afterward Registrar, is peculiarly valuable, supplemented as it is by Reeve's own letters and journals, which give further insight into its working and its place in the economy of the British Empire. The Judicial Committee was created in 1833. In describing its peculiar and manifold functions, Professor Laughton asserts that not even excepting the Supreme Court of the United States, there is not, and never has been a tribunal in the world which has been called upon to administer laws of such variety, extending over so large a portion of the earth or affecting such vast multitudes of people, as does the Queen in Council through the Judicial Committee. Through the influence of the Marquis of Lansdowne, the President of the Council, Reeve was appointed Clerk in 1837. He held the office until 1853, when he was made Registrar, and he continued as Registrar until 1887, when he retired, and devoted himself exclusively to the editorship of the Edinburgh and to his work as literary adviser to the Longmans. Greville, whose Journals Reeve edited, was for years his colleague in the Council Office. In politics, Reeve's work was almost exclusively behind the scenes. It brought him into contact during his long and busy life with many of the foremost men in English and European politics; and the full record of his life which Professor Laughton has set forth will abundantly repay reading to those who care to follow the history of political parties in England from the repeal of the Corn Laws until the split in the Liberal party on the Home Rule bill in 1886. Reeve was a Whig. He had no sympathy with democracy in England or Ireland any more than in the United States. He quite despaired of the United States in the closing months of Buchanan's Administration. American affairs then presented to him "a scandalous scene of corruption, slave trading and anarchy;" while in February, 1862, he was convinced that if the North defeated the South, reunion would be as far off as ever, and that the only safe course for the North was to regard the whole campaign as a kind of drawn battle, "and both sides negotiate as to terms of separation."

Reeve and some of his correspondents were nearly as pessimistic in regard to England. After the Home Rule split, the Socialist programme put forward by the Fabians in 1891 greatly disturbed them, and in January of that year the late Lord Derby was lamenting to Reeve that Home Rule, although badly crippled, was still capable of a good deal of mischief, and lamenting also that no new question was coming forward "except that of strikes, eight hours legislation, and Socialism generally."

Farmington, Conn.

EDWARD PORRITT.

Industrial Experiments in the British Colonies of North America. By Eleanor L. Lord. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1896— 154 PP.

This monograph presents the results of an investigation into the efforts of Great Britain to encourage the production of naval stores in the American colonies. In its preparation the author has utilized, with evident care and industry, the Board of Trade Papers in the Public Record Office in London. Students of American economic history will feel special interest in the materials furnished by Miss Lord's labors in a field that has remained so largely unworked.

In accordance with her established colonial policy, Great Britain desired to find in America the largest possible market for her manufactures, and especially for the products of her woolen industry. The trade between the colonies and the mother country generally resulted in a balance of indebtedness due to English merchants, for the colonists desired to purchase freely large quantities of imported comforts and luxuries. This balance must be made good in some way or other, and it was settled largely by shipments of coin which the colonists secured from their trade with Holland, Spain, France, and the West Indies. But here a difficulty was encountered. The Navigation Acts made the greater part of this trade unlawful; and, in spite of constant evasion, tended to repress the commerce of the colonies and to make it more difficult to secure the means of paying for the supplies imported from England. Thus the Navigation Acts tended to defeat the settled. purpose of the mother country to enlarge the colonial markets for its manufactured products.

If the colonies could have been induced to devote more attention to the production of naval stores, this difficulty would have been obviated. Such stores would have found a large and increasing market in Great Britain, and would have furnished the colonists with the means of paying for larger purchases of English products. Moreover, if it had been possible to draw from the colonies adequate supplies of naval stores, Great Britain would have been no longer dependent upon the Baltic countries for these commodities, which were so vitally important to its commercial and naval interests. From the point of view of the mother country, therefore, it seemed desirable to encourage the production of naval stores in the colonies. Early in the seventeenth century, the rich forests of the Atlantic seaboard had attracted attention, and it had been suggested that naval supplies might be produced advantageously in the plantations.

Masts were exported from New England as early as 1635, and eighteen years later the Council of State considered various means of removing the difficulties that attended the importation of tar, masts, deals, etc. from the colonies. These obstacles were, first, duties imposed by the mother country; second, the high cost of labor in the new settlements; and third, the heavy freight charges for transporting such bulky products across the Atlantic. This last difficulty was, perhaps, the most important, for two or three voyages could be made to Norway or to the Baltic for every one made to America. In spite of all obstacles, however, New Hampshire and the settlements in Maine began to export considerable quantities of masts, while Carolina produced not a little pitch and tar for export.

In 1697, the newly established Board of Trade and Plantations sent commissioners to New England to investigate the subject of naval supplies, but little was accomplished in this manner. Then two attempts were made to form chartered companies to engage in the production of such stores, but the hesitancy of the Board, and determined opposition on the part of the colonists, frustrated such efforts. Another project was advanced in 1710. It was proposed to settle bodies of poor emigrants in regions suitable for the production of naval stores, and to develop systematically the production of these articles. Governor Hunter succeeded in establishing such a settlement in New York, but the only tangible result of his labors was a heavy bill of expense.

But the War of the Spanish Succession and the formation of a Swedish company that monopolized the Baltic trade in naval stores finally brought this subject to the attention of Parliament. In 1705, an act was passed by which bounties were offered on the importation of tar, pitch, hemp, masts, yards, and bowsprits, produced in the colonies. Under this law there occurred a considerable increase in colonial exports of pitch, tar, and turpentine. But the experiment was an expensive one for the British Navy, which, between 1713 and 1717, paid out £90,544 in premiums, while it secured less than eight thousand barrels of colonial tar and pitch. In 1722 another act removed all duties upon wood, planks, and timber, imported directly from the plantations; so that colonial producers were given an advantage in the English market. This act also prescribed the methods that must be followed in manufacturing all tar for which bounties might be sought. This last feature of the law of 1722 served to extinguish what little interest the original bounty law had excited in the naval supply industry.

By this time, moreover, shipbuilding, commerce, and various branches of manufactures had developed sufficiently in several of the colonies to absorb the attention of the people. This fact rendered all the more futile the efforts of the home government to divert colonial industry into the production of naval stores. Other chapters of the monograph are devoted to the development of the lumber industry in New England, and the futile efforts of the home government to preserve the valuable ship timber in the forests. These require no special mention.

In the bibliography, Miss Lord seems to have overlooked Oldmixon's British Empire in America and Douglass's Summary of the British Settlements. Both of these works discuss the trade in naval stores. On page 127, the name of Joseph Jenks is changed to "Joseph Jenkins." On page 135, discussing the period of paper money inflation in New England, the author says: "The following table (of Boston exchanges) will serve to indicate the rapidity of the depreciation of paper currency, which had been issued originally to pay for the Canadian expeditions in the late war, and which continued to be received and held at par by main force, until it was redeemed in specie paid over to Massachusetts by Parliament for the ransom of Louisburg." The reader can hardly fail to wonder how a currency whose rapid depreciation is admitted in the first clause of this sentence, could have been "held at par by main force," or by anything else. But such criticisms do not detract from the value of the monograph as a useful investigation into hitherto unused sources of information concerning the colonial trade in naval stores.

Cornell University.

CHARLES J. BULLOCK.

Les Industries monopolisées aux États-Unis. Par Paul de Rousiers Paris, Armand Colin & Cie, 1898-12mo, 332 pp.

There are very few subjects at the present time in which the masses of the people are more interested, or on which there are more divergent opinions, than that of trusts. It is still too early for a comprehensive work on the subject to be written, and the task which M. Rousiers has set for himself is to trace the development of a few of the most typical instances, and from the causes which have led to their failure or continued success to deduce the probable future of this most pronounced form of concentration. The first portion of the work is largely historical, and deals with the trusts in oil, coal, sugar, steel, whiskey and cordage. Leaving

this, he devotes a chapter to those industries where the possibilities of monopoly are based upon the possession of patent rights, and another to the quasi-public enterprises, where the field for competition is necessarily limited. It is in the concluding chapter that the author draws the lessons gained from his observations. He finds that the complicity of the railroads, the protective tariff legislation and patents have been the sine qua non of the successful attempts to form trusts. The first of these springs from a lack of public authority, in turning over to individuals powers that should be exercised by the State. In so doing, we are suffering from what he is pleased to call "an abuse of the principle of laissez faire." The protective system, on the contrary, is the result of the exaggerated use of the power of the state which takes from the whole people the rights and benefits that should be theirs and delivers them into the hands of the favored few. It is along this line that lies the great danger of the future. The natural limit to which prices can rise is no longer kept down by free foreign importation. Competition is at least removed, if not prevented from this quarter. This limit may be reached, as was the case with the Wire Nail Trust when it was found that the goods produced by this organization could be sent to England and returned with the addition of the import duties and still be sold at a price lower than that demanded by the Trust. The granting of patent rights is a proper field for the use of public authority since it is beneficial to industry.

From the economic standpoint M. Rousiers thinks that trusts have been a benefit to the community, but politically they are a menace to the country. He draws a vivid picture of the corruption of State legislatures and city councils, by the means of skilfully distributed shares. He is glad to see that the indiscriminate granting of franchises by the city authorities has passed, and that the public now draws the benefit of part of the returns that formerly entered the pockets of the shareholders. As public sentiment is opposed to trusts, he expects that in time most of them will pass away. Where the monopoly is founded upon natural causes, as is the case with the Standard Oil Company, there seems to be the possibility for a long-continued existence, but where they are propped up by artificial means they are clearly doomed. If this is the end in view, then the repeal of the present tariff legislation would sweep away most of the unnatural means by which at present prices are kept above the competitive level.

Yale University.

WM. B. BAILEY.