Macdiarmid’s Enquiry into the System of National Defence 1805 + Burn? This book is titled “An Enquiry Into The System Of National Defence In Great Britain”, by John MacDiarmid, Esq., published in London by C. and R. Baldwin in 1805, and it’s a first edition, according to WorldCat. The book is 3/4 bound, with seven double-lined horizontal bands and gilt lettering on the spine, pebbled green boards, marbled endpapers with the bookplate of Newport Public Libraries and a small label which reads “Bound By H. Dight Newport” at the bottom of the front paste-down, the title page and a library stamp after the title page, two pages of Contents, and 483 pages of text, and a library withdrawal page on the rear paste-down. The book was published in two volumes, only Volume I is here, and it is a rare title; only two copies are located in Special Collections around the world, according to Worldcat, (at the National Library of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh), and two copies are ebooks. MacDiarmid (1779 - 1808) was from Weem, Perthshire, in Scotland and was an author and journalist; he wrote periodicals and edited the St. James Chronicle, and when war broke out with France in 1802, he looked into the subject of national defense and published this work in 1805, which disapproved of substituting volunteers in favor of a regular strong standing army. The book is 8vo. and measures 8 3/4 x 5 1/2 in. wide and it’s in good condition, with a tight binding, the pages are pretty clean overall, with hints of browning or toning in some of the margins, on the title and Contents page, and towards the endpapers at the rear, and a topic that was probably hotly debated at the beginning of the 1800’s, especially with the rise of Napoleon in France; it took nearly ten more years for Napoleon to be defeated and to stop his conquest of Europe and Great Britain. #196 #1568