non obstante Tammany, so we shall continue to improve in the future. This is what we have always maintained in these columns, and no fair-minded man can call the view pessimistic. -Stories, poetry, information, and pictures all go to the making of a magazine, and of these the greatest in bulk seem to be stories. Even when the contribution belongs under the head of information, it is called a story, if possible, and thus Scribner's is able to save Mr. Lodge's account of the Revolution from being avoided as history. His "Story of the Revolution-the First Step -the First Blow," is made as light a narrative as possible, and is accompanied by many entertaining illustrations. The other contribution to which the publishers call attention on the cover is Mr. Thomas Nelson Page's "Red Rock," the first instalment of a novel of the war. Bret Harte's doggerel on "The Birds of Cirencester" (told for children à la Ingoldsby Legends) is good in its way. This, and some of the other January verse, lead us to wonder whether the public was not mistaken in supposing that the magazines brought out their avalanche of December poetry as their best in stock. To judge by the January improvement, the Christmas verse was simply an inferior lot worked up to look attractive and to be absorbed by the holiday market. of -In Harper's, Laurence Hutton has au article called "A Group of Players," which contains several pleasant anecdotes Booth, Wallack, Barrett, and others. Mr. Hutton's knowledge of the stage and of actors is very great, and he generally recalls characteristic touches. Thus, no one who ever saw Lawrence Barrett can fail to be amused at learning that, while he had a simple and unaffected pride in his humble origin, he was terribly annoyed by a rumor that his real name was "Larry Brannigan." Of Booth's eccentricities and generosity many examples are given, and a conversation is recalled which embodies a phrase showing his keen interest in what may be called the affinity of the arts. Of Lester Wallack it is said his weakness as a writer of reminiscences was his fondness for dwelling "on what his father had said to the Duke of Wellington," "to the exclusion of his father's conversation with Elliston or Kean." A curious fate now threatens a successful actor in the phonograph. It seems that a "nickel-in-the-slot" machine has been constructed which preserves for ever, among other things, "the ravings of John McCullough," i. e., lunatic scraps from Virginius, Spartacus, and Brutus, given in his voice and winding up with an insane laugh. A very pleasant paper is that on Stuttgart by Elise J. Allen. The illustrations and text together make an excellent guide-book to the old Suabian city, and the writer has the great qualification, which so many Americans and English people lack, of understanding the German character. This is most of all important in Suabia, where the naiveté of the race reaches a point which seems ludicrous even to the German mind. To many foreigners all Germans are Suabians, but we can hardly be mistaken in thinking that the land of Grimm's heroic "Seven Suabians" is the only spot in Germany which could have produced and preserved the legend of the old judge here given. - Upon the discovery, in 1855, of Bradford's Journal in the Bishop of London's Fulham palace, permission to copy it was granted to the Massachusetts Historical Society. Taking advantage of this favor, and for securing "a fair and exact transcript" of the only original and continuous chronicle of the Pilgrim church and colony for its first half century, the services of Rev. Joseph Hunter, an officer of the British Museum, were secured. Mr. Hunter (famous for discovering the acting of "Twelfth Night" in the Middle Temple in 1602) engaged a gentleman who he knew "would execute the work in a scholar-like and business-like manner"; he "gave attention and supervision while it was in progress," and at its close reported: "The transcriber has done his work in a very satisfactory manner, preserving all the peculiarities of Bradford's writing, and the copy is, I think, as perfect a representation of the original as could well be made. I have perused the copy, turning often to the original when I thought there might be some error, and there has hardly been an instance in which I did not find it exact. I made the collation with much attention," etc. The gratification of the Massachusetts Society in receiving the copy, they declared to be "second only to that which would be experienced at the sight of the original," and they published it immediately, filling therewith the third volume of their fourth series. None of their multitudinous issues is more valuable or more interesting, or has been considered so accurate and authentic. The rescue, however, of the original itself from British captivity by Mr. Bayard, and its coming home to Boston in 1897, must subject the Hunterian copy to a new test. Indeed, the photographic facsimile executed last year and now scattered through the world must lead to the detection of errors hitherto unsuspected in the London transcript. -A very noteworthy omission, amounting to nine consecutive lines, has met the eye of the present writer. It occurs on p. 179 of the Boston volume and p. 122 in the facsimile. The following lines not found in the former work are copied literatim from the latter, the facsimile: an having their libertie to make their own provissions. But some of these which came last, as the ship carpenter, and sawiers, the salte men, and others that were to follow constante employments, and had not howers time from their hard labours, to looke for any thing above their alowance; they had at first 16 alowed them, and afterwards as fish & other food could be got, they had abatemente to 14 & 12, yea some of them to 8, as the times and occasions did vary. And yet thos which followed planting & their own occasions & had but 4 * W After detecting this serious omission, the present writer at once recognized it as a case of what is technically styled homœoteleuton, or sameness of endings. The last words in the facsimile before "having their libertie," which is the first clause in the omitted lines, are "had but 4 "." But these words are identical with the last words in those omitted lines. It is clear that the scribe had written them where they first appear, and, when he would go on in his task, mistook their second appearance for the first, and so wrote only the words following that second, unawares leaving nine lines uncopied. This palpable mistake, in spite of manifold and careful endeavors to guard against such a mortification, is not the only one in the Massachusetts printed copy. It emphasizes the value of original documents. THE CONSTITUTION OF 1653.-I. History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner, M.A. Vol. II. 1651-1654. Longmans, Green & Co. 1897. 8vo, xxii and 503 pp. Historians of the Commonwealth are overpowered by the personality of the Protector; even Mr. Gardiner cannot entirely escape from the disease of Cromwellianism. Readers of his last volume, admirable though it be, may reasonably regret that the pages expended on a candid but sympathetic analysis of Cromwell's motives and aims have not been devoted to a thorough examination of the remarkable constitutional experiment which ought to make the year 1653 for ever noteworthy. A reviewer, at any rate, may be allowed to dismiss from his mind the interesting but unimportant inquiry as to the proportions in which enthusiasm and public spirit were in Cromwell mingled with duplicity and ambition, and may reasonably endeavor to bring into prominence the characteristics of the earliest (as it is one of the most ingenious) of written constitutions. The Instrument of Government (or, as we should now say, the Constitution) of 1653 merits attention, and this for two reasons. It was the type of a new kind of polity; and a study of the Instrument shows that Puritan constitutionalism was in its essence, even more than in its form, essentially unlike the constitutionalism of modern England. What, then, were the main characteristics of this earliest of written constitutions? The constitution which anticipated the treaties of Union and welded England, Scotland, and Ireland into one state, is marked by four salient features. The Executive constituted under the Instrument of Government was the strongest executive which has ever existed in England. "The Government," to use modern phraseology, was not the Protector, but, a very different thing, the Protector and his Council. This body was endowed with the widest authority; it held in its hands the whole civil administration; it had complete control of the armed forces; it determined the foreign policy of the state; it had the right to declare war and make peace; and these constitutional powers were supported by adequate re sources. Under the Constitution were maintained an army of at least 30,000 men and a sufficient number of ships; and for the support of the military and naval forces there was provided a constant yearly revenue, while the Constitution also insured to the Government £200,000 per annumwhich, we take it, was equivalent to about a million of our money-for the maintenance of what we should now call the civil service. These revenues were not depen dent for their existence on an annual or other act of Parliament. They could, be legally raised under the Constitution without any Parliamentary authority. At the head of this powerful Executive stood the Protector: but the Council itself was a body well adapted for the effective exercise of power. It consisted of not less than thirteen nor of more than thirty meinbers; it might, that is to say, be a little smaller than a modern English cabinet, and was, when raised to its full number, not much larger than the Senate in the time of Washington. Every Councillor held office for life; he could be removed only for actual and proved breaches of duty, such, for example, as corruption. He held his position, that is to say, on a tenure even more certain than the tenure by which English judges have held their places since 1689. The first body of Councillors were appointed under the Instrument. Vacancies, as they occurred, were to be filled up by a complicated system of appointment, which, as far as one can judge, would have led to the result that, while few men would have become Councillors who were not members of Parliament, no man could be chosen who was not acceptable to the Council; and it is no bold conjecture that, had the Instrument of Government remained in full force, the Council would in effect have filled up vacancies in its body by coöptation. The Protector, it will be said, towered above the Council. As regards Cromwell, this is obviously true, though Cromwell, as Mr. Gardiner points out, was at the Council board no despot, and his Councillors were no ciphers; but, under the Constitution of 1653, succeeding Protectors would have in all likelihood become the leaders or even the servants of the Council, for the Council, among its other attributes, had the right of electing the Protector, and all experience shows that a small body of statesmen with the right of electing their head will in general succeed in choosing, as they will always endeavor to choose, that one of their members who will carry into effect the wishes of the electors. And however this may be, in considering what was the authority of the Executive under the Instrument of Government, we must look upon it as a body which would usually act in harmony with the Protector. Whenever this was the case, the Council created by the Instrument of Government was constituted so as to possess greater powers than have fallen to any King or Cabinet since the time when the House of Commons became an essential part of the English polity. Henry the Eighth, it may be suggested, committed acts of tyranny which could never have been perpetrated by the Protector and his Council. This is true, but the prerogatives of the Tudors, ample though they were, were limited on every side by custom. No Tudor possessed a standing army; no Tudor could despise the power of Parliament. The authority of Henry and of Elizabeth rested on their capacity for recognizing the permanent will of the nation. Modern cabinets, again, have disposed of armed forces, and have expended revenues, incomparably larger than the armies or the revenues at the disposal of Cromwell, but the strongest of ministries has been dependent for its very existence on the support of Parliament, or, in truth, of the House of Commons. The Cromwellian Council was a permanent body which was intended to outlast one Parliament after another; and, what is of even more consequence, the power of the Council was not in reality balanced by a body with anything like the weight of the houses which had at times withstood the wilfulness of Elizabeth, and had, during the Civil War, destroyed the power of the Crown. For the single House of Representatives elected under the Constitution of 1653, though called a Parliament, was in reality a very different thing-a mere legislature. This transformation of Parliament into a legislature was, in truth, one of the main alterations introduced The first Parliament of the Protectorate For the third and most important of the changes introduced by the Constitution of 1653 was, if we may use modern terms, the transformation of a "flexible" into a "rigid" Constitution. According to the view taken by Mr. Gardiner, the Instrument of Government made the whole of its provisions-or, in other words, every article of the Constitution-immutable. There is nothing in itself unreasonable in this interpretation of the Instrument. During the sixteenth or the seventeenth century, lawyers who used strongest language about the authority of Parliament held in effect that Parliamenta term which in their mouths of course meant the Crown and the two houses-would not or could not constitutionally change the fundamental laws of the realm. The Puritan leaders, though forced, under the stress of circumstances, to become revolutionists, were in spirit stanch Conservatives. Their indignation had been excited by the despotic innovations of the Crown, and the preservation of liberty was in their minds associated with the rigid maintenance of established custom and inherited rights. It must never be forgotten that it was not the enlightenment of Bacon, but the crabbed legalism of Coke, which earned the veneration of parliamentarians. It is therefore quite possible that the authors of the Constitution of 1653 wished to endow the fundamental institutions of the state with a fixity which, though not secured by law, has been in fact insured by the force of custom. But to any one who studies the Instrument of Government with the eye rather of a lawyer than of an historian, the fact, strange though it be, soon becomes apparent that its unknown authors were men of subtle intellects and of great sagacity, and that, with a foresight rarely found among the framers of constitutions, they had provided the means for constitutionally changing the greater part, at any rate, of the polity which they had framed. A careful perusal of Article 24 leads to the following result: Laws were by the Constitutionalists of 1653 divided into three classes: (1.) Ordinary laws, which did not touch the provisions of the Instrument, or, in other words, which did not affect the Constitution. Such laws could be enacted by Parliament with or without the consent of the Protector. (2.) Laws which amended the Constitution, but did not affect certain fundamental provisions thereof referring in the main to religious freedom; such laws could be enacted by Parliament with the consent of the Protector, but not otherwise. (3.) Laws which affected or restrained the effect of these "fundamentals" contained in articles 35 to 37; such laws, if so they can be called, could not be enacted at all: they were ab initio invalid. On this point the Instrument is absolutely clear. Article 38 enacts "that all laws, statutes, and ordinances, and clauses in any law, statute, or ordinance to the contrary of the aforesaid liberty, shall be esteemed as null and void." The "aforesaid liberty" is of course the religious liberty guaranteed by the Constitution, and it may be well to note that, with a tenderness for religious freedom which may perhaps be fairly attributable to the breadth of Cromwell's Own sympathies, the very article which invalidates any law that should restrict, does not invalidate any law which should extend, the sphere of spiritual liberty. However this may be, it is plain that the Constitution was not in reality as a whole unchangeable. The greater number of its articles could be changed by Parliament with the assent of the Protector. The only amendments which were constitutionally forbidden were amendments, if so we may call them, intended to restrict the gua-rantees for freedom of religion. Here we come across the fourth noteworthy feature of the Constitution of 1658. It introduced into the world that conception of guaranteed rights which is familiar to the Constitutionalists of every country but England. Whatever be the logical merits of this idea, it has certainly been fully accepted by the people of countries such as the United States and Switzerland, where religious and political freedom has flourished; and any one who reflects upon the nature of English law and the habits and traditions of English and of American courts may feel a conviction, as certain as it is allowable for any sensible man to entertain about events which have not happened, that, could the Constitution of 1653 have held its ground, the existence of a written and more or less rigid Constitution which guaranteed certain rights would, in England, as it did in a later age in America, have changed the whole position of the judiciary. Once acknowledge that a law passed by the Legislature is null and void, because it contravenes an article of the Constitution, and a court influenced by the ideas common to the whole English people will be certain to hold that, in any given case, the courts must treat such law as a nullity. But if this be once conceded, the result inevitably follows that the Judges must pass judgment upon the constitutionality of laws, or, in other words, the judiciary must become the protector of the Constitution. It is no vain imagination that, had the Instrument of Government remained the supreme law of the land, Hale might in England have performed the task and obtained the fame which in the United States fell to the lot of Marshall. Here, then, we have embodied in the Instrument of Government as remarkable-we may perhaps say as admirable-a constitution as has ever been consciously framed by men bent en founding a well-grounded commonwealth. If we look simply at its terms, we should think the Constitution of 1653 at least as well constructed and as likely to endure as the Constitution of the United States. We all know that the Constitution of 1653 had no permanence, and that its very existence has been all but forgotten by Englishmen. In another article we shall consider what were the reasons why the Constitutionalists of the Commonwealth failed utterly in the attempt to erect a Government which should secure to the English Commonwealth the advantages both of order and of liberty. RECENT FICTION. St. Ives. By Robert Louis Stevenson. An Open-Eyed Conspiracy: A Saratoga Idyl. and a courage so dauntless that his great The fine figures of Mr. Stevenson's crea- The first flight, from Edinburgh Castle to the English home of the Count de Keroual, is a splendid bit of narrative pressing on at hot pace, yet leisurely enough for ample characterization of people and places and for love-making and brawling by the way. Up to the parting with the Gilchrists at Swanston cottage, the illustration of the art of story-telling is pretty nearly perfect, and if we had to make a choice of the most vivid and entertaining scene in all Mr. Stevenson's novels we should hardly hesitate to say, "Chapter ix. of 'St. Ives'." The second flight, in the claret-colored chaise, with the wrathful disinherited Viscount Alain in full chase, has not the same authority, the same easy command of material and expression, while the third flight-all that follows the Assembly ball-is a comparatively disorderly scamper. It happens that at the Assembly ball Mr. Stevenson left off and Mr. Quiller Couch, working from the author's notes, finished the tale. No one can say what Mr. Stevenson would have done with his notes, but when we remember the fantastic and unrelated ending of "The Ebb Tide' there is no certainty that he would have spared us Viscount Anne's adventures in the balloon, or the voyage with the mysterious Captain Colenso-an extravagance which no author except Mr. Frank Stockton could perpetrate and be forgiven. Mr. Stevenson's taste was not faultless; yet it is not probable that he would have crowded the final scenes in Paris with such commonplace devices, or overwhelmed Viscount Alain with such melodramatic defeat. The conclusion of St. Ives's love story seems to us more in Mr. Stevenson's manher than the narrative of adventures. Always shy of the passion of love, Mr. Stevenson, in using it as a motive, conceded the smallest possible amount of emotional and sentimental detail, and Mr. Quiller Couch scrupulously respects his reticence. Though the lovers are always head over ears in trouble, St. Ives is as gay as a lark, and Miss Flora Gilchrist far from a lovelorn damsel. She has practical sense and courage in adversity, qualities which, when embodied in a beautiful woman, went to make the sort of woman that, so far as he has given us his confidence, Mr. Stevenson most admired. As St. Ives, incessantly playing with tragedy, is never tragic, and only once, in describing his relations with a transient figure, the aged French Colonel, achieves pathos, there is no scope for Mr. Stevenson's most impressive style, no passage where the poet's presence is intimated in impassioned prose. But as an example of his narrative style, his gift for telling just what was seen and said and done, of giving a distinct personality even to the least of the actors in the drama, he has left us nothing so characteristic as 'St. Ives' except 'Kidnapped.' The Viscount's perfect comAnand of the descriptive epithet is alone enough to insure him a long literary life. Good a story-teller as Mr. Stevenson was, if the test is ability to give an impression of truth, Mr. Kipling is perhaps a better one. This is not to say that he is a bigger figure in letters, for that emphatically he is not-a declaration which some serious seeker for truth may hereafter attempt to make good, or perchance refute, in a bulky and unprofitable volume. But, for the stories, in the last analysis a candid admirer may be forced to admit that perhaps none of Mr. Stevenson's could be quite and all true, while even an enemy could display only childish rancor in denying to every one of Mr. Kipling's the seal of a scornful veracity. Equally profitless would it be to dispute their interest. He imagines things so strongly, and he knows things so well, that subjects, however alien to our thought and tastes, become at once of the utmost importance. We reproach ourselves for having lived so long in neglect or contempt of them. The cod-fishing industry is not intrinsically, of itself, apart from Mr. Kipling, an occupation that invites attention from those who dwell remote from the Banks, knowing the fish chiefly as a substance triangular and tough, with no suggestion of the ocean about it except the salt. Codfishing has never been made a "cause." that we should shout for it, or even denounced as a pleasant vice, that we should hasten to know it in order to suppress it. Cod-fishing, except for fishers and their families, has always been but a name for a transaction on the deep which nobody could be expected to inquire into. All this until Mr. Kipling chose to sweep the pampered son of an American millionaire off from the decks of an Atlantic steamer into a fisherman's dory and set him to catch, split, and salt cod for three months. Thus suddenly knowledge about cod-fishing has been widely diffused; it has become picturesque, absorbingly interesting in every detail, and doubtless a source of hope and consolation to the parents of insufferable boys. The description of Harvey Cheyne's apprenticeship on board the We're Here is a capital expression of Mr. Kipling's singular ability for investing plain facts with the arresting charm of fiction by imparting his own vigorous interest in them to the reader. The abrupt, disagreeable first chapter, and the chapters narrating the rush of the Cheynes across the continent to meet their lost darling, show that rare and wonderful imaginative force which occasionally makes fiction more real than life itself. The characterization of the cod-fishers is feebler, vaguer than anything of Mr. Kipling's we can think of, and the corrupt English which they speak has never been heard on the Gloucester shore or from the deck of a Canuck fishingsmack. On the other hand, Harvey Cheyne is known and detested by every one except his mother wherever a score of Americans may be gathered together. Not less familiar and dismal is Mrs. Cheyne, with her nerves, her doting subservience to the abominable child, her selfish command of the husband so lavish of wealth and with the patience of a thousand donkeys. Mr. Kipling has drawn her with a vindictive irony which implies that he has made arrangements for permanent absence from her country. "She" is not likely to forget the picture of her ridiculous self controlling the railroad system of a continent by her hysterical cry, "Hurry," or to forgive such an innocent-seeming paragraph as that announcing the arrival of the Cheyne special at Chicago: "It is on record that the last crew took entire charge of switching operations at Sixteenth Street, because 'she' was in a doze at last, and heaven was to help any one who bumped her." The reminiscences of 'Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker,' make a very readable historical novel. Most historical novels are not readable, and, so far, Dr. Mitchell has scored a success. The tale is dull at first; the inherent tediousness of childhood's memories being increased by a formal, constrained style which is mistakenly supposed to give the eighteenth-century cachet. Once Wynne is grown up, the story moves, and the style is correspondingly freer and more natural. The long and rather involved tale of love. war, and colonial social life is carefully constructed and linked smoothly; the scenes and situations are vivid, some of them spirited, and there are at least two admirably drawn and strongly contrasted charactersHugh's father, John Wynne, a sombre-minded Quaker, and his aunt, Miss Gainor Wynne, a sort of chaste colonial Baroness Bernstein. There are persons still living who suppose, perhaps erroneously, that behind the commercial reasons for the revolt of the Colonies, there was discontent very general, very profound, very passionate, with the rule of kings and the supremacy of aristocracies, and that the Revolution was largely an expression of resentment against the existing social order, and even a protest against the idea which its continued existence involved and proclaimed. Such persons, after reading 'Hugh Wynne,' can hardly escape being con fused in mind, and, if imaginatively attached to theories, troubled in spirit. All their cherished ideals are shattered. There is not even a passing bow to freedom, equality, and the rights of man. Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest were not "fathers of the Republic"; they were "founders of an empire." Washington was no impeccable patriot leading his people to a higher destiny. He was a haughty, reserved, arrogant aristocrat, blasphemous at times; he was a soldier of the King, temporarily out of work, and, all on account of a trifling extra cost for a cup of tea, willing to turn his hand against his master and plunge his country into a long war of which the issue was most uncertain. The men who captured Major André, and those who condemned him to death for conspiring with a traitor, were so insensible to the charm of birth and breeding that no gentleman could speak of them without a shudder. Washington felt the ignominy of his own part in the regrettable incident so deeply that he could not permit the unfortunate young Englishman's name to be mentioned in his presence. Arnold himself was not half a bad fellow. It is true and undeniable that he tried to sell his country; but then he had always kept open house in Philadelphia, and had married a daughter of a first family, and had got into luxurious extravagant ways, and really needed a good deal of money to keep him going. Why Hugh Wynne and his Aunt Gainor joined the rebels, it is useless to inquire. All their tastes and habits were aristocratic, and they had plenty of money to pay for tea at any price. Clearly, on the evidence, the Revolution was a colossal folly. A society apparently better-bred, more polished, altogether finer and gayer than anything known in America during this century, was broken up by it, and whatever the people not in the "Governor's set" may have gained by it does not appear in Dr. Mitchell's quite readable historical novel. This question is not answered in another novel of the Revolution, not quite readable. The title, 'King Washington,' is rather agitating. The "Colonial Dames," the "Daughters of the Revolution," the exclusive Massachusetts coterie of "The Twenty-nine," have compelled us to acknowledge the noble origin of most of the native population of the United States, but have not yet prepared us to believe that Washington ever was, or could have been, or would have been, a king. On page 293 of this novel our incredulity is confirmed by Washington himself. The story is a meandering, romantic account of an attempt to kidnap Washington, when, towards the close of the war, he was in headquarters at Newburgh. A young woman implores him to spare the chief agent of the conspirators. Washington, we are told, "removed his glasses and did not think it beneath his dignity to wipe the tell-tale moisture from his eyes." Then, quite in the good old cherry-tree-and-hatchet manner, he spoke: "The power to pardon does not rest with me. In America no one person is King." It has been the fate of many great men to be misunderstood, but few have been made to appear ridiculous so persistently as Washington. Mr. Howells's 'Open-Eyed Conspiracy' is one of the light, brilliant performances with which he occasionally amuses himself between serious labors. Mr. and Mrs. March, spending a few weeks at Saratoga, the one philosophical and ironical, the other im pulsive and literal, both inveterate meddlers, involve themselves in the affairs of a forlorn rustic beauty. Always protesting that they have nothing to do with it, they get her engaged to marry one of their pet young men. Slight as the episode is, it attracts attention to a change amounting to transformation that American social life has undergone in the last ten or fifteen years. The glory of the Saratoga caravansaries has departed; culture shuns them; fashion recognizes them not; aspiring plutocracy would not be found dead there. Only benighted Cubans imagine them still to be the centres of fashion which ante-bellum legends describe them. There is a crowd, heterogeneous, brilliant, appearing very rich and even splendid, but the presence of a really "nice" person is as rare as that of an angel. All this Mr. March, who knew Saratoga long ago, and still has a fondness for it (a fondness shared, but less frankly owned up to, by Mrs. March), notes, as he sits positively sizzling even in the shade, or strolls beneath the splendid trees, or lounges about the big hotels where he doesn't stop, where Mrs. March wouldn't stop for untold gold. The tone of Mr. March's reflections is genial, humorous, ironical, hardly a serious note; nevertheless, he manages to contribute impressively to that series of social studies which, by their brilliancy and comprehensiveness, we trust may insure for Mr. Howells enduring fame. NOMINATIONS. Nominations for Elective Office in the United States. By Frederick W. Dallinger. [Harvard Historical Studies, Vol. IV.] Longmans, Green & Co. 1897. Mr. Dallinger's book goes over ground which is familiar to every one. He begins with an historical sketch of the nominating machinery in the United States, in which he traces the rise and growth of the present primary and convention system. The sum and substance of this chapter, the drift of which is entirely historical, is to show that the present system is modern. It has little or no relation to the old caucus, nor to the system of self-announced nominations (the English system), at one period common in the South. It is the application of representative, democratic institutions to a purely party business within party lines, and is made the analogue, so far as possible, of those institutions themselves; the primary corresponding to the town or ward meeting, and the convention to the Legislature. The first chapter is followed by a description of the present system as it exists, and by an account of the defects observed in its operation, while the remainder of the book is occupied with a discussion of the remedies proposed. We shall not weary our readers with rehearsing the shocking story of the abuses of the system, for they may be summed up in a few words: Instead of the primaries and conventions turning out candidates fairly representative of the community, they tend to fall into the hands of a local "ring" headed by a corrupt manager or boss, who himself nominates; the primaries and conventions merely registering his decision, and that decision being dictated mainly by his own private interests. His nominees are, in the main, place-men dependent on the taxes for a living which his favor provides, forming a close corporation or "machine," which effectually bars the door to any nomination not authorized by him. Through his control of the nominating machinery, he fills all departments of the government with his private agents, and thus, though elections seem to remain free, he really determines whom we shall elect, and becomes himself the government, though he `may not hold any office in it. When we come to the question of remedies, we find that a great number have been proposed, among them minority representation and regulation of primaries by law; but the remarkable thing about this part of the book is that the author, whose familiarity with the history of the subject no one can dispute, dismisses all the specifics proposed, and tells us that he knows of but three things likely to have much effect on nominations-a diminution in the number of elective offices, absolute separation of local from national and State politics, and, above all, the abolition of the spoils system, and consequent destruction of the class of professional politicians. We may perhaps throw some light upon the view of the important subject of nomination to which Mr. Dallinger's researches tend, by calling attention to one or two points involved, though not expressly stated, in his study. Down to very recent times, writers who have discussed the fundamental questions of government have generally failed to foresee the importance of the nominating system in a modern representative democracy enjoying a wide suffrage. In Greece and Rome, owing to the narrow local suffrage and the fact that representative institutions did not exist, the difficulty now felt did not arise. Nor was its future importance anticipated by Montesquieu, Hobbes, or Locke. When the authors of the 'Federalist' discussed the proposed Constitution, and explained the mode contrived for electing the President, their explanation showed that they had never thought about the detailed work of nominations at all. "The people of each State," they said (Fed., No. €71), "shall choose a number of persons as electors," as if this function would be performed by the whole people coming together in a sort of State meeting and balloting. Attention has been frequently directed to the fact that the Electoral College, which they intended to be a body of notables, speedily came to be a body of nobodies-dummies selected by party machinery to cast a foreordained ballot; but it is at least equally curious that the method by which the candidates for electors were to be chosen should not even have occurred to them or to their critics. As they say themselves: "The mode of appointment of the chief magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system of any consequence which has escaped without severe censure, or which bas received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents." What they were thinking of when they talked about "the people," was really some small classical, mediæval, or Renaissance city community, the inhabitants of which knew each other more or less by sight, and in which the number enjoying the franchise was very small. and the notables all men of established position, known by sight to everybody in the place. Having in their minds a very different sort of community from that which was destined to establish itself in America, they could not foresee the result of their scheme, and they accordingly gravely state that "they have not made the appointment of the Pre sident to depend on any preexisting bodies of men, who might be tampered with beforehand to prostitute their votes; but they have referred it in the first instance to an immediate act of the People of America." Yet to-day the nomination of the candidates does depend on preëxisting bodies of men, and we have only to turn to such a book as the autobiography of Mr. John Sherman or the present account to find that certain portions of these bodies are universally known to be purchasable, while nomination of any one for an office by "an immediate act of the People of America" is a mere phrase signifying nothing. When Louis Napoleon obtained possession of France and shrewdly constructed a tyranny resting on universal suffrage, it began to be perceived that the business of placing before the people the candidate for whom, or the question on which, they were to vote was no less important than the extension of the right to vote itself. We see the same thing continually in private corporations and stock companies, when stockholders continue bad managers in control because the ticket is made up by the managers themselves, and even vote away their own rights because the method of presenting the question to them is devised by those whose interest it is that these rights shall be voted away. We know now that on the control of nominations the whole character of any government, or the conduct of private corporate affairs, may easily turn. In the long run, any one who controls them must control everything. Unless we are mistaken, it will be found that whenever the suffrage is very extended and popular, the business of nominating candidates for elective office falls into the hands of a small number of men, or into those of the candidates themselves. Hence, in a democracy, the first question is, What is the character of these bodies? In this country, self-nominated candidates are beginning to reappear (and in our opinion as time goes on their number is likely to increase); but, as a general thing, candidates are nominated by "preëxisting bodies," and the character of the candidates depends in the long run on the character of these bodies. To believe otherwise is to believe that the tree is not to be known by its fruit. Now to-day these bodies are not bodies of distinguished or even responsible men, but aggregations mainly of obscure and irresponsible men, "politicians" by profession, whose very occupation is a by-word, who are frequently corrupt, and who, when not actually dishonest, are biassed against the selection of good candidates by every habit and influence of their lives. The condition of our legislatures, of the Senate of the United States, is enough to show that the machinery of selection works badly, and yet, as we have said, upon the selection of candidates by these or other bodies depends the whole future of the government. Hence, it is the universal conviction of those who have given much attention to the subject, that the present low character of the men turned out as candidates by our nominating system cannot continue if our system itself is to last. The government might go on long after its essential virtue had departed, but, as it degenerated, the country and its civilization would decline; laws would cease to be observed, property and life would become less secure, provision against the future would not be made, debt and ex penditures would increase, and in the end, whether through the effect of war or intestine commotion and disorder, rotten forms would be swept out of existence by the strong hand, and some sort of despotism be established in place of the institutions we have known. A cynic might even say with some plausibility that we need not wait, and that we are actually now living in the state of things we dread for our children, that our dumb legislatures are but a modern copy of the silenced Senate of Rome, and our Platts and Crokers the vulgar despots of a vulgar age. To this length we do not go, simply because we are inclined to believe in the inherent power of cure possessed by the germ of freedom-the vis medicatriæ libertatis. But let no one doubt on what road we are travelling. The sign-post is the working of our system of nominations. The modern primary and convention system was introduced in order to make nominations more representative, and so they no doubt did for a time; not until a comparatively recent date did the public awake to the fact that the system had fallen into the hands of permanent "preëxisting bodies" or committees, which, under the supervision of a Boss, and to a great extent in his pay, manipulated and prearranged these conventions and primaries. In the days of the caucus and congressional nominations, nothing of the sort was heard of, and we have no doubt that one of the most potent causes of the rapid perfection of the new system, and its present smooth working, was the corruption of the civil service by the spoils system, which, in the years after the war, came to its height and is still most powerful in local and municipal politics. If this view is correct, the gradual improvement of the civil service which is going on all the time must be taking away from the Boss a large part of his capital. The Post-Office and the Custom-House, and even the Navyyard, are pretty nearly free from his grasp already, and in time the municipal and State service will be; he can still keep a governor and legislature, however, and this he does almost entirely through a rotten nominating system, combined with appeals to party feeling. Bad as the boss system is, it should show us the direction in which improvement, if at all, is to come. The business of selecting candidates in a modern community can be managed only by a comparatively small number of persons. If we wish the nominations to be representative of our interests and aims, people who are really representative must themselves nominate-whether by "petition," or by self-announced candidature, or by a citizens' committee, matters very little, they must nominate, and they must at the same time take away the causes which make the Boss's control count at present for so much. If the class of men engaged in political life were representative, we should get representative nominations now. But how can they become so? The author has enumerated some of the means. We should add to them everything that could diminish the enormous pecuniary stake which elections keep before the eyes of the greedy and unscrupulous, and especially the control of the Legislature over private and local interests, over cities, corporations. over the tariff. Two hundred million dollars was once given as a fair estimate (p. 150) of the annual incomes represented by patron |