subject of which it treats than the chapters on the execution of foreign judgments found in the books on the conflict of laws.

It is scarcely necessary to say that when we speak of the execution of foreign judgments, we mean judgments in civil and not in criminal cases. It is a universal principle that the authorities of one country will not enforce the criminal sentences pronounced by the tribunals of other countries; but when we enter the domain of civil rights and remedies, we discover a totally different rule. Here national boundaries are in great measure obliterated. National policies and national jealousies disappear, and each nation lends its aid to administer justice as between man and man in respect to their private transactions. If, for example, a suit be brought upon a contract which was made and was to be executed with reference to a foreign law, the court will apply and enforce that law as the law to govern the case. It was somewhat broadly declared by Lord Stowell in the famous case of Dalrymple vs. Dalrymple, which involved the question of the validity of a Scotch marriage, that where a foreign contract was to be construed and enforced it was the duty of the court to ascertain what the foreign law applicable to it was, and that the law of England, having furnished this principle, altogether withdrew, while the foreign law then became the law of England for the purposes of the case.

This principle of the recognition by each country of the laws of other countries in civil matters really lies at the foundation of the enforcement by the authorities of one country of the civil judgments of the tribunals of another. Hence it has been declared in England that a foreign judgment in respect to a matter properly governed by the law of England would not be enforced in that country, if the foreign tribunal refused to apply the English law. On the other hand, the English law having been applied, it has been held that the English courts would enforce the judgment, although the foreign tribunal misconstrued the law. Such was the decision of Mr. Justice Sterling, in 1887, in the case In re Trufort. The same rule had already been laid down in two earlier English decisions, namely Castrique vs. Imrie, L. R. 4 H. L. 414, and Godard vs. Gray, L. R. 6 Q. B. 139.

It would far exceed the space allotted to a book review to attempt to disclose the rules observed and the methods pursued in various countries in the execution of foreign judgments. In some instances the subject. is regulated by treaty. M. Constant informs us that France has such treaties with Austria, Germany, Italy, Russia and Switzerland. These conventions, however, are not so important for us as the broad doctrines which are generally recognized and administered. It is generally stated that, to render a foreign judgment effective, it must appear that the court had jurisdiction of the parties and the subject-matter. This is fundamental. A judgment rendered without jurisdiction is in 'strict right no

judgment at all, and it is obvious that the jurisdiction must extend both to the parties and the subject-matter. The judgment must also be final, and, if in personam and for a pecuniary claim, must be for a fixed sum. In many countries, as in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Chili and others, it may also be necessary to show that reciprocity is observed in the country from which the judgment comes. This is expressly provided in article 661 of the German code of civil procedure, which was promul gated in 1877; and where there is no express provision on the subject it would not be strange if the courts should refuse to recognize judgments proceeding from countries whose tribunals refuse to execute foreign judgments. Such a case would fall within the principle of the declaration or suggestion of Lord Hatherley, above mentioned, that the English courts would not enforce a judgment respecting a matter governed by English law, if the foreign tribunal refused to apply that law.

Growing out of the requirement that, where a foreign judgment is to be enforced, the court which renders judgment must have jurisdiction of the parties, the question frequently arises whether the defendant has properly been served with process. It is a general principle in such case that, except as to citizens or domiciled persons, the process of the courts can have no extra-territorial effect; and it has been held both in the United States and in England that the extra-territorial acceptance of service otherwise invalid is insufficient. It would be manifestly unjust and inadmissible that persons against whom demands are made should be required to answer wherever it may suit the convenience or caprice of the plaintiff to bring his action. Such a rule would be intolerable. So sound and necessary is the requirement of service within the jurisdiction, that it has been enforced as between the states of the United States almost as strictly as between nations wholly foreign to each other. The abuses to which a relaxation of the rule would give rise have been amply illustrated in the matter of divorce. The theory on which extra-territorial service in such cases has been sustained is that it would defeat the object of the statutes to permit a person to escape their operation by leaving the jurisdiction. On the other hand it may well be asked whether, by recognizing such service, as by a notice in some obscure newspaper or by a communication mailed to a supposed post-office address, the statutes have not often been converted into instruments of fraud, by being made to serve the purposes of dishonest action on one side or of collusion. It has been strongly advocated by high authority that foreign divorces, where the service of process is by publication, should always be treated as having no extra-territorial effect as to a defendant domiciled in another jurisdiction, unless there be satisfactory proof that the whereabouts of such defendant could not after diligent search be discovered. JOHN BASSETT MOORE.

History of the New York Property Tax.

An introduction to the history of state and local finance in New York. By JOHN CHRISTOPHER SCHWAB, Ph.D. Publications of the American Economic Association, Vol. V, No. 5, 1890.- 8vo, 108 pp.

The history of American local finance has been almost an untrodden field. Although several students are now engaged in working up various. parts of the subject, almost nothing has been published. It is therefore with a friendly recognition that we must greet this attempt to trace the history of the property tax in New York.

The monograph, which is a slightly enlarged translation of an essay originally printed in German, is written on the whole with fidelity and care. Extended references are given in the foot-notes to the chief published and manuscript material. Very little attempt, however, is made to present anything but a consecutive narrative of the facts. In the few cases where Dr. Schwab tries his hand at analysis, the result is not always good. Thus one of the main points of the monograph is that the property tax in New York owes its origin to English and not to Dutch precedents. In order to prove this statement the author gives us a slight account of the English tenths and fifteenths, which he correctly assumes to have been general property taxes. But Dr. Schwab errs in believing that this general property tax was peculiar to England. It was found all over the continent, in Holland as well as in the other countries. In Holland during the middle ages it was known as the schot, or tax on the besittungen, levied at irregular intervals. Especially from 1653 on it became a regular state tax levied on all property in general. And it is to be noticed that when the Dutch governor gave his reasons for imposing a general property tax "on estates and means in 1674, he added the words, "as is practised in the Fatherland in such and similar circumstances." Dr. Schwab quotes the text of this document on page 39, but significantly omits this passage, which is perhaps the most important part of the letter. It is true, indeed, that the New Netherlanders liked to impose excise taxes, after the fashion of their mother country. But the English colonies were not backward in this respect. Massachusetts imposed a license tax in 1646, and a general excise in 1668; Plymouth colony imposed an "excise" on wines and tobacco in 1646; Rhode Island in 1655; Pennsylvania in 1684, etc. etc. Thus the whole contention of Dr. Schwab that the origin of the New York property tax must be sought in England seems very much exaggerated. The general property tax was not an exclusive possession of England by any means. The efforts made to introduce it under the Dutch régime should not be referred to English precedents alone. The reason of the general property tax is to be found in the general economic and social

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conditions; and this in fact is intimated by the author himself in another place.

The monograph is open to another criticism in its treatment of the property tax on corporations. The laws of 1823 and 1829 are given correctly, but no mention is made of the successive changes, some of them of considerable significance. In particular, the important subject of bank taxation is wholly omitted. Again, the provisions of the general corporation tax law on page 90 are by no means exact, and we find, moreover, no mention of the separate taxes on transportation companies. With these exceptions, however, the essay is a good piece of work. And it is to be hoped that we shall soon see similar monographs devoted to the other American commonwealths.

Freiland. Ein Sociales Zukunftsbild.

E. R. A. S.

Von THEODOR HERTZKA.

Leipzig, Verlag von Duncker & Humblot, 1890.- xxxiv, 677 pp.

It has seemed to me a mistake on the part of the author of this romance that he has put his book into the form of a novel, for he has not the novelist's gift. His purpose, as distinctly announced, was to present his ideas in a realistic, striking way, so that they would reach a wider circle of readers and would have a deeper influence. If he had presented his views on the social question compactly and in scientific form, the greater part of his readers would have been better pleased, and the book would probably have had a wider influence; for this novel has dissertations as long, dry and unpleasantly scientific to the unscientific novel reader, as is a work on political economy; while to the economist the love story- an improbable, not to say silly one- and the multitudinous details regarding the settlement and growth of Freiland are almost equally burdensome.

One cannot avoid the comparison of this work with Bellamy's Looking Backward. As a novel it is immeasurably inferior. Bellamy presented pleasing pictures, with details that were pleasing, but in the main he spared his readers statistical details and long dissertations. Besides that, the spirit of charity and brotherly love, so pleasing in an ideal world, so hard sometimes to find in our real one, breathed throughout the book. In Freiland the spirit is the passionless, scientific one, which is out of place in a romance, however valuable and necessary it may be elsewhere. A novel should conform to the principles of literary art ; but these would exclude the rather precise pages of population statistics. Freiland's absurd love story, too, utterly fails to remove the impression that the author has a piece of hard work on hand, — an impression that is not favorable for arousing one's enthusiasm for the good time coming.

But the author of Freiland would not wish to be judged as a novelist. He is primarily an economist, and this work is intended to be an economic work. He thinks that he has discovered the solution of the social problem, and in this book he makes his discovery known. He had thought long over this problem; he had wondered at the absurdities of many of the answers given by great thinkers from Plato's time to our own; when "suddenly, like a dazzling sunbeam into the darkness of his doubt," the consciousness came that his solution was not in conflict with the discoveries and the work of others, but that it was rather the key to them all and was the only true and complete solution. I confess that the manner in which the author first places himself in the same rank with Plato and Bacon calling the latter by name — and then coolly acknowledges that he is greater than any preceding social philosopher, has a tendency to prejudice the reader against him; but that should not hinder a judgment on the merits of the case.

Perhaps the fewest words in which the solution of the problem can be given are these the abolition of interest on capital, of private property in land and natural forces, and of the profits of the entrepreneur as such. Or rather, as the author would say: since the use of the land is free and capital is furnished free of interest by the state, and since each person may at his will engage in whatever business suits him and go at will from one to the other, rent, interest and profits of the entrepreneur disappear, without being forbidden by the state; or, as he puts it again, they unite with wages into a single indivisible income of labor. Free association in business is encouraged to the fullest extent, in order that all the benefits of organization on a great scale may be obtained; and to each association capital is furnished by the state for productive purposes, without interest, though the capital must be repaid, and though taxes are paid for state purposes, as well as to get capital for loaning. Of course, no capital is loaned without good security for the repayment of the principal. It is not given to every one who asks for it.

A detailed criticism of the various points made in the book is not necessary, though they admit of much discussion. On economic questions we expect good work from the author. One fundamental error seems to belong to the book, the one found in nearly or quite all books written with the same object in view. The author seems to assume too great foresight and intelligence on the part of the citizens, and he seems to overlook in great measure the means by which men are really managed by their leaders. In fact, he acknowledges in one place that it is hardly fair to start a society consisting exclusively of educated people; but he thinks that all would soon be educated in a society