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excerpting, as we have hitherto done, in his own words so far as possible, his leading ideas and a few of the numberless facts newly displayed by him. If, however, these pages contribute to accelerate the due appreciation of an admirable work of devoted scholarship and ripe judgment, their purpose will be fulfilled.

The work of the well-known historian of the Tudors is sure to attract a wider circle of general readers than are likely to be interested in the investigation of obsolete administrative antiquities. Parliament being the very core of England's political life, and the British Parliament having become the model of innumerable assemblies all over the world, a book on its development, or rather its philosophical essence judged historically, if (as does the work before us) it teems with well-selected facts, original combinations, illuminating comparisons, suggestive problems, and new proposals to solve them, cannot but leave its mark upon all future views of the "British constitution generally as well as on the political question how any nation can govern itself by means of elected representatives. Prof. Pollard's unprejudiced impartiality, wideness of view, and felicitous expression reflect honour on the memory of Maitland, whose researches in the origins of Parliament and of the constitution he has ably carried on. He enriches his story by reproducing original disquisitions, chiefly from the Rolls of Parliament of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. But he also surveys the last thousand years of British society, in its widest sense, including Church and State, from the point of view of an expositor of Parliament.

It is no mean praise for the institutional value of the House of Commons, that this keen observer should retain his firm belief in it. His chief argument for parliamentary government consists in the possibility of discussion between divergent interests. It is only by representation that democracy can govern an empire, and that a national state remains compatible with self-government. Self-government, opines its faithful adherent, made England readier to admit even the claims of other peoples. Opposed to hero-worship and bureaucracy, he declines on the other hand to accept the referendum, syndicalism, and guild-socialism, and

admonishes Labour not to forget its spiritual aims. Though disliking the mob and well aware how few persons are able to judge of political questions, and how every government requires professional experts, he is content to see the highest political sovereignty reposed in the electorate-an electorate involving universal suffrage and the general will of the people. Are we to supply 'behind it' after 'and'? Or does the author identify the nation's will with the vote? The masses vote under the party's whip. Is it not rather the party which sways the real sovereignty of democracy? Our guide remains silent about party as well as about the responsibility for the formation of public opinion of its prompter and mouthpiece, the Press, or of the social influences which pay it. And will His Majesty the People always administer the nation's capital, invisible goods included, in such a way that the children may enjoy their ancestors' inheritance ?

Under the heading 'The British Realms in Parlia ment' the author proposes to change the moribund House of Lords into a representation of the different states of the imperial commonwealth, like the American senate. Without unity of race, language, tariff, law, and church the cohesion would be warranted only by the consent of the members. The judicial committee of the Privy Council ought, says our author, according to Lord Haldane's plan, to appear periodically in sessions throughout the British realms.

In contradistinction to the leading doctrine, shared by us, which derives the House of Lords from the advisory side of the Curia regis, i.e. the monarch's council of state, Prof. Pollard prefers to see its ancestor in a court of law, the Curia's judicial aspect. Maitland had indeed pointed out that a plea could be adjourned from King's Bench to Parliament; that judges formed the core of its membership; that in 1305, the earliest date at which we are informed of its proceedings, it was chiefly occupied with petitions; and that in compliance with such petitions it often set the courts of law into more rapid action. Our author adds as an argument that many parliamentary forms and expressions hail from law courts (just as do, we may remark, those of many a Teutonic institution, for instance, the gild), and

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that the House of Lords was and is the supreme court of appeal. The magnates of the 13th century, however, by themselves lack such a power. Possibly a certain affinity between Parliament and judicial proceedings, may lurk in two further trifles: the Speaker, the origin of whose office remains problematic to our author, may have got his name prolocutor from the Anglo-Saxon forespeca; and the arrangement of the seats of the lords, according to the oldest engravings reproduced in this book, may go back to the four benches of the Teutonic doomsmen.

To a court of law, however, an accused party or two litigants must essentially belong. Nor was it justice, but a share of government and its emoluments, that the barons aimed at when they cried for more frequent parliaments. Prof. Pollard, indeed, explains lucidly that gradually those petitions originally coming from individuals grew into common petitions, by aiming at the ame purpose, and therefore attained political import and furthered legislation. As whole corporations gave 胁 n petitions, thousands of provincial people came in ontact with the centre of state; and the crown knew well that the petitioners would be more willing to grant axes, if their wishes were granted. Nevertheless, those inorganised travellers from the country to Westminster liffered widely from the knights and burgesses coming o parliament, because these were elected by, and were hot only responsible to, but also bound, their constituents.

Prof. Pollard has ingeniously discovered, in a field so vell ploughed already, the new fact that the nine assemlies summoned by writ between 1275 and 1298 nowhere bear the official name of Parliament, and that the fifteen parliaments' of that period were not summoned by vrit. These Parliaments, he concludes, were small udicial councils, while financial and general affairs were eft to the large assemblies of feudatories summoned by writ; and he supposes Edward I to have amalgamated he two institutions by summoning them to the same lace and term and to common sessions for certain purposes. But could such a bipartition exist without eing remarked in some contemporary writer or record? for was the limitation to judicial business or the xclusion of non-judicial councillors absolute in the o-called Parliaments.

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Emphasising the embryonic state of Parliament before the 14th century the author quotes Fleta, who seems to ignore the continuous unity of preceding and ensuing sessions, when he speaks in the plural of the king's 'parliaments,' which are to him nothing but expanded great councils of state. The summoning of representa tives of boroughs and counties to Westminster for legal affairs possibly suggested to Edward I the wise measure of giving the election of members of parliament to the county court. But Edward did not create the House of Commons-still less did Montfort; nor did he introduce hereditary peerage, which in many respects looks now unlike its ancestor, by his special writ of summons. (This last statement, though historically incorrect, has been converted into a legal fact because it was acknow ledged by law.) Nor did the division into two Houses exist under him. The three estates are indeed mentioned for the first time in 1421, under the influence of the French constitution. The author ought not, however, to deny that the clergy formed one estate; the duality of convocations is no counter-argument. He considers it still necessary, doubtless with good reason, to refute again popular errors though long exploded; for instance, that the crown's financial demands were the sole or even the first purpose of Parliament; that every subject (before 1918) was represented; or that representation was in the days of yore coveted as a privilege by the electors or a an honour by the member. The Commons did not, as our author repeats, from the first constitute a necessary element of parliament or one estate, nor did Knights and Burgesses then deliberate together. The Lords did not form two estates; else the assent of the Commons would not have been absolutely required for the validity of a law, nor could the temporal lords, as they did in the 14th and 16th centuries, have outvoted the prelates on questions of the gravest importance between Church and State.

Many happy remarks about the social influences of Parliament are scattered through Prof. Pollard's book For instance, he points out that the higher middle classes were drawn into closer contact with the centre of the state in proportion as sessions were short but frequent, and almost every time attended by new members. The

social gulf between the classes in the 14th century seems to him narrower, and nobility a less exclusive caste, han it is in our day. England's national and political unity, doubtless strengthened by Parliament, is here chiefly ascribed to the merit of Parliament. But it existed before 1300; and its causes-insularity, and the work of the Norman monarchy being perhaps the chief -in contradistinction to the conditions of less lucky neighbours, have often been explained. As the history of the English State begins for Prof. Pollard in 1066, ne could not pay regard to the opinion I expressed in 1913* and have not changed since, that the ecclesiastical nd bureaucratic sides of the Norman great council, the predecessor of the House of Lords, find their lineal incestry in the witena-gemot. It is not without hesitation hat I dare to commend to his revision a sentence in field entirely his own: The politicians who effected he Anglican reformation claimed that religion should be the affair of the people and not the domain of the priests. We seem to hear the biographer overrating is hero, or possibly the lecturer desirous of catching he ear of his audience, when Prof. Pollard deems Parliament to be England's greatest gift to civilisation, or when he measures the political genius of a nation by he success of its representative system,

The remarks about Germany and her politicians were penned while the flame of international hatred was aging. The rich and often thoughtful literature about he future freedom positively paving the way to a higher ocial aim, in contradistinction to the negative liberty from fetters, which exists on the subject of Rechts- and Volksstaat, has apparently never reached him. Fair judge as he is, he would certainly, if he could study it, nodify his condemnation in a revised edition, which his pirited work amply deserves.

F. LIEBERMANN.

The National Assembly during the Anglo-Saxon Period' (Halle, 1913).