of law involved in particular topics. Mr. Atlay might well have chosen a middle course; and certainly notes as brief as his will fail to satisfy the demands of the publicist and lawyer. The present edition may be useful as a school book, but the editor's contribution is of little value to the specialist.

Mr. Atlay's additions appear in brackets in the body of the text or in the foot notes. The longest connected passage supplied by him is that relating to the Venezuelan boundary dispute (pp. 111-113); but it makes no mention of the rule laid down in the treaty for the guidance of the arbitrators, namely, that "adverse holding or prescription during a period of fifty years shall make a good title;" nor is this referred to in connection with the paragraph on "Prescription" (p. 118). The Hague Peace Conference in its relation to international arbitration receives a suitable notice (pp. 364-366); although the first case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (The Pious Fund of the Californias) is dismissed in two lines. In a note (p. 365) reference is made to the recent settlement of the Alaskan boundary, but chiefly to call attention to the "serious blot on the proceedings - the manner in which the United States chose to construe the term, 'impartial jurists of repute.'" There is no statement of the points in controversy. Two surprising omissions are the absence of all reference to the adjustment, by means of the Hay-Pauncefote convention, of the dispute over the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, and to the question, so much discussed at the outbreak of the Boer War, of British suzerainty over the Transvaal. This last was a difficult and knotty question; but with Cuba, and possibly Korea (hereafter), among the number of semi-sovereign states, the discussion of this form of sovereignty is likely to become important. No notice is taken of Cuba (save for a reference to the non-assumption of the debt by the United States in the peace treaty of 1898), either with respect to its entrance pro forma into the family of nations, or with respect to its peculiar status under the so-called Platt amendment.

The brief war between the allied European powers and Venezuela in 1902-03 is adverted to in connection with the subject of Pacific Blockade (p. 372), but no explanation of the grounds of intervention is given. Nor is it stated that the intervention, which at first took the form of a pacific blockade, ultimately became war de facto and de jure. It was admitted to be such by Premier Balfour in the House of Commons, after the United States had given notice of its intention not to be bound by the so-called blockade. Professor Holland subsequently pointed out that the institution of prize courts at Trinidad was incompatible with any theory but that of legal war.

The facts in the case of the "Bundesrath," one of the German ships seized for carrying contraband to the neutral port of Lorenço Marques, during the Boer War, are neatly summarized in a note (p. 670), and the conclusion is reached that the seizure was sustainable on legal grounds—a conclusion which tacitly reverses Hall's opinion as expressed in connection with the subject of "continuous voyages."

In proportion to other topics, much space is given (p. 301) to the case of Mr. Blair, whom the Chinese government in 1891 refused to receive as minister from the United States, because of views expressed by him in Congress on Chinese Exclusion; but nothing is said of the retirement in 1898 of Señor Dupuy de Lome, Spanish minister at Washington, in consequence of the surreptitious publication of a personal letter in which he referred offensively to the President and government of the United States.

A comparison of the table of cases in the present edition with that in the fourth, shows a citation of ten new cases. Six of these are American, relating, with one exception, to the war with Spain.

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN.

J. F. BARNETT.

A History of Modern England. By HERBERT PAUL. In Five Volumes. Vols. I, II. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1904. - 450, 446 pp.

These two volumes cover the period from the resignation of Sir Robert Peel in 1846 to the death of Lord Palmerston in 1865. At the present rate of progress, the three yet to appear should carry the story down to the retirement of Mr. Gladstone in 1894. Notwithstanding the author's preliminary criticism of Seeley's theory that the historian is concerned with man only as belonging to a state (I, p. 19), the history is so far preeminently political. There are, to be sure, several admirable chapters dealing with literature, science, art, and the church, but the economic development of the country is almost entirely neglected. However, this will not seem such a serious defect to those of us who are old-fashioned enough to believe that historical orthodoxy should not be tested by the creed of the political economist.

Mr. Paul has opinions and he is not afraid to express them; at the same time, he is usually, though not always, sufficiently broad-minded to see the other side of the question. One can easily surmise that he is in politics an advanced Liberal, if not a Radical, and in religion a very broad churchman. To the reviewer, the most pleasing feature of the

book is the emphasis which it lays upon the personal element. Lord Palmerston is of course the central figure. A follower of Canning, he regarded it as England's duty to interfere actively in continental affairs, and to pose as the champion of liberal ideas, or as Paul rather unsympathetically expresses it:

He was a great European diplomatist, who wanted England to have a finger in every pie. . . . He was interested in the affairs of every European country, and always ready to give his advice whether it was asked or not. He was never impartial. He always took a side, and though he hated reform at home, he loved revolution abroad [I, 236.]

The Spanish marriage episode, the Pacifico-Finlay dispute, the coup d'état of December 2, 1851, the Crimean War, the struggle for Italian unity, and the war in America are all discussed in the light of the Palmerstonian policy.

In the Spanish marriage controversy Paul supports the traditional British view, which is favorable to Palmerston and fixes the blame on Louis Philippe and Guizot. No new evidence is given, however, to combat Spencer Walpole's defense of France. According to Walpole, Lord Aberdeen agreed with Guizot that the Duke of Montpensier, son of Louis Philippe, should marry the younger sister of Queen Isabella of Spain, but not until after the queen herself had married and had issue. It was further agreed that the queen should be restricted in the choice of her husband to the descendants of Philip V. Shortly after Palmerston succeeded Aberdeen in the foreign office in 1846, he sent instructions to Bulwer, the British envoy at Madrid, in which Leopold of SaxeCoburg was mentioned among the queen's suitors. Then, in characteristic Palmerstonian style, he launched into a criticism of the despotic government which existed in Spain. If this document had merely been. sent to Bulwer, trouble might still have been avoided. Palmerston, however, handed a copy of it to Jarnac, the French chargé d'affaires in London. Louis Philippe and Guizot regarded the mention of Leopold as a violation of the agreement made by Lord Aberdeen, while the royal family in Spain were naturally indignant at Palmerston's officious remarks about their government. The result was that the courts of France and Spain were drawn more closely together, and both marriages took place on the same day, the queen to the Duke of Cadiz, and the Infanta Louisa to the Duke of Montpensier. (See Walpole, History of England, IV, 515-528.)

There was one peculiarity about Palmerston's conduct as a cabinet member which Paul brings out very clearly, namely, his habit of un

dertaking most important business without consulting the crown or his colleagues in the ministry, or even letting them know what he intended to do. His offenses in this respect were so frequent and so flagrant that the queen in 1850 sent him a formal note of protest. She demanded that he should state distinctly what he proposed to do in a given case, in order that she might know to what she had given her royal sanction; that a measure which she had once approved should not be altered arbitrarily or modified by the minister; and finally that she should be kept informed of what went on between the secretary and the British representatives at foreign courts and should be given an opportunity to read the despatches. This pointed reproof had only a temporary effect. After the coup d'état of December 2, 1851, a cabinet meeting was held, and the government decided to adopt a policy of strict neutrality. The authorities at Paris were so informed, but before the note was sent Palmerston expressed to Walewski, the French ambassador, his approbation of the president's act. This undignified, not to say unconstitutional, behavior exhausted the patience of the queen and Lord John Russell, and Palmerston was dismissed from office.

Palmerston's conduct on this occasion was certainly open to criticism, but Paul is perhaps too severe. He apparently has found it impossible to be judicious in discussing any question with which Louis Napoleon was concerned. "Napoleon the Little" was a "base impostor," a "public criminal," whose "murderous usurpation of supreme power in France" was without any justification.

He was under a heavy obligation to the Church of France, which had welcomed him and his accomplices with public thanksgiving in the Church of Our Lady, the Mother of Christ. The neighboring morgue had been a fitter place [I, 239, 266, 300, 338; II, 9].

The responsibility for the Crimean War is placed on three men, and the Emperor Nicholas is not among them. They were Palmerston, Napoleon III, and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. Palmerston was in the Home Office, but his influence over the foreign secretary, Lord John Russell, was supreme. The prime minister, Lord Aberdeen, never faltered in his desire to preserve peace, but he was convinced that Lord John was indispensable to the government and that the dissolution of the government would bring on the war (I, 311). He permitted Palmerston and Russell to drag the country into the conflict, and then remained in office, not because he loved power, but in order that he might use his influence to procure an honorable peace. But

there is another side of the question, presented by Kinglake, which should not be ignored. If Palmerston had been prime minister, the Emperor Nicholas would have known what to expect and would have been more willing to make concessions. With Aberdeen in office, he comforted himself with the dangerous belief that England did not seriously intend to go to war. (See Kinglake, Invasion of the Crimea, I, 301-302, 309–310). Paul's sarcastic statement that this notion is "akin to the Chinese theory that battles can be won by wearing hideous masks, and uttering horrible sounds" (I, 342) is hardly a sufficient reply. The influence of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe at Constantinople is not overestimated. The fact that he was the real power behind the Ottoman throne is cleverly indicated by the frequent enclosure of the words "the Sultan" in quotation marks. The account of the part played by Napoleon III in this conflict, however, does not harmonize very well with the author's picture of an "imposter" of mediocre talent.

The least satisfactory part of the book is that dealing with the Civil War in America. Many of us will not agree with Mr. Paul that John Brown was a "hero and a martyr of freedom" (II, 295), and that Jefferson Davis was a "puppet chief” and “a man of no account " (II, 297, 341). The Dred Scott decision was sufficiently complicated to deceive most American students of history and constitutional law, but we believe that no one has ever said before that the Supreme Court decided "through Chief Justice Taney, that the master of a negro slave might pursue him from a Slave State into a Free State, capture him, and bring him home" (II, 296). Mr. Paul might also have explained more fully his statement that

two-thirds of the Senate and the House of Representatives might, with the consent of the people, have amended the Constitution so as to abolish slavery altogether. But in that case no wrong would have been done to anyone. . . . [II, 296].

In spite of a few unfortunate precedents in that direction, we can hardly admit that "it rested with Congress to determine the constitution of a new State" (II, 296). Either Mr. Paul, or Lord John Russell, or both of them, have misunderstood the exceptions in the Emancipation Proclamation:

This proclamation was most unjustly and ungenerously criticised by Lord Russell, who complained that it did not free the slaves in the Northern States, when no such process was required, inasmuch as they would have no masters who could reclaim them [II, 336-337].