work is abundantly furnished with maps and illustrations of all kinds. To each chapter the principal documentary evidences are appended. The book answers perhaps less to the description of a narrative than of a repertory of the materials for a narrative, chronologically arranged. Popular it cannot be expected to be: this its bulk and price as well as its method forbid; but it will probably be the standard work, a library book of reference, and a general quarry. The great labor which it must have cost its author has not been expended in vain.

In the march of discovery which marked the close of the fifteenth century Henry VII. took part, with his usual caution and parsimony, by lending John Cabot his royal countenance and a very sparing measure of assistance. Cabot's application to the king for letters patent in favor of himself and his two young sons, Sebastian and Sanctus, whose names were inserted to extend the duration of the charter, opens the archives of the British colonial empire. The sunnier regions had been pre-empted ; but the fisheries of Newfoundland, which were the reward of Cabot's adventures, proved a gold-mine richer than the fabled treasures of El Dorado. It is Judge Prowse's opinion that from the time of the discovery the English never ceased to avail themselves of this treasure, and that the fisheries built up the west of England.

The fisheries, discovered by an expedition from a western port, were chiefly in the hands of the men of Devonshire, who were the great maritime adventurers, and, truth to speak, the great pirates of England in those days. Devonshire regarded the fisheries as her own, and if she had not tried to monopolize them, her commercial liberality would have been greatly ahead of her age. Judge Prowse divides the history of Newfoundland into two epochs of nearly equal duration :

"The early or chaotic era, from 1497 to 1610, when the Island was a kind of no man's land, without law, religion, or government; frequented alike by English and foreign fishermen ; only ruled in a rough way by the reckless valor of Devonshire men, half pirates, half traders.

"The Fishing Admiral period, from 1610 to 1711, a dismal time of struggle between the colonists and the western adventurers, or ship fishermen from England. This may also be designated the colonization period. "The colony under naval governors, 1711 to 1825; the advent of the first resident governor, Sir Thomas Cochrane.

"The modern era, the struggle for autonomy."

The Devonshire adventurers and the British government at their instigation for some time did their best to prevent colonization, and to break up such settlements as were formed. They wanted Newfoundland to be merely a naval station for the fishing fleet. Settlers at last, however, made good their hold. They were of the same hardy class and sustained by the same religious fortitude as the Puritan founders of New England. Projects of colonization conceived by theoretic or aristocratic founders failed in Newfoundland as they have failed elsewhere.

The Fishing Admiral, whose rule extended through the second period,

was simply a skipper, and apparently the first who came to hand. A very curious potentate, especially in his judicial capacity, he was. Judge Prowse describes him as appearing on the bench of justice, not in judicial robes or magisterial black, but in his blue fishing jacket and trousers besmeared with pitch, tar, and fish-slime, and an old sealskin cap upon his head. The temple of law was a fish-store and the judgment-seat was a butter-firkin. Justice was bought with a little money, with a present of New England apples, or with a bowl of rum, the last of which bribes sometimes laid her on the floor. In this period of misrule a lucid interval is formed by the government of Cromwell, who sent out a commissioner with good instructions.

The administration of the naval governors, who were officers of the Royal Navy and whose rule followed that of the Fishing Admirals, seems not to have been so bad. Its rough and ready ways may have suited that wild maritime population, though its justice was not always discriminating; at least we find it recorded that in one case a man was whipped within an inch of his life that next day inquiry was made into the facts, and it was found that they had whipped the wrong man.

At last Newfoundland was recognized as a colony and regular governors were sent out. In due time came the struggle for self-government, which in 1855 was terminated in the usual way by the concession of a constitution after the British model, the imperial governor being reduced, like the sovereign whom he represents, to the position of a figure-head. The revolution was bloodless, though, to mark the advent of liberty, the governor's image was burned. But as Judge Prowse says, the success of the British constitution is largely dependent on the men who work it; and in the case of Newfoundland, as in those of the self-governed colonies, it has proved easier to send out a copy of the political machine than to export the character and traditions of the statesmen by whom the machine has been kept in order and made to operate hitherto with a fair measure of success.

A large Irish immigration, which took place at the end of the last and beginning of the present century, may have added to the sociability and hilarity of the colony, but did not add to its political harmony or to its aptitude for the working of parliamentary institutions. It was followed by conflicts, sometimes bloody, between the Protestants and the Catholics. Judge Prowse says that these were got up by politicians; but sectarianism at any rate supplied the gunpowder to which politics put the match. Perfectly natural and genuine, at all events, were the faction fights among the Irish themselves. The Tipperary "clear airs," the Waterford "whey bellies," and the Cork "dadyeens" were arrayed against the "yallow belly" faction—the "Doones" or Kilkenny boys, and the Wexford "yallow bellies." There were, besides, the "young colts" and a number of other names for the factions. They fought with one another "out of pure devilment and divarsion," as an old Irishman explained to Mr. Prowse. These were the colonial counterparts of "old Erins," "Caravats," and "Shanavests," "two-year-olds" and "three-year-olds," and perhaps we may add of the "Parnellites" and "Anti-Parnellites" of the present day.

Judge Prowse freely lectures the imperial government for its ignorance and surrender of colonial interests. He will find his complaints echoed by Canadian, South African, and Australian writers, all of whom aver that the interests of their colonies have been betrayed. It is curious that these communities should have existed so long without discovering that people know and care more about their own affairs than they do about those of other people. Would Newfoundland make great sacrifices for Canada or Canada for Australia? Why, then, should the British nation be expected to run the risk of war in the interest of dependencies remote from its view and from which it derives not a particle, either of exclusive commercial profit or of military strength? Each dependency magnifies its own importance and expects the whole force of the empire to be put forth on its behalf. A fair historian would probably say that British diplomacy had, on the whole, done as well for the colonies as, considering its limited force and its world-wide responsibilities, they could reasonably expect.

Judge Prowse's complaints of course relate chiefly to the footing which the French have been allowed to retain in Newfoundland, and which is a perpetual source of altercation, not only between the French and English governments, but between the English government, which is disposed for the sake of peace with France to concede French claims, and the colonists, who call for a resolute resistance to them. The western half of the island, the half next Canada, is in something like a state of blockade in consequence of the French claims under the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713, and the Treaty of Versailles, 1783. By those instruments, the French fishermen were permitted to fish all along that shore and down the east shore as far as Cape St. John without molestation from British fishermen. By the treaty of 1783 His Britannic Majesty undertook "to take the most positive measures for preventing his subjects from interrupting in any manner by their competition the fishery of the French, and for that purpose to cause the fixed settlements [les établissements sédentaires] which should be formed there to be removed." Lord Salisbury in Parliament has described Newfoundland as "the sport of historic errors"; and a more awkward situation or one more pregnant with quarrels, it would certainly have been difficult to create. The excuse is that when Bolingbroke signed the treaty of 1713 the west, or French shore, as it is now called, had no regular inhabitants, and was regarded as beyond the limits of civilization. The growth of settlement has rendered the relations of the two nationalities intolerable. The Newfoundlanders call upon Great Britain to oust the French, which she can do only at the cost of war. The British governors hold that Newfoundlanders are not at liberty to fish at the stations occupied by the French fishermen, but may fish at places not so occupied along the shore. This ruling is enforced against the Newfoundlanders by British warships amidst constant growls on the part of Newfoundland.

While he rebukes his mother-country, Judge Prowse shows a British colonist's feelings towards Yankees. Even in the compact drawn up by the Pilgrims before landing from the Mayflower, he seems to scent some

thing premonitory of wooden nutmegs. Speaking of the War of 1812, he says that, though its ostensible causes were the right of search and impressment, "the real reason, as is now admitted by all candid historians, was Madison's re-election as President." All the bloodshed and destruction of property he charges to the account of "the inordinate political ambition of this unscrupulous man." That Madison would not have consented to go to war had he not feared that, by refusing, he would lose his re-election, is probable; but to admit this is not to say that Madison's re-election was the national motive for going to war. As well it might be alleged that Great Britain's reason for going to war with Spain, in 1739, was the retention of Walpole in power. Walpole declared war against Spain in opposition to his own convictions, in order that he might retain power; but the cause of the war was the popular feeling against Spain.

On one or two points of general history, Judge Prowse's statements are open to exception. Bacon cannot be justly said to have been "the last English statesman to use the rack and to pervert justice." He was an official witness of the application of the rack to Peacham, but his name is not specially connected with the practice. As chancellor, he cannot be shown to have ever perverted justice, though he laid himself open to the charge of corruption by accepting presents from suitors. Lord Bute was a despicable minister, and employed corruption on a large scale to carry a disgraceful peace. But there is nothing in his character which would lead us to suppose him capable of taking a bribe from France, and any accusation of that kind may be safely set down to party spirit, which at that time ran furiously high. Bute's wealth was derived from his marriage with Miss Wortley Montagu, the heiress of the great Wortley estates.

GOLDWIN SMITH.

NOTES AND NEWS

Heinrich von Sybel, the last of the great historians of the school of Ranke, died on August 1. Sybel was born at Düsseldorf, December 2, 1817. After four years under Ranke at Berlin, he took his degree at Bonn, where in 1844 he became a professor extraordinarius, having in 1841 published his important monograph on the First Crusade. In 1845 he was called to Marburg as professor ordinarius, where he wrote the first edition of his Geschichte der Revolutionszeit von 1789 bis 1795 (Düsseldorf, 18531857), an epoch-making work, in which the period of the French Revolution was treated especially from the point of view of diplomatic history, as a great disturbance of the international policy of the European states. In 1856 Sybel was called by King Maximilian II. to Munich, where he established the historical commission connected with the Royal Bavarian Academy, and founded the Historische Zeitschrift. In 1861 he became a professor at Bonn. During the ensuing period, beside the historical studies embodied in his Kleine Historische Schriften (1863-1869) Sybel served with vigor in the Prussian Abgeordnetenhaus, in the Diet of the North German Confederation, and, beginning in 1874, in the imperial parliament. In 1875 he was made director of the Prussian Archives at Berlin, whose publications he originated and superintended. For twenty years, as a member of the Prussian Academy, he has had a foremost part in all official historical undertakings at Berlin. His last work, and, with that on the Revolution, his greatest, was his Die Begründung des deutschen Reiches durch Wilhelm I., of which the seventh volume was published last year. The work, designated on the title-page as composed vornehmlich nach preussischen Staatsacten, had every advantage of the writer's official position until it had approached the fifth act of its drama, when the young military officer who now occupies the throne of William I. closed the archives to the great historian. Nevertheless the history was continued. The last of Sybel's publications was an article in the Historische Zeitschrift, in which he defended various positions taken by him in his last volume from criticisms recently made, especially in the matter of the respective attitudes of Beust, Napoleon III., Gramont, Eugénie, and Bismarck toward the inception of the war of 1870.

Rudolf Gneist, who died on July 22, was not merely an historian of high rank, but also a renowned jurist and political reformer. He was one of the few prominent historians of this century who have helped to make history. He was born in Berlin, August 13, 1816. In 1839 he began his academic career as Privat-Docent. His life was less migratory than that.