The essays "Woman as Witch," "Hans seeks his Luck, and "Kindred Group Marriage" are of great interest to the student of social origins. They treat of the supposed early matriarchal system and sex customs. The author makes an original philological study of the words for sex, not hesitating to question received derivations.

The remaining essays are on scientific or religious topics or both. The fifth, "Politics and Science," is a severe criticism of Lord Salisbury's famous Oxford address, in which Darwinism was called in question. The author is a fearless as well as a merciless critic. St. George Mivart, Balfour, Kidd, Drummond, Salisbury, even Spencer and Kelvin, suffer at his hands. He detests Pseudoscience, Analogical Argument, Theological Bias, and the Manchester School of Economics. His enthusiasms are equally strong. He is a humanitarian to the core, sympathizes with folk-movements, even when wrong or superstitious. While a professed atheist, he regards popular religions with reverence. He thinks we fail to-day to understand the medieval church through modern intolerance both ecclesiastical and sceptic. His last essay is a history of the Passion Play, in which he seeks to show the influence of the Teutonic folk spirit and pagan worship on Christianity. He does not regard the middle ages as "dark":

"As we do not merely smile at the stories of the Greek gods, but study their evolution and their legends in order to appreciate a great literature, a greater philosophy, and the highest development of plastic art, so we must study the mediæval gods even in their smallest details, if we would master the spirit of another great literature, another great philosophy, and the highest development of pictorial art the world has known. Nay, if the Hellenist smiles at you, reader, say boldly that you will set your Dante against his Homer, that St. Thomas was not more arid than is Aristotle, that your Zeitblom and Dürer were as great creative artists as his Praxiteles and Pheidias; nay, that he who built the Parthenon would have stood speechless and as a little child before the Minster at Strassburg, or the cathedral at Cologne. Take that Hellenist through the streets and courtyards of Nürnberg or Augsburg, and give back to them the color and the incident of the folk life of 500 years ago,-and if he be an artist by nature, he will hesitate to give the palm to Periclean Athens, even if the sigh of her slaves has not caught his ear."

I. F.

By

The Abolition of Privateering and the Declaration of Paris. Francis R. Stark, LL.B., Ph.D. (Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, Vol. VIII, No. 3.) New York, Columbia University, 1897-8vo, viii, 162 pp.

This little volume is one of the series of historical studies published under the auspices of the faculty of political science in Columbia University. It is an interesting and creditable historical study of the decline of privateering, including the story of the Marcy Amendment, and the attempt of Seward to commit the country to the Declaration of Paris at the beginning of the Civil War. Nothing is said, however, about the reasons which might very well persuade the United States to take this step at the present, reasons drawn from the comparative worthlessness of privateering and the absolute value of the other rules of the Declaration to a power usually neutral. The essay thus, as it seems to us, skips the interesting and practical part of the whole subject. Besides the essay on the history of privateering, there are preliminary sketches whose points the author sums as follows. "There are two conclusions from the foregoing chapters: First, that the theory of individual enmity is no longer defensible; and secondly, that the practice of capturing private property at sea is dying. It exists to-day where it exists at all for historical reasons purely; it is the logical result of a principle that is dethroned, and the student of history can deduce but one future for it." The argument seems to be that the continental publicists agree pretty well in denying the theory that all the subjects of belligerents are in a state of war, the one set with the other. A few American publicists share the same view. The fact which stands in the way is that private property of enemy subjects on sea is still liable to capture, but the tendency is to follow Marcy's suggestion and exempt this too. Therefore there is no longer reason for declining assent to the continental view of individual enmity.

To us, this argument appears the reverse of clear and logical: it blinks the facts: it fails to distinguish between law and policy: its conclusions are admirable enough, but reached by wrong methods. As the present war is abundantly showing, the capture of enemy's private property at sea is still legal. So our Courts hold, as Mr. Stark admits, that similar property on land could be lawfully seized if Congress chose. What is the irresistible inference? What theory alone explains such legal rights? Is it not because each government is at war with all the subjects of the

other? If our government makes a treaty exempting private property from capture, it is an act of policy, but does not alter the law. If all nations do the same it alters the law at the present, but cannot alter what it was before the change. The French publicists may argue against the capture of enemy's property: that does not alter the fact of its existence, and in 1870 their own government put it in force again. The whole continental theory, as it seems to us, from Napoleon's time down, is based upon hostility to English naval power and a desire to draw its teeth. What wonder that the English stick to their rules of capture. They have come down without a break from the Consolato del Mare, are enforced by the highest Courts of Great Britain and the United States to-day, and are used by any continental power which finds them convenient. And so they will exist until, it may be, abolished in return for some equivalent. Until abolished by agreement, they will be enforced. As enforced they wage war upon individual property in a variety of ways. War upon individual property is war upon the individual. Such war carried on against two sets of individuals by the government of each, is more easily explained by the theory that all in the one state are at war with all in the other than in any other way. Limited and softened in many ways under the influence of humanity and the growth of the neutral interest, the theory remains unchanged. To argue that because the observed facts of capture are less harsh, therefore the theory warranting capture has changed, seems to us a non sequitur, unnecessary, dangerous. We English-speaking people in these times cannot afford ourselves the pastime of spinning theories out of our own brains, in the face of the facts. For those theories, if accepted, may change the balance of the world's power, and the pastime become too serious.

Yale University.

T. S. WOOLSEY.

Etude Economique et Juridique sur les Bourses Allemandes de Valeurs et de Commerce. Par André-E. Sayous. 1898-Paris, Arthur Rousseau, 654 pp.

It is a pleasure to get hold of a book like this. The author, while ostensibly investigating a certain set of historical facts, has a power of generalization and suggestion which makes his work invaluable to any student of economics, whether he makes a specialty of this department or not.

After a brief historical introduction, the author treats successively of the general functions of exchanges, of the methods which they employ, and of the persons involved in their operations; in each case happily combining a study of the special circumstances of Germany with the broader applications of his subject-matter to other countries. In dealing with each of these topics he gives equal attention to the economic and the juristic sides of the matter. In fact it is one of the great merits of the book that it so well holds the balance between these coördinate parts of the subject.

We cannot better indicate the author's clearness of insight than by quoting one or two of his ideas. It shows itself from the very outset, where he criticises the current attempt to distinguish speculative from non-speculative sales-which has given our legislators so much trouble. "Let us not speak of a future or option (operation à terme de bourse) but of a traffic of this nature; a whole system of operations à terme de bourse in all their manifold concatenations We are dealing with a public demand, where there is a probable intention, it may be of both parties, it may be of one only, not to effect any actual delivery, but to retire with a differential gain; as distinct from those markets which satisfy individual demands (besoins particuliers) or those where the intent to deliver is altogether probable." This puts the case in a nutshell. If you have a speculative market, it makes little difference what form the transaction takes-cash or margin, delivery or settlement. The effect on the relations of supply and demand is practically the same.

One more suggestive quotation, and we are done. "The most important function of a stock exchange is to establish a sort of mean rate of interest at each moment for the free capital seeking investment. Arbitrage equalizes this from one place to another; speculation, so far as its foresight is accurate, tends to do this from time to time; though it is not always possible to distinguish the effects of an anticipated change in the rate of interest from those of an increase of risk, as a basis of speculative activity. Just as the function of a produce exchange and its speculation is to steady the price of commodities, so the proper function of a stock exchange and its speculation is to equalize the rate of interest on investment; producing a certain unity in the operations of the money market which we can hardly meet in the market for commodities."

A. T. H.

The Science of Political Economy. By Henry George. New York, Doubleday & McClure Company, 1898-pp. xxxix, 545.

Henry George was a great preacher. Progress and Poverty is one of the most eloquent volumes of sermons which has appeared in the English language. But in proportion as George passes from the field of oratory to that of science, his work becomes less good.. He criticises his predecessors with no sparing hand; but he lays himself open to the same kind of criticism in far greater measure than they do. With all its claims of novelty, the book has little which is really new, unless it be a somewhat commonplace metaphysics within which the author tries to frame his economic system. Subtract this, and we have simply a new edition of Progress and Poverty, less well written, plus a number of rather disconnected utterances on money and kindred topics, logical enough when the author sticks close to Smith and Mill, and less so in proportion as he departs from those models. For this reason, it is quite impossible to review the book in extenso. This is not the first time that a good preacher has proved himself a poor controversialist. Those of us who have admired George for his brilliant earlier work and for his unblemished personal character can only regret that this last book was ever written and desire that it may be forgotten as soon as possible.

A. T. H.

The National Movement in the Reign of Henry III. and its Culmination in the Barons' War. By Oliver H. Richardson, A.B. New York, The Macmillan Co., 1897-12mo, pp. xiv +235.

To those general readers who avoid historical monographs as mere dry collections of undigested facts, poorly put together, Professor Richardson's book on the Barons' War will come as a pleasant surprise; and the historical student will find his critical sense fully satisfied in the scholarly way in which the author has used the sources from which his story has been drawn. He has avoided the error of attempting to give "an exhaustive account of the political history of the reign of Henry III.,"-ground which has been trodden many times,-nor has he traced in chronological order, merely, the events which led up to the Provisions of Oxford and the outbreak of hostilities. He has, on the other hand, presented us with a well-thought-out, a well-arranged, a well-written, and an interesting account of the various causes which finally cul