITH AND SON, 186, STRAND. MANCHESTER: W. H SMITH AND SON. 12, BROWN STREET.
1861.
Title page of the collection Essays Addressed to Volunteers Ë* .i
THE VO
FOB ItLSOASBXBM AND GHXSBIBX.
THE GENERAL CONTENTS COMPBUK:— A Chronicle of the Week, recording the moat important pwicwJhçi of the several corps of the two counties, reported by special corre-spondents, and embracing information upon rifle-ranges, admiaishaUre organisation, è«ei*l «jispeeti^is, rifle c œ iiesKmiua ^ a * gunnery practice, formation of new corps, appointmentsand promotions, Ac Descriptive articles on the more important general events, review», rue meetings, &c. Original contributions upon various topics of pfrmiwrt interest sad
•âme to the volunteer service. Notices of improvements and new inventions in guns and gunnery. Editorial Comments; Government Notices; Officiai Papers; Correspondence; and information on all national events connected with the development of the volunteer force.
The following are among the Contents of the first volume of the Journal,
viz. :—from September, 1860, to February, 1861.
DESCRIPTIVE PAPERS AND REPORTS.
The Review of Lancashire Volunteers at Knowaley. The Cheshire County Rifle Contest on Leaaowe Common. The Newton Review Rifle Contest at Southport The Lancashire County Contest at Hightown. A German Account of the Newton Review. Translated by the Author
bom **• JBgemeime Mütter Zakmg. The Inaugural Meeting of the First Engineer Corps in Lancashire. Cheshire County Rifle Association at Chester. J™* [1]»™ Oonnty Rifle Association at Preston.
"•Annual Bhte Contests at Chester, Blackburn, Wigan, Frodsham, »outhport, Accrington, &c ESSAYS am» EDITORIAL ARTICLES.
The History of the Rifle: Eight Chapters. French Armaments. T * French Light Infantry: Tai». C^ptatav . .
First page of an advertisement giving the contents of the first volume of The Volunteer Journal
Endnotes
[1] In April 1857 Charles Dana, one of the founders of The New American Cyclopaedia, invited Marx to contribute to it. On Engels' advice, Marx agreed to write a number of articles, and Engels promised to help him with those on military and military-historical subjects. Subsequently Engels undertook most of these articles so that Marx could complete his economic research. Marx wrote primarily biographical essays on military figures and on politicians, for which Engels also helped him to elucidate the military aspect. Marx's and Engels' work together for the Cyclopaedia, like their joint reporting for the New-York Daily Tribune, is an example of the close collaboration between the founders of scientific communism. The New American Cyclopaedia was "a popular dictionary of general knowledge" prepared by a group of progressive bourgeois journalists and publishers on the New-York Daily Tribune editorial board and edited by Charles Dana and George Ripley. It was published in 16 volumes by D. Appleton and Company, New York, in 1858-63 and reprinted in 1868 and 1869. A number of prominent US and European scholars wrote for it. Despite the eclecticism typical of this and other bourgeois encyclopaedias, many articles in The New American Cyclopaedia reflected progressive democratic views. Marx and Engels wrote their articles from revolutionary-proletarian, materialist positions notwithstanding the editors' demand not to express their party point of'view. But because of this demand Marx limited the range of his subjects mainly to military problems and to the study of different countries, giving up the idea of writing essays on the history of German philosophy, the Napoleonic Code, Chartism, socialism and communism, which he thought it inadmissible to deal with even in a spirit of apparent neutrality. It may have been for this reason also that Marx did not contribute the article "Aesthetics" as originally planned. The articles in The New American Cyclopaedia were published anonymously, and only volumes II, V and XVI contained lists of the authors of major articles. Marx is also mentioned as the author of the articles "Army", "Artillery", "Bernadotte", "Bolivar", "Cavalry", "Fortification", "Infantry", and "Navy" (actually these articles were written by Engels, except for "Bernadotte" and "Bolivar"). Marx's and Engels' authorship of other articles has been established on the basis of the Marx-Engels correspondence, Charles Dana's letters to Marx, Marx's notebooks, where the dispatch of articles to New York was entered, and other material (conspectuses, extracts for articles, etc.). In all, the authorship of 81 articles has been established. Some of them may have been abridged by the Cyclopaedia's editors, who in some cases interfered with the text. Marx and Engels contributed to The New American Cyclopaedia from July 1857 to November 1860, and their articles (those known to us) were published in volumes I-V, VII, IX and XII. They were also included, unchanged, in the 1868-69 edition of the Cyclopaedia but were not reprinted any more during their authors' lifetime. A collection of them was not published until 1933 in the Soviet Union in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XI, Pan II. The most complete publication of these articles was in volumes 14 (1959) and 44 (1977) of the Second Russian Edition of the Works of Marx and Engels. However, this publication left out some articles—"Austerlitz", "Augereau", and "Badajos", of which Engels was erroneously regarded as the author. When preparing the Russian edition, the editors established the true authorship of a number of articles wrongly attributed to Marx and Engels by some biblio-graphers. Thus the articles "Abd-el-Kader" and "Chartism" were written by William Humphrey, "Austerlitz" by Henry W. Herbert, "Epicurus" by Hermann Raster, "Socialism" by Parke Godwin, and "Hegel" by Henry Smith. The article "Aesthetics" could not have been by Marx either, for it conflicts with the views expressed by Marx on the subject in his works. In the present English edition, the articles by Marx and Engels from The New American Cyclopaedia are published on the basis of research carried out during the preparation of the Second Russian Edition of their Works. p. XXIX