But Machiavelli is not slavishly Aristotelian and Spinoza and Hobbes reject him altogether. A number of causes contributed to the desertion of Aristotle and ethics by political science, and it was only with the reaction against the mechanical conception of the world, typified in Rousseau, that there was a possibility of return to the Greek conception of the State as a moral being. With Hegel "political science definitely returns to its old ethical connection." "In Hegel political science is speaking once more in its native tongue. Once more it speaks, as it were, in Greek; once more it expresses itself in terms of ethics" (p. 522). In the matter of detail, it may be remarked with satisfaction that the typographical work is almost flawless; the more noticeable for that reason is the omission of "no" from line 12, p. 319. The author is speaking of the English government and the principle by which it is to be classified. "But by which shall we classify-crown, parliament, cabinet, or electorate? Here, there is [no] such simple issue as confronted Aristotle; and the answer is not easy"-not alone for the omission of "no," but for the far more serious failure to give a satisfactory answer to this difficult question, do we feel inclined to find fault. After a few remarks about the electorate as the determinant, Mr. Baker says; "One is almost driven to say that there is no absolute standard of classification, and that England can only be classified according to several standards as a State with a large measure of local government, and with a central government conventionally composed of king and parliament, but really of an oligarchical cabinet constituted by a democratic electorate." Such classification is merely a description and utterly without worth as a scientific conception; nor can we so easily be brought to believe that the English government is of such a unique character as to defy classification. The reader will doubtless be inclined to disagree with some of the conclusions arrived at by the author as a result of his attempts to determine the extent to which the Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions may be applied to modern politics and with some of his dicta regarding modern political thought. Particularly will this be the case if the reader is not inclined to subscribe to the conception of political science embodied in T. H. Green's Principles of Political Obligation, which the author states he has taken as his standard for contrast and comparison. For example, he says (p. 157), that "the application of the category of organism to the State is necessary and true. It is necessary, because it gives a true idea of the kind of unity which exists in the State; it is necessary, because it is an antidote to a false idea of the unity of the State, as legal in its essence, and contractual in its form." It is well and good to war on the notion of the State as a legal institution based on contract; there are few that will quarrel with such a course now that natural law and natural rights are so thoroughly discredited. It is, however, to be questioned very seriously whether even greater harm will not arise through the antidote than the poison; the remedy prove worse than the disease. In a note on p. 158 Mr. Barker recog nizes the failure of the organic concept in that it omits "conscious" action. The inherent tendency-and its danger-to convert an analogy into a reality, to accept the word for the thing, is illustrated by that very large number of writers of recent years who have seized upon the biological concepts of organ and organism and applied them unrestrainedly to any and all kinds of social and political phenomena which they were not able otherwise to explain; not understanding either the phenomena to be explained or the means by which an explanation was sought, they have furnished to satiety the edifying sight of the blind leading the blind. Confusion alone can result from such methods, and so it would seem more in the interest of right political thinking to avoid the use of terms which serve merely as a cloak to our ignorance and help not at all to the understanding of the matter. Greek citizenship, we are very properly told (p. 294), consisted in the active participation by the holder in all the functions of government in the executive, legislative and judiciary-and the failure to extend the limit of citizenship beyond the confines of city-State was due to the lack of the notions of representation and federalism in any but the loosest kind of sense. "The modern State has no exacting conception of citizenship to bar its expansion; but even in the modern State expansion has come, not through the extension of citizen rights to a wider sphere, but through the widening of the sphere of allegiance to a sovereign." "Common allegiance to the crown, not common citizenship issuing in the election of a common parliament, is the basis on which it [the British Empire] rests" (p. 299). Again in a note, p. 300; "This conception [i. e., that of the Roman Empire] has largely entered into modern citizenship, which means a personal status and a local membership; but an English citizen has political rights, like the franchise, which bring him nearer to the Greek its than to the civis Romanus of the Empire." It is necessary to observe that Mr. Barker here uses a terminology not followed in America, for with us political rights form no necessary part of citizenship. The machinery of the book is very good; there is prefixed a chronological table of events bearing on the text from Lycurgus to the Contrat Social; the index is quite full, and there are numerous footnotes and references. Of the footnotes there are several that might better have found a place in the text. In concluding, it may be permitted to call attention to one or two points in the discussion of the slaves in the Greek States (pp. 360–36). The statement is made that "In Sparta, on the contrary, the Helots were indigenous Greeks enslaved by the Dorian conquest;" a view which modern historians of Greece discard for the one which sees in the Helots, citizens from whom the rights of citizenship have been taken because they did not fulfill their military duties. * * Again "In Attica* the slaves outnumbered the citizens in the proportion of two to one." Here it must be remembered that citizens and freeborn are not equivalent terms-or else Mr. Barker is far astray in his figures, for, with the possible exception of Corinth, there was no city of consequence in Greece in which the free-born did not outnumber the slaves. To speak of "praedial serfs" seems a bit careless and to say that "legally as well as socially they [the slaves of Attica] were not degraded" may properly be regarded as expressing the state of their condition rather strongly. E. G. ELLIOTT. On the Civic Relations. By HENRY HOLT. (Boston and New York: Pp. xxxi, 668.) This is a largely rewritten and enlarged third edition of the author's Talks on Civics. The catechetical form has been abandoned, and the attempt to reach very young readers frankly given up. The work is confessedly based on second-hand authorities, but these have been selected with discriminating care. The volume deals. with elementary legal as well as with economic and political problems; it is clearly written, well arranged, and may be read with profit by any one seriously interested in the problems of modern civic life. Four Centuries of the Panama Canal. By WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON. (New York: Henry Holt and Company. 1906. Pp. xxi, 461.) Mr. Willis Fletcher Johnson has sought in his large volume to cover comprehensively the history of the Panama Canal and project; to explain in detail the climatic, sanitary, engineering and political questions which the United States is attempting to solve in its present work of canal construction. The first three chapters, comprising fifty pages, are concerned with the history preceding 1850. The following fifty pages bring the narrative down to 1890, or to about the time when the United States government began to interest itself in the project. Then follow 175 pages, giving in much detail the story of the adoption of the Panama route by the United States government, the establishment of the republic of Panama, and the acquisition, by the United States from Panama, of the right to construct the waterway. One-third of the book is concerned with an account of the work as it has thus far progressed. The reader of the volume will hardly need to be told that the author is a man whose literary training has been that of a newspaper writer. The narrative is unnecessarily long. Serious students of the canal question will be surprised to find that the volume contains very few references to the many authorities from which the author must have drawn his information. Those who are acquainted with the admirably complete and concise "History of Interoceanic Projects and Communications," contained in the Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission, 1899-1901, will be certain to feel that it is a better history than Mr. Johnson has succeeded in writing. Moreover, the discussion of technical questions in this Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission and in the Report of the Board of Consulting Engineers for the Panama Canal will certainly be considered superior to that contained in Mr. Johnson's volume. In view of the fact that the canal is being constructed to aid the commerce and industries of the United States, one can not help wondering that Mr. Johnson did not discuss the relation of the canal to the commercial and industrial progress of the United States. If it be said that such a discussion does not belong to a historical work, the reply must be that the major part of this volume, Four Centuries of the Panama Canal, deals with present-day problems. The thorough treatment of the commercial and industrial value of the canal con tained in the Report of the Isthmian Canal Commission, 1899-1901 contains the data for as full a discussion of that subject as any author might desire. Throughout the work unlimited praise is bestowed upon Secretary Taft. Everybody will agree with the author that the able secretary of war is entitled to great praise. By giving such prominence to the services of the secretary of war, the highly important work of the distinguished engineers who located the canal, who worked out the plan for the construction of the great waterway, and who inaugurated the immense task of executing the project, has not received its merited measure of praise. EMORY R. JOHNSON. La constitution juridique de l'empire colonial britannique. Par H. SPEYER. (Paris: Arthur Rousseau. 1906. Pp. viii and 337.) The study of the details of British colonial administration by continental writers is always instructive, not only because of their point of view but likewise by reason of their freedom from local bias. The present volume, which forms a valuable contribution to this discussion, is no exception to the rule. The author, who is a member of the law faculty of the University of Brussels, is as clear in statement as he is simple in diction; throughout, he adheres strictly to a preconceived plan in which every point is rigorously assigned to its proper place. Prefaced by a brief bibliography, the work is divided into seven chapters; the first consists of a geographical introduction comprising a short historical and statistical review of the various groups of dependencies; two chapters are then devoted to an account of their political organization; attention is here directed to the methods of executive, legislative and financial control; the fourth chapter reviews the historical evolution of the three forms of government designated by the author as "the administrative," "the representative" and "the parliamentary." The story of the rise of colonial federation in Canada, Australia and South Africa is then briefly narrated. The sixth chapter, sketching the development of jurisprudence and private law in the several parts of the British Empire, while belonging perhaps more properly to the domain of law than to that of political economy, is especially interesting by reason of its comparative |