take them to the public-house. Looked at in this rather low way, clubs seem to me better than the licensed public-houses they tend to replace. Nor do I see that they compare unfavourably, all things considered, with the majority of clubs in other places. . . . Evidence of the spirit of self-sacrifice is not wanting. In many cases the members do all the repairs and alterations of the club after their own day's labour is done. . . . Many, too, are ardent politicians, and begrudge neither time nor money is advancing their political views. And something

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more may be said. Coarse though the fabric be, it is shot through with golden threads of enthusiasm. Like Co-operation and like Socialism, though in a less pronounced way, the movement is a propaganda with its faith and hopes, its literature and its leaders. This, it is true, applies to a few individuals only, but to many more club-life is an education... Taking things as they are, the working-man's club is not a bad institution, and it is one with very strong roots" (pp. 97, 98). Even the publicans are not regarded as an influence altogether evil. They live by supplying the wants of the bulk of the people, and it is not possible that they should be much worse than the people they serve." Moreover, publicans are approximating a little more to the true character of licensed victuallers. "Undermined by the increasing temperance of the people, and subject to direct attack from the cocoarooms on the one side and the clubs on the other, the licensed victuallers begin to see that they cannot live by drink alone" (p. 114). "In such a situation it would be a fatal mistake to decrease the number of the houses in the cause of temperance. To encourage

the decent and respectable publican by making existence difficult to the disreputable is the better policy, but let us on no account interfere with a natural development, which, if I am right, is making it every day more difficult to make a livelihood by the simple sale of drink" (pp. 115, 116). This advice may not commend itself to those who regard compulsory sobriety as the panacea of social ills; it is worth quoting as at least the carefully formed opinion of one who has studied the facts in an all-round way, and who certainly does not ignore the misery caused by drunkenness.

Mr. Llewellyn Smith's chapters on "Migration" are now placed together in vol. iv. of the new issue; his results fit in with what is noted in the chapter (by Miss Margaret A. Tillard and the Editor), on "Homeless Men "-about the very large proportion of Londoners to be found in night-refuges. The influx of the countryman often makes the Londoner homeless by superseding him. According to the tables given in Appendix B of the old edition, reproduced in vol. iv. of the new, in the Cavendish Square district of Marylebone 579 of

the inhabitants were born outside London.

In many of the very

poorest districts of the centre, east, and south, between 20 and 30 per cent. only were born outside London.

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In the new vol. iii. a note is inserted in the chapter on Elementary Education," dealing with changes since 1890.

In the new vol. iv., on "The Trades of East London," notes have been added at the end of the accounts of the bootmaking trade, of the tailoring trade, of the furniture trade, of the tobacco workers, dealing briefly with changes introduced by strikes, etc., since 1888.

D. G. RITCHIE.

HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANDED INTEREST. Its Customs Laws, and Agriculture. By RUSSELL M. GARNIER, B.A., Oxon. [406 pp. 8vo. 10s. 6d. Sonnenschein. London, 1892.]

Social History is no longer relegated to a paragraph or at most a section at the end of a narrative of wars and treaties and political intrigues. The professional historian occupies himself with the everyday life of ordinary, unambitious folk. Our arguments are nothing if not historical. It would be difficult to estimate the part played by the mark system and the Anglo-Saxon local courts in the establishment or restoration, if it be so, of local self-government in England at the present day. It is a justifiable boast that Englishmen of education. at any rate have a wholesome dread of à priori theories. They love a precedent. Thus we may desire an eight-hours day because it seems morally just, but we feel that the arguments in its favour are enormously increased when we are told, whether truly or not, that eight hours was the normal working day of a medieval artisan. For such information we have been accustomed to go to the economist or the historian. But it is plain that there are whole departments of medieval life which can only be adequately set forth and interpreted by persons equipped with the specialized knowledge of the analogous departments at the present day. This must be particularly true of all matters relating to agriculture and husbandry generally, which, despite the undoubted advance of the last. two centuries, present from the nature of the case no such gulf as separates the modern factory "hands" from the apprentices of a medieval craft gild or the workers of the "domestic" system of literal manufactures. Thus all who are interested-antiquarians, philanthropists and politicians alike, will accord a hearty welcome to the appearance of a work dealing with economic history from the pen of a writer who is closely acquainted at first hand with agricultural operations and pursuits. Mr. Russell

Garnier, while professing to write in an impartial spirit, perceives that his work "cannot but be useful to the statesman as well as the husbandman," while he ventures even further into what is called the region of practical politics when he expresses his confidence "that our present land reformers will learn moderation if they give more attention to the historical side of the question."

This History of the Landed Interest is apparently to fill two volumes, and of this the present work, which takes us down to 1688, is the first instalment. Mr. Garnier has prepared himself for his task by a careful perusal of most of the available English writers, mediæval and modern, on the subjects of which he treats. He does not seem, however, to have used Dr. Cunningham's books at all, and he is perhaps far too little aware that the excellent and indispensable pioneer work of the late Professor Thorold Rogers has been questioned in more than one important point. Mr. Garnier believes in Professor Ashley. He would have done well to wait until the latter's second volume has shown him the falsehood-into which Dr. Cunningham, too, has fallen-of the belief that the medieval gilds were destroyed by the rapacity of Edward VI.'s counsellors. These writers, however, have made historical investigation the business of their lives: Mr. Garnier has not. It is interesting to hear from an expert the explanation of technical details of the system of cultivation, even though a layman may not grasp the full importance of the processes described, but Mr. Garnier seems to have been most ill-advised in devoting so large a portion (one-third) of his volume to the discussion of the knotty points connected with the tenure of land before the Norman Conquest. This is essentially a matter for the antiquarians, and until they have sorted their evidence and agreed on their readings there is no place for the man whose practical knowledge may help to clothe with living flesh the dry bones of actual, even though it be after all but scanty, fact. But Mr. Garnier has not feared to rush in where many an historical student would have feared to tread. He has not contented himself, as would possibly have been his most judicious course, with a mere marshalling of the facts on either side in the great controversy between the Manor and the Mark. He makes a show of an appeal to original authorities, but Tacitus and Sir Robert Morier are quoted alternately as witnesses of equal merit and importance. Nay more, Mr. Garnier boldly rejects the opinion of Dr. Stubbs, while he quotes it, that "no one now believes Tacitus to have intended the Germania for a satire on Rome," and, with M. Guizot, unqualifiedly asserts that "the book was intended as a satire on Roman morals" (p. 37), while he gives us his "firm belief" (p. 21), unbacked, however, by evidence or argument, that

"the manorial system in some form came into existence during" the period of the Roman occupation of Britain, which perhaps no one ever seriously doubted. The question at issue is whether any traces of it survived the English Conquest. But Mr. Garnier deals out scant justice to the Bishop of Oxford, or, for the matter of that, to all writers of authority on this subject. We are asked on one occasion (p. 36) to exclude from our minds for the present "the opinions of Seebohm, Stubbs, Coote, and other theorists," and to proceed to the fountainhead of our information, and, after a short account of the German tribes, in which for some purposes apparently the evidence of Cæsar and Tacitus is used as contemporary with each other, we are told that this social system just described "is not the mark system of Von Maurer, Kemble, and other theorists." This sounds like a cheap way of prejudicing our minds against the opinions of these well-known writers. It may, however, be described as entirely misplaced criticism. For the present, the matter must be left to scholars among whom Mr. Garnier would be the first to disclaim for himself the honour of a place. The summary which we do find on p. 43, in which the weak points of both sides, so far as they have gone, are clearly pointed out, has a distinct place and use in a book of this kind. Had the author contented himself with a summary of current views, there would have been no cause for complaint. The charge against him is aimed at his attempted originality, which is mainly based on a disparagement of the views of persons more competent to decide this particular point than Mr. Garnier would venture to own himself to be.

Indeed, the weak point of the book throughout is its purely historical side. Mr. Garnier asserts as against Professor Maitland the original separation of the Court Baron and Court Leet. But no student will go back upon the opinions of Coke and Blackstone for all that Mr. Garnier has said. Nor will the author's acceptance of Ordericus Vitalis' assertion that William the Conqueror divided the land so that it should provide him with sixty thousand knights, give the least credence in the minds of historical scholars to that long-exploded myth. It is much more likely that they will believe Mr. Round, who gives reasons for supposing that under no circumstances could the number of knight's fees in England, including both those enfeoffed and those "on the demesne," have much exceeded the number of five thousand. Again, what is the statute of Articulo Cleri in Edward II.'s reign? or where did Mr. Garnier learn that in the mediaval Parliament “the county members swamped the small band of townsmen who sat in the Lower House?" It is true, as he says a few lines afterwards, that "the voices of the latter for a long period of history were seldom

heard," but the word swamped seems to imply a difference in numbers to the advantage of the representatives of the shires. It should be superfluous to remind him that between Edward I. and Henry VIII., the full shire representation comprised seventy-four knights, whereas the actual number of towns, most of which sent two members apiece, never sank below ninety-nine, and had been at a considerably higher figure.

But it must be allowed that Mr. Garnier has digested a great deal of interesting and incidentally important information. Among other things he draws our attention to the change in the relative importance of real as compared with personal property, which, however much recognized in actual fact, has not yet been realized in English Law. We learn of the late survival of the Court Leet and Court Baron, despite their diminished sphere of action. But no doubt the chief merit of the book lies in the part which an ordinary student of economic matters is least able fully to appreciate, and, when Mr. Garnier fulfils the promise of his preface and gives us a history of agriculture alone, we may expect to see a work which, though appealing to a smaller class than does his present volume, may yet be more useful of its kind in that it will be free from those inevitable errors, both of treatment and of fact, to which any writer is exposed who plunges too much à l'amateur into the thorny quarrels of adequately armed specialists, and tries to rule them out of court by the hasty label of "modern theorists." D. J. MEDLEY.

UBER DAS VERHÄLTNISS VON ARBEITSLOHN UND ARBEITSZEIT ZUR ARBEITSLEISTUNG. Von L. BRENTANO. [Second Edition. 103 pp. 8vo. Dunkler and Humblot. Leipzig, 1893.]

This second edition of the author's pamphlet under the same name, published in 1875, is substantially a new work on its very important subject, that of the relation between wages and hours of labour and the work done. It is characterized by all Professor Brentano's clearness of style and fulness of historical detail. He shows that, till about the middle of the eighteenth century, it was universally considered that high wages meant little work, and that the lowering of wages was consequently the best stimulus to production; that a contrary current of thought then set in, of which thought the leading exponent with us was Adam Smith, it being now maintained that high wages bring with them an increase of production. He asks himself the reason of this discrepancy, and concludes that each view was justified by the circumstances of the time; that high wages do not stimulate production, where the worker's wants