that the Price Revolution lies behind the Puritan Revolution in England to which he attaches so much importance, the Price Revolution is entirely unnoticed. The significance of the struggle for commercial empire and the adoption of the principles of mediaeval town policies by the states of Western Europe are not perceived although domestic politics, political theory, and international relations were largely determined by these factors. The influence of the French on the political thinking of the American colonists is greatly exaggerated. Locke, not Montesquieu or Rousseau, was the philosopher from whom the colonists drew the arguments which they used against England between 1763 and 1776; the Declaration of Independence is saturated with Locke; the constitution embodies the ideas that were worked out in the colonial debate with England, first incorporated into the state constitutions, and their adaptability to practice observed in these constitutions before they were in 1787 placed in the federal constitution. Mr. Wallace also fails to take adequate notice of the importance of the New World environment upon the political ideas of the colonists. French influence would certainly have led the Fathers who drew up the federal constitution to formulate the Rights of Man before they began to determine what their government was to be like. Let us note, too, in passing that these Fathers did not labor "two years to frame a comprehensive statement of the basis of popular sovereignty." Jefferson had been in France and had carried French ideas to America, but the compiler of the index of the book apparently did not think that Mr. Wallace had said enough about Jefferson as a transmitter of French thought to make it worth while cataloging his name.

Consideration of the portion of the book which deals with more recent times may more fairly be postponed until the volume which we are told is to follow this has been published. Some matters, however, may be suggested at this time. The treatment of the nineteenth century is devoid of any contribution to our knowedge and interpretation of the period. Most readers will find that they will come away from a perusal of the second of the two volumes which Professor Hayes of Columbia has written on the social and political history of Modern Europe with a much more adequate, much more balanced, and far

clearer knowedge of events and developments since 1815 than they would have if they had spent their time in working through Mr. Wallace's book. The only interesting point that is made by Mr. Wallace is that the recent expansionist movement of Europe over other parts of the world was due not so much to the bourgeois desire for new markets, as to collusion between the proletariat and the rulers of the states. Unfortunately this point still remains to be proved. Again, there is not enough made of the economic development of the United States since the Civil War. The United States has been very much in the fore of the world's history in the last decades and should have been given greater attention. Problems and movements, complicated by century-old factors in Europe, often appear in simpler forms in the American field and so contribute to a juster appreciation of what is going on in the world at large.

F. J. TSCHAN.

Modern and Contemporary European Civilization: The Persisting Factors of the Great War, by Harry G. Plum and Gilbert G. Benjamin, Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1923. Pp. 413.

This is an interesting attempt at a new kind of text-book of European history since 1815. It marks a brave effort to break away from the conventional method of treating the subject in chronological and geographical fashion. It proceeds from the assumption that the history of the past century ought to be studied chiefly with a view to understanding the World War and its aftermath, which are supposed to have brought to a focus all the great political, economic, and social questions confronting modern civilization. Hence the authors begin by describing "the present condition in which the world finds itself with the great problems facing it for solution," and then go back to review the evolution of each of these problems during the past century. In so doing they have devoted a larger amount of attention than is customary to economic and social questions; and they have also endeavored to proceed "constructively;" i.e., to

explain, interpret, and draw conclusions from the facts presented, rather than merely to narrate and leave the student to frame his own conclusions.

But the novelty of the book lies mainly in its method. The results of the survey and the judgments expressed in passing are familiar enough, not to say commonplace. The authors applaud democracy, "social justice," the peace movement, the League of Nations, the scientific movement of the nineteenth century; and they castigate the Congress of Vienna, secret diplomacy, imperialism, Socialism and Bolshevism. One looks in vain for new views, but at any rate the views expressed are moderate, humane, and, with few exceptions, unobjectionable. Religious questions are treated with the greatest caution, and are very seldom mentioned.

The greatest defect of the book is inaccuracy. Proper proofreading would have prevented such lapses as "Louis Phillippe" (p. 117), "Nauman" (p. 16), "Treitszke" (p. 170), and a host of others. What is worse: the volume contains a lamentable number of inexact dates and erroneous statements of fact. To cite but three examples out of many: the authors give one to understand that British policy at the time of the Crimean War was directed by Lord Beaconsfield, but in 1878 by Lord Salisbury (!) (pp. 95-96); they declare that Cavour about 1858 was planning "to obtain the support of Napoleon III in making war upon Austria and Italy" (p. 192); and they affirm that the Treaty of London of 1840, "which was forced upon the Turks of Egypt, recognized the dependency of the Caliph upon the Sultan" (p. 117).

R. H. LORD.

The American Colonization Society, 1817-1840. By Early Lee Fox, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Johns Hopkins Press: Baltimore, 1919. Pp. viii, 231.

In the first three chapters which comprise 180 of the 226 pages, there occur over one hundred quotations, formally introduced and formally set off from the body of the text. In the text itself quotations are numerous. We wonder, in conse

quence, how Dr. Fox would state anything himself. When after about eighty or more pages filled with quotations we come to some that are reasonably quotation-free, we marvel at his command of language. In vigorous and elegant English he upholds the American Colonization Society and condemns the Garrisonians. The Society, so far as we are aware, has enjoyed the good repute, due a well-meaning body of idealists. The Garrisonians most of us have classed with the "jingos," arousing public opinion about some evil, real or imagined, and falling into oblivion when something is about to be done. We did not realize how cruelly the abolitionists misrepresented and attacked the American Colonization Society, and how extensive was the harm which they did in making any settlement of the slavery question, short of civil war, impossible. In this Dr. Fox has made a contribution.

Dr. Fox tells of the mismanagement of the Society's funds, of incompetence in the administration of Liberia, and other matters that promise interesting reading which he does not completely furnish. Some subjects which he might have developed, he touches too lightly. He might have entered into the difficulties attending the establishment of a free negro republic in Africa. If the free negro was in America "a most fruitful source, of lawlessness and crime, of social and political insecurity" (Pp. 30, 31), he certainly was not good colonizing material. But since the colony was established for him, he went out into it, and by his shiftlessness, and other bad traits made Liberian beginnings tremendously difficult. The Society had to shoulder the responsibility and pay the costs. Under the best conditions, a colony long remains a liability. Even the Raleigh fortune could not establish Virginia. Much less could this benevolent Society, relying almost entirely on voluntary contributions, hope to tide over its African plantation. We wonder that the Society succeeded as well; for it was not blessed with other then zealously denominational and ministerial minds in its councils; its presidents were figure-heads. Men of economic common-sense might have saved the Society from financial embarrasments by securing congressional aid, from the secession of important auxiliary societies by tactful firmness, and from

manhandling at the hands of the abolitionists by publicity methods as vigorous and more honest.

Dr. Fox might also have told why Congress did not subsidise and why the Garrisonians attacked the American Colonization Society. Where there is so much smoke there must be some fire. If, taking the statistics of 1820-1830, it cost $106,367.72 to transport and settle 1430 (or 1420?-the Society's figures are not consistent, and Dr. Fox merely notes that "the cause of the discrepancy is not apparent" page 89,) freemen in Liberia, or per capita, $74.38, how much should it cost and how long should it take to remove only the annual 5000 increase of the black race in the south? What promise was there in the Society, besides trying to create a cordial entente between the sections and how long could such good feeling last?

We must also call attenton to the fact that the source material upon which Dr. Fox draws, consisting very largely of the records of the Society, its letterbooks, the correspondence of its officers, agents, and friends, and the African Repository, is nowhere evaluated. After being obliged to listen several times and at some length to Elliott Cresson, we are firmly told, (p. 112), that he was given to hyperbole. A citation from Lincoln might more properly have been taken from his works than, from Rhodes (p. 145). The index lacks important items: among others, Charles Carroll of Carrollton who is mentioned only twice is incompletely indexed; Elliott Cresson who is often mentioned is entirely ignored.

Charles Carroll of Carrolton was the second president of the American Colonization Society, succeeding Judge Bushrod Washington in 1830. Dr. Fox only twice says that Cresson used to call Carroll "The Great Incubus" (P. 74), adding "with the possible exception of Carroll, not a president of the Society has ever been a proponent of slavery...." The reviewer is not disposed to offer any defense of "The Great Incubus" (although he must note that we still have to wait eight and thirty pages to be told about Elliott Cresson's habits of speech). Carroll's rela