beautiful illustrations of persons and places prominent in the history of the country.

University of Pennsylvania.

CHESTER LLOYD JONES.

Collins, J. Byard. The New Agriculture. Pp. 374

York: Munn & Co., 1906.

Price, $2.00. New

"Back to the land and be an individual" is the burden of Mr. Collins's message. He states that "there are probably not less than two millions of people in this country at the present time who, by leaving their places which they now occupy as clerks, bookkeepers, salesmen and factory hands could, by earnestly and intelligently adopting the avocation of agriculture, better both their own condition and that of those dependent upon them."

This call to the land appears to be a city call of "go to it” rather than a country call to "come to it." It is much to be doubted if the writer at the present or at any time in the past has had regular engagements to milk the cows at 4.30 a. m., or even to go spray his trees in bug time. The urban tincture of the book is emphasized by the expression of sympathy with the viewpoint of the individual who has become a cog in a great system of corporations, graft and exploitation, where the individual has small chance to "carry out his own theories or strive for the advancement of his own ideals."

The basis for the call to the farm is the great scientific improvement that has recently placed new powers at the disposal of the farmer. This progress has received great notice of late in the newspaper and magazine press and in government bulletins, and Mr. Collins's book brings these matters into very useful and available form in thirty- to forty-page chapters on such topics as irrigation, the new fertilization, new creations, new varieties, new practices, new machinery, etc.

The book is a treatise rather than an experience, and savors considerably of poetry as well as of business, and he makes some mistakes. It will be of use, however, to any one who wishes to easily inform himself of recent progress in agriculture or cheer that ever-increasing hope that lies in urban hearts and makes men think of a farm home.

J. RUSSELL SMITH.

University of Pennsylvania.

Fairlie, John A. Local Government in Counties, Towns and Villages. Pp. xii, 287. Price, $1.25. New York: The Century Company, 1906.

In this volume of the "American State Series" Professor Fairlie has undertaken a considerable task in 287 pages. First, in three chapters, or fifty pages, he attempts both to describe and to sketch the development of the forms of local government in England and in the United States from Roman times down to the present. Second, he offers us in four chapters, or eighty

pages, an account of the "county" organizations, of their general characteristics and of their chief agencies, their interrelations and procedure. Third, he gives us a similar account in four chapters, or seventy-one pages, of the "Minor Divisions," viz., the town in New England and the townships and county districts in our central, southern and western states. Fourth, in five chapters, or sixty-eight pages, he summarizes the tendencies and methods of central or state supervision of the agencies of local government. A bibliography and an index follow the text.

The author does not, generally speaking, essay much beyond discrimination and description of the general and numerous species of local government that have developed in or that have been transplanted to the forty-six states making up our national goverment. He does not attempt, of course, much minute or particular description of each and all forms in each state, because of the obvious limitations of his space, but generalizes wherever common or like forms are discernible throughout groups of states, and specializes, usually, only when interesting or important variations have developed and persisted. He has given us a handy and valuable compendium of the general or major results of his extensive and minute studies previously made in the vast and almost illimitable wilderness of local government.

It is not easy to review such a text satisfactorily, for its contents do not readily yield to citation or reproduction in minime, and an effort results in little else than superfluous description or recital. Readers may or may not prefer the methods of treatment Dr. Fairlie pursues. Many doubtless would desire greater consideration of the conditions or causes affecting or producing the different forms or methods of local administration; or more discussion of the proper functions or work of the various organs and the proper construction thereof. There is but little consideration given herein to the potent influence of national government and its exigencies upon the varying developments of local agencies. Throughout much of the first part one is constantly impressed with the fact that the text gives us the results of the study of constitutions, statutes and ordinances rather than of first-hand investigations into the actualities of local government. Paper governments are one thing and practical government is likely, if not certainly, to be exasperatingly different. Nevertheless, it is not fair to quarrel with the author because he has chosen to give us an exposition of the anatomy or morphology rather than of the physiology and hygiene of local governments.

The volume is, however, subject to serious criticism because of the mode or style of presentation. The author has made a survey of our vast national area and has sought to compress in this brief compend descriptions of the countless contrary and divergent forms or growths and of their concurrent or reactionary tendencies. By reason of his desire to be comprehensive, detailed and specific, the author frequently confuses the reader in a mass of underbrush or leaves him grounded in a mud bank. We doubt if a student well versed in the history of English and American local government will have clear perspectives on completing the first three chapters, and an uninformed reader will find himself befogged. Professor Fairlie's method or purpose requires either two or three robust volumes,

wherein he can set forth details with great elaboration or brevities and generalities, if we are to have clear-cut views and sharp outlines. In the first two parts especially he gives us too much and blurs the vision. In the fourth part, on the contrary, wherein the subject-matter is not so various and variable, his discussion is but slightly subject to this criticism.

Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.

F. I. HERRIOTT.

Hill, David Jayne. A History of Diplomacy in the International Development of Europe. Volume II. The Establishment of Territorial Sovereignty. Pp. xxv, 663. Price, $5.00. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1906.

In the preface to this, his second volume, Mr. Hill states more clearly the ideals both as to matter and to method which have animated his writing. It is evident that his lengthy explanation has been called out by what was an almost unanimous criticism of his first volume-namely, that his work was not a history of diplomacy per se, but rather a general history, with a slightly increased emphasis placed upon diplomatic incident. The author now says of his work that "in order to adapt its contents to all classes of readers, although based primarily upon authentic documents, the matter has been presented in the form of a synthetic narrative in which the more special details have been interwoven with facts already familiar. It is believed that the assignment of new matter to its proper place in the general order of events and the association of it with facts already known is preferable to a more abstract treatment. The life of history resides in the current of events, and its lessons should be drawn directly from the narrative." Having thus defended the narrative form and the use of well known data, Mr. Hill next reasserts the existence of a real diplomacy in the Middle Ages, contending that a modern definition of diplomacy cannot justly be applied to what he considers its earlier manifestations. . . The essence of diplomacy does not lie in the character of its organs or its forms of procedure. Intrinsically, it is an appeal to ideals and principles rather than to force, and may assume a great variety of specific embodiments."

66

In fact, however, the criticism of the first volume was not directed against the use of a narrative form, but rather implied that the narrative so overshadowed the analysis as to make impossible any true conception of what the diplomacy of the period really consisted in, or what its value was in international development. In the present volume, covering the period from 1313 to 1648, there is still too much space devoted to mere detail, too much, in truth, of the general history type of writing, but, on the other hand, there is also a much more determined effort made to assert and explain permanent diplomatic traditions and customs arising from interstate intercourse. The narrative is exceptionally well done, for Mr. Hill has a genuine gift in this form of historical exposition, and yet the final impression received from the first six chapters of this second volume is one of disappointment in that so

little has actually been learned of the growth of diplomatic tradition, or of the formulation of rules of international action. In Chapter IV, for example, after fifty-six pages of historical summary relating to the acts, the policy and the so-called diplomacy of the Popes in their relations with states both within and without the Italian peninsula, all that the author is able to postulate in regard to the permanent conditions or the permanent results of this period is that the characteristic of its diplomacy was deceit, and that the one international custom formed was the establishment of permanent embassies in Europe. Mr. Hill himself writes that "the wars of Italy and the diplomatic negotiations connected with them rested upon no fixed principles whatever. Neither national interest, nor public morality, nor religious zeal had any place in them. Personal ambition, rivalry or resentment was their only spring of action." In fact, did not this epoch embody an “appeal to force" rather than to "ideals and principles"?

If diplomacy merely means the negotiations and treaties whereby one state deceived and cheated its neighbors, the details offered by Mr. Hill really constitute a history of diplomacy. But Mr. Hill himself unconsciously refutes this idea, for in the seventh and last chapter of the present volume he finally enters upon the period where diplomacy, resting upon accepted rules of international conduct, at last assumes a rôle of historical importance. In his introduction to this chapter on "The Development of a Sovereign State System," the author writes: "With the rise of Protestant states, Europe was broken up into groups of powers which no longer possessed a common bond, and in which religion was beginning to be considered as a function of the individual state. What then, were the normal relations of independent states recognizing no common spiritual adviser?"

This question might have been asked earlier if its conditions had existed; but it was, in effect, entirely new. Before it could be answered it was necessary that jurists should elaborate more clearly the conception of the state and the principles of jurisprudence affecting the relations of political communities, that experience should demonstrate the necessity of applying them in practice, and that the nations should agree to accept them as governing international intercourse and conduct." This necessity of formulating the normal relations of independent states implies that true diplomacy was but newly born. If, as Mr. Hill states, "the question was entirely new," then here surely the proper history of diplomacy begins, or at the best the few principles and ideas emanating from a former age deserve but a limited treatment. And the sharp break from the previous age is shown also in the author's method, for here, at last, he has different material to deal with and is not dependent on mere historical narrative, and here he discusses theories of states, of sovereignty, of neutrality, and analyses the writings and the influence of men like Bodin, or Gentilis, or Grotius. Mere narrative is still excessively used, but is now made the vehicle for conveying impressions of the birth and development of diplomatic conceptions.

In effect, then, Mr. Hill seems to the reviewer to have just arrived at the true beginning of his task-to have expanded in one volume, and in all but one chapter of a second, matter that might have been described and

analysed in an introduction of reasonable length. But Chapter VII gives promise of a greater service in later volumes, and, with the author's ability in expression, these volumes, if not sacrificed to narrative details, should furnish something of real value in historical literature. Volume II contains five tables on rulers and treaties from 1313 to 1648, four maps, and has an excellent index.

Leland Stanford, Jr., University.

E. D. ADAMS.

Hillis, Newell Dwight. Fortunes of the Republic. Pp. 333. Price, $1.20. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1906.

This book was recently characterized by a business man as follows: "He apparently thinks that the way to learn all about social conditions in the United States is to go from city to city delivering lectures." Yet we are so unaccustomed to thinking in exact terms with regard to government and citizenship that the superlative optimism of this volume will undoubtedly seem to inspire many readers.

"If the rich are growing rich slowly through a falling rate of interest, the working people are growing rich rapidly through a swiftly rising wage. . . As for morals, it is enough to say that for three years the losses through dishonest clerks have been steadily falling, while the conscience fund in Washington has been steadily rising. Men cannot eat their feast in happiness while others are famishing." Such sentences, written with a desire to stem the tide of discontent, are calculated to make more socialists than the extreme philosophy of those who openly confess the doctrine. If the author had studied the contribution lists of any great city he could not have stated as facts that "The American heart is becoming as sensitive as an aeolian harp." In general, his statements of fact as to social and industrial conditions are about as accurate as the sentence: "While the news of San Francisco's sorrow was still hot upon the wires, eighty millions of people became good samaritans in one day." What actually happened was that eighty millions of people became excited for one day and a few thousands became good samaritans. Quite as far from the mark are the generalizations as to painters, poets, musicians, inventors of genius, who, it is said, "are the after fruits ripened in the warm atmosphere of universal intelligence."

Writing from a city where 150,000 children are from two to six years behind their proper grade in school, and where 400.000 are suffering from physical defects that make them unable to benefit from their schooling in proportion to outlay by the taxpayer; writing from a borough where tens of thousands of children are denied the privilege of proper schooling or even proper breathing, he offers the beautiful sentiment: "There is no position so high that the boy from the forge, factory or the farm may not aspire to and achieve the honor offered." After a year of exposure that has revolutionized the attitude of press and public toward corporate corruption and