The reviewer must plead in excuse for the apparently disproportionate space here given to one of the papers in the volume, that the question which is involved is so fundamental that no clear thinking is possible on early English constitutional or social development without some sort of preliminary conception as to the position of the mass of the people. That the insistence on its importance is often regarded as almost fanatical, but shows how little clear thinking there is.

And now, as the volume is one which is sure to pass through several editions and to be very generally consulted, it may be useful to call attention, not to its merits, which are many, but to a few defects which may be removed upon revision. The poorest work in the book is to be found in the sections on "Social Life and Manners," by Mr. P. H. Newman. In knowledge and judgment it is not, perhaps, inferior to a good deal of historical journey-work that passes muster: it is its association with superior work that reveals its poverty. In style, however, it is susceptible of a good deal of improvement. On page 221 is a passage to which it is hard to assign a meaning: "The king's prerogatives were considerable: he had... the power of summoning the witan, and they with him framed the laws. It is worthy of remark that his word was taken without oath. This is curiously reflected in many of the laws referring to witnesses"; and then the writer proceeds to quote from that erudite work, the "Report of the Royal Commission on Market Rights," a couple of passages from the Saxon laws, apparently in blissful ignorance of the existence of Thorpe or Schmid. Some fatality dogs the sections on "Social Life" in this volume, even when they are anonymous: for when we come to the chapter on the period 1066-1216 we find Holinshed solemnly quoted at great length as, apparently, an altogether reliable authority for the ecclesiastical troubles of the twelfth century (e.g., page 335).

Passing now to the sections that are worthy of serious criticism as to their matter, here are a few dubitanda, greater or lesser :

Page 75 "These collegia... from whom the trade corporations of the middle ages may be said, without much straining of language, to be descended. . . ." One would like Mr. Hughes, the writer of this, to say in what sense he uses "descended": he is no doubt aware that, so far, we have been unable to prove the continuous existence of a single collegium into the middle ages proper.

Page 125 Mr. York-Powell makes the cotsetla of the Rectitudines "unfree." Economically, doubtless he was: but one understands

.

that the term is here used in the sense of legal status; and if so, how are we to interpret the clause concerning the cotsetla in the Rectitudines: "eal swâ ælcan frigean men gebyreth"?

Same page: "The Village Council to settle matters of unjust trading and the common tillage and pasture, he [the new English lord of a villa group] presided at ' comes oddly after a sentence which tells us that he "stepped into the Roman patron's place," and sounds. like an unconscious survival from Mr. York-Powell's earlier convictions. The only evidence for an early Saxon village moot is to be found in the alleged "archaic" features of the village of the later middle ages and a village moot is hard to fit into the writer's own picture, before quoted, of the "two or three homesteads" of the English "yeomen," and the "dozen or score of cots" for the British serfs.

Page 136: "At first the king of the English would go round with his proposed laws to the several folk moots, getting the separate consent of each." The only support for this, so far as I am aware, is Athelstan 3; and that is hardly sufficient.

Page 138: "To watch the king's interests there was another local freeholder of the better sort, chosen by his fellows, often at the king's nomination, as scir-gerefa or sheriff." What is the evidence for this? Is it not a part of the imaginary democratic golden age which people used to find in Saxon times? And do not the first five words of the sentence make it somewhat improbable?

Following Walter of Henley, the hide on page 123 is made 180 acres on the three-field system, and 120 on the two-field. On page 238 we are told by the same writer that it was always "an ideal of 120 acres." As Mr. Round has already pointed out, either of these views is intelligible; but they are difficult to harmonize. While we are mentioning inconsistencies, apparent or real, we may, perhaps, ask Mr. A. L. Smith to compare his own utterances on page 207 about the "usual food," with what he says on page 357 about wheat.

The volume is full of repetition, not altogether explained by the extenuating plea of the editor, but caused to a great extent by the unduly large number of contributors. There is very little feeling of proportion in the editorial arrangement, which has placed what are really considerable treatises on architecture by the side of the briefest generalizations on fundamental social institutions. It is to be hoped that in future volumes the editor will see his way to redressing the ill-proportion; that he will be able to induce his abler con

tributors to write at greater length, and that he will allow them a freer hand. Meanwhile, students of social history are grateful for what they find in this first volume: and especially for the fascinating pages of Professor Maitland on jurisprudence, the freshness and independence of Mr. York-Powell, the conservative caution of Mr. A. L. Smith, the sober judgment of Mr. Richards on Roman civilization, Mr. Poole's scholastic lore and Mr. Owen Edwards's pro-Celtic enthusiasm. W. J. ASHLEY.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

Philanthropy and Social Progress.

Seven Essays by Miss

JANE ADDAMS, ROBERT A. WOODS, Father J. O. S. HUNTINGTON, Professor FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS and BERNARD BOSANQUET. With Introduction by Professor HENRY C. ADAMS. New York, Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1893.268 pp.

Bibliography of College, University and Social Settlements. Compiled by M. KATHARINE JONES. Philadelphia, The College Settlements Association, 1894.-19 pp.

Forward Movements. Containing Brief Statements Regarding Institutional Churches, Social Settlements, Rescue Missions. Boston, W. L. Greene & Co., 1894. — 47 pp.

The announcement by Columbia College of its plan for sociological field work at the University Settlements emphasizes anew the importance of the settlements to students of social science. To the sympathetic observer they offer unrivaled opportunities for the study both of social conditions and of various methods of amelioration. Moreover, the settlement movement is now considered of such importance in contemporaneous social history that libraries are making special collections about it, and bibliographies of the subject are being prepared.

In Philanthropy and Social Progress the principles and methods of the settlements are set forth by two leading spirits of the movement, Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, and Mr. Robert A. Woods, of Andover House. Miss Addams contributes the first two chapters, on the "Subjective Necessity" and "Objective Value" of settlements. In the first she analyzes the motives which lie behind the movement. First, there is felt to be a need to extend democracy beyond political forms to the whole social organism, if democratic government is to be a success. In a democracy it is impossible to establish a higher political life than the people desire; but the

desire for a higher civic life can be fostered in the whole people only through common intercourse. "Hull House endeavors to make social intercourse express the growing sense of the economic unity of society. It is an effort to add the social function to democracy." The second motive is an impulse to share the race life, and to aid in social progress; the settlement gives useful employment to educated young people who feel this impulse, and thus prevents stagnation. Third, the settlement results from a renaissance of Christianity along humanitarian lines.

Mr. Woods, in his paper on "The University Settlement Idea," emphasizes the scientific motive. He insists that "the university and the closely populated city quarter each need the other"; and predicts that the importance of the settlement to the residents and other workers will lead to its becoming an organic part of the university, perhaps one of the professional schools, in which the students may exercise all their varied faculties and learn to deal with men. The paper abounds in practical suggestions.

The chapter by Professor Giddings on "The Ethics of Social Progress" was published also in the International Journal of Ethics for January, 1893, and requires no comment here. Two essays by Father Huntington on philanthropy in general, and one by Mr. Bosanquet on the administration of charity, complete the volume. All seven papers were read in the summer of 1892 before the School of Applied Ethics at Plymouth. Those by Miss Addams have also been published in the Forum.

Miss Jones's compilation is invaluable to any student of the subject. It is really much more than a bibliography, for it quotes from many of the books and articles in such a way as to give in small compass the history and meaning of the settlement movement, besides a brief statement regarding each of the principal settlements in England, Scotland and America. Forward Movements also gives a sketch of each of the settlements in the United States, together with some of the leading institutional churches, and a list of rescue missions in Boston and New York City. This little pamphlet is of more recent publication than the other, and at a time when settlements are springing up all over the country as rapidly as at present, that is a marked advantage. There is a list of nearly twenty American settlements, half a dozen of which were established within the past year. The information regarding them was collected by Rev. Robert E. Ely, of Prospect House, Cambridgeport.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SETTLEMENT.

MAX WEST.

The Distribution of Wealth. By JOHN R. COMMONS, Professor of Economics and Social Science, Indiana University. New York and London, Macmillan & Co., 1893. - Small 8vo, 258 pp.

This little book contains a multiplicity of ideas and suggestions. It is based upon the latest Austrian theories of value, German notions of political economy as a social and ethical science, English conceptions of personal liberty and private property, and the modern denunciation of monopolies and trusts. Acknowledgment is freely made to Böhm-Bawerk, Menger, Wieser, Wagner and Gross ; numerous quotations come from Holland's Jurisprudence; and we occasionally catch sight of Henry George and Karl Marx. The author has evidently studied extensively and the book is eclectic in its composition and ideas. The illustrations (examples) are fresh and attractive, the statistics are of the author's own collecting and the book is provided with the diagrams of the mathematical school, if not with the mathematics itself. From such a combination, with the added advantage of an excellent style, we should certainly expect something weighty and important.

The author in his first chapter elucidates the theory of value, price and cost, following the Austrians in their theory of marginal utility. This he declares to be a serviceable conception and to give a scientific basis for explaining the fundamental question of value, namely: What are the forces which control the supplies of commodities relatively to the demands? The answer (at the end of

the chapter) is:

The price of a commodity is determined by the expenses of the production of the most expensive part of the customary supply. This supply is determined by the relative power possessed by the different coöperating productive factors, of limiting their share of the total product relatively to the wants and resources of society.

What are these factors? They are (Chapter II) land, capital, personal abilities, monopoly privileges and legal rights, taxes and labor.

of these factors

Those that are It is only those

The important step now is to determine which are able to limit their share of the total product. replaceable, labor and capital, cannot, of course. that are irreplaceable or that occupy the position of monopolies, that can limit the supply and thus control prices in their own interest. The first of these factors is land, and this leads us to the consideration of the law of "Diminishing Returns and Rent" (Chapter III).