In estimating Durham's services to the development of representative and responsible government in the oversea dominions, Lucas recalls the fact that Durham was not the first British statesman to urge the reunion of Upper and Lower Canada, nor was he the first statesman to realize that responsible government must be conceded to what are now the oversea dominions. Durham's merit, in Lucas's opinion, is in his advocacy of a generous measure of colonial self-government in the form in which it existed in the United Kingdom, in the force and clearness with which he pointed out existing evils in the Canadas and the remedies that must be applied, and above all:

in the statesmanship with which, not content with generalities, he prescribed definite and immediate action; and the courage and insight, amounting to genius, with which he gave to the world the doctrine of responsible government, not as a prelude to the creation of separate peoples, but as the cornerstone upon which a single and undivided British Empire should be reared in abiding strength.

The same qualities that made Durham a difficult colleague made him exceptionally available for the mission to Canada in 1838. His availability may seem an accident; but, in view of the little that had been accomplished by the commissioners who had preceded him, and in view of the conditions in both Canadas-conditions that had been steadily growing worse,—it was the most fortunate accident in the history of England's relations with her colonial possessions.

In his introduction to the Report, Sir Charles Lucas undertakes to give somewhat detailed answers to six questions: (1) What were the political conditions prevailing in the United Kingdom and in the British Empire at the time of Durham's mission? (2) What was the position in Upper and Lower Canada? (3) What were the terms of Durham's commission? (4) What was in brief the scope, character and substance of the Report? (5) How far, in the light of the present day, did Durham read the past correctly; how correctly did he forecast the future of Canada; and how far were his recommendations adopted? (6) How far are the principles Durham laid down of universal applicacation? There will be some difference among students of Canadian history concerning Lucas's conclusion that there was no real justification for the Papineau and Mackenzie rebellions; for it is probable that there would have been no Durham mission had it not been for the uprisings in Upper and Lower Canada. But there will be little disposition to criticize Lucas's estimate of Sir Francis Bond Head as a man who was dangerous and flighty in the extreme; and none whatever

to question his assertion that there never was a British government more anxious to work in harmony with public feeling in a colony than was the British government in its relations with Lower Canada in the two years that preceded the rebellion of 1837. No crisis in British colonial history in the century that followed the Declaration of Independence was more important than that which led to the Durham mission; and in these first two decades of the twentieth century, when the oversea dominions are attracting continuous attention in England, chiefly because they have obviously made a success of responsible government, Sir Charles Lucas has rendered excellent extra-official service to the Empire by his production of this edition of the Durham Report and by the admirable framework in which it is presented.

HARTFORD, Connecticut.

EDWARD PORRITT.

South America: Observations and Impressions. By JAMES BRYCE. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1912.-xxiv, 611 pp.

Of James Bryce it has been said truly that he is a "' connoisseur of societies and possessed of an educated taste in civilization." The reputation that he has won in a life devoted to public service rivals that which he has earned by his contributions to political literature. Whatever he writes is sure to be widely read and to please his readers. Yet it may be questioned whether his South America will add anything to his fame.

The book deals with the entire group of republics in the New World which have received the collective designation of "Latin America and must be examined from this point of view. With all Mr. Bryce's breadth of knowledge and keenness of observation, the impressions which he has garnered as the fruits of a four months' journey, even if ripened by incidental reading and conversation, can not be invested with more than a moderate degree of authority. What was possible in the preparation of his masterly treatises on the United States and on South Africa is quite impossible in the case of Latin America, because the information is more difficult of access and what is accessible is less trustworthy. Years of patient investigation must be spent ere one is in a position to describe the past and present, to say nothing of the future, in Latin America. Moreover, competence in this field is not wholly a matter of finding the best sources of knowledge and of giving the necessary time to the searching for information. It depends largely on an attitude of mind. No one can hope to gain an insight into the char

acteristics, the ideas and the institutions of the Latin-Americans unless he understands thoroughly the European language spoken by most of them. Probably no American people, nor the European ancestors of any American people, have been so inadequately comprehended and so gravely misjudged as those of Spanish and Portuguese stock. To remove this misunderstanding and to correct this misjudgment, so far as reason and fairness demand, calls for expert, discriminating knowledge both of the speech and of the records. Such intimate knowledge Mr. Bryce makes no pretence of possessing.

Of the sixteen chapters in his work, eleven are devoted to a description mainly of six South American countries, with excursions into history, archæology and ethnology, enlivened at times by so interesting an episode as the love affairs of the nun of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores of Arequipa. The interest of the narration is enhanced by the author's distinctive charm of style. The accounts of natural

scenery make agreeable reading and the comparisons drawn between South American scenery and that of other countries are interesting. The historical allusions, however, are so frequently erroneous as to make their chief service the confirmation of existing misconceptions. If Mr. Bryce had read Bourne's Spain in America or Kirkpatrick's monographs in the Cambridge Modern History, he would not have condemned the Spanish colonial system in so dogmatic a fashion.

Beyond doubt the general observations and impressions contained in the last five chapters of the book, and dealing with political, economic and social phenomena, are the best to be found anywhere in English. While accurate, profound and instructive, as contrasted with the views supplied by most of the other publications in that language, they nevertheless reveal at times a lack of intimacy with the subject. Had the author possessed that intimacy he would not have dwelt so insistently on the scant amount of intellectual, scientific and artistic progress in the Latin-American countries. Had he been acquainted with Latin-American literature in the vernacular, he would not have implied that the bent of the Latin-American mind has been practical rather than idealistic, nor would he have assumed that the "fountain of pleasing verse" has been virtually the sole form of literary expression. Had Mr. Bryce fully understood what the word "politics" means in Latin America, he might not have made so many disavowals of any intention to discuss the theme. He does not seem to realize that political history there is commonly identified with present politics, to such an extent that, even in scientific congresses, the word " history" is taboo among the Latin-American delegates. The constitutions of

the Latin-American countries, furthermore, as a whole or in the great majority of cases, are not modeled upon that of the United States so much as upon the fundamental law of France. How otherwise is one to explain that, in form alone, the government of sixteen out of the twenty republics is unitary and not federal?

The limits of this review might be prolonged unduly were the reviewer to point out in detail specific instances in which Mr. Bryce has given too great credence to untrustworthy sources of information and in which therefore his statements and assumptions are beside the mark. Compared with other books on the same theme, his book unquestionably is valuable. It must, however, be regarded as unsatisfactory when judged by the high standard of his own previous works on other lands and peoples. But it professedly consists of observations and impressions.

W. R. SHEPHERD.

Die ökonomische Entwicklung Europas. Vol. VI. Das Verschwinden der Börigkeit und die Wandlungen der Grundherrschaft in England und Italien. Bauernbefreiung und Grundentlastung in Deutschland und Russland. By M. KOWALEWSKY. German translation by A. STEIN. [Bibliothek der Volkswirtschaftslehre und Gesellschaftswissenschaft. Vol. XVI.] Berlin, R. L. Prager, 1913.

-501 pp.

Professor Kowalewsky has reached the end of his period but not of what he has to say about it. This fact and the recent agrarian legislation in Russia, in which he himself took part, account for the extension of his original plan, upon which the work was to have been completed in six volumes. We are now promised a seventh volume, which is to contain an account of the rise of peasant proprietorship in France, and an eighth, which is to be devoted to a discussion of the theories of the leading economic historians of England, France, Germany and Italy with regard to medieval economy.

The general character and the special strength and weakness of Professor Kowalewsky's work have long been recognized. It is a compendium, which aims, as its title indicates, at giving a general view of the economic development of Europe throughout the middle ages. It is something else besides, as will presently be shown; but for the moment we are concerned with its immediate purpose. In the discharge of his task Professor Kowalewsky has very properly made use of other people's work, and, where that was wanting, has gallantly and abundantly labored to fill the gaps himself. He has ransacked archives

and libraries, and to complain that he has neither exhausted these resources nor filled all the gaps would be ungenerous. He wishes to give the sort of general view that was provided by Cibrario in his Economica politica del medio evo (1842), and, with certain reserves, it may be readily admitted that he has done so. Moreover, he has made accessible a good deal of difficult and curious learning and has furnished a great many fresh and interesting illustrations of points already well established. But all this is not accomplished by one man, even by one so vigorously cosmopolitan as Professor Kowalewsky has proved himself to be, except at the cost of a certain inaccuracy and superficiality. The reviewer has often had occasion to mention and illustrate these faults in noticing earlier volumes, and he does not now wish to recur to them in detail. It is enough to say that the present volume offers a rich harvest of slips, inaccuracies, signs of haste and carelessness; but at this time no useful end is to be served by reaping it. The present volume, as the title indicates, is devoted to an account of the emancipation of the cultivating class, the breakdown of the agricultural system that had prevailed throughout the middle ages and the consequent changes in the structure of society. Our author's account of the disappearance of villeinage in England does not add very much to what is already known of the subject, as he is working chiefly from Ochenkowski's book, published in 1829, and his own work which appeared in Russian-alas for the Tower of Babel!-in 1880. He lays a good deal of stress on what he describes as the enormous change in English legal theory in the fifteenth century, citing a passage in Doctor and Student (page 29, edition of 1824) to the effect that the law regards every man's land as enclosed, even when there is no fence or hedge. This, he says, is contrary to all earlier legal theory and directly traverses the very frequent rights of common (common of shack) over the arable after the harvest. This point seems to be of less importance than he thought. In the first place, there is a passage in Britton II, xxvi, 4, cited in Gonner, Common Land and Inclosure (page 12, note) which seems to carry very much the same sense; and, in the second place, it is at least open to reasonable doubt whether such commons were not, in the last analysis, merely "a mutual disregard of trespass" (Gonner, op. cit., page 46). Professor Kowalewsky then deals with the emancipation of the peasants and their separation from the soil, the rise of the yeoman class and the farm system, the growth of industry-promoted by the increased amount of available labor in the towns-and the eventual application of the capital so accumulated to the land. Then follows a long chapter