An Appeal to the Fathers' Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, of Boston, has Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, of Boston, has given us the fruit of many years' study in a critique upon the working of our political institutions which is worthy of the attentive consideration of every thought ful patriot. It is conceived in the spirit of Lord Bacon's aphorism: "Since things change for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly, what end will there be of the evil?" That our institutions were admirably designed, and that they have on the whole worked beneficially, Mr. Bradford has no doubt. As little doubt has he that, like all human constructions, they need repair and readjustment, and show signs of

weakness under the increased strain of a changed time. The readjustment that he urges, and in which he is supported by an array of expert testimony, is not in any change of the Constitution. The difficulty of changing it he regards as one of its chief merits. His proposition is that we should “learn to work the Constitution as it is.” The leading principle on which our government is based may be said to be the separation of executive and legislative power; the leading cause of failure, that we have never carried the principle into effect, "except in the town governments peculiar to New England." What we have in practice, as distinguished from what we have on paper, is government by the legislature, which in the States has reduced the executive to insig nificance, and in the Nation has greatly encroached upon the theoretical independence of the executive, as Professor Woodrow Wilson showed ten years ago in his book on "Congressional Government.'

The incapacity of the legislature, whether State or National, for governmental functions seems to be generally suspected, to say the least. Mr. Bradford enlarges upon this. Its members are not elected for special fitness; they represent at most only local interests; personal responsibility for the general welfare is correspondingly minimized; general inter

The Lesson of Popular Government. By Gamaliel Bradford. In Two Volumes. $4. The Macniillan Company, New York,

ests are constantly sacrificed to local and

private interests by log-rolling and lobbying; there is an increasing tendency to profligate expenditures, and the anarchy already existing in its conduct of financial

matters is characteristic of the anarchical character and tendency of the present working of government by a legislature. So far has this gone that in our largest States there are practically two executives, the official one and the non-official,

so that the Governor finds either his rival or his director in the Boss, who, by the aid of adherents in the legislature, is often able to dictate or to neutralize his action.

In this fact, so odious to all but placehunters and spoilsmen, Mr. Bradford justly recognizes a distorted reflection of the idea of the framers of our National Con

Their

stitution, of which our State Constitutions are more or less padded copies. theory of the executive contemplated a leader of that public opinion which is the

working and the conservative force in a republic. They certainly did not expect that leadership to be exercised by a legislature in which public opinion is at best represented only in incoherent fractions. Nor did they expect his prerogatives to be shorn as they have been in the matter of appointments by the legislative usurpation styled "the courtesy of the Senate," or that his sphere of control would be also narrowed by the operation of a Civil Service Reform promoted mainly by his own abdication of power to avert worse evil through legislative interference. the alternative to the growth of personal government by an irresponsible bossism, with political ruin in the sequel, Mr. Bradford deems it urgent to reinstate in practice the constitutional theory of personal government in place of the impersonal and irresponsible government by legislature that has largely supplanted it.

As

In other words, he would restore to the executive, both State and Federal, its proper initiative and leadership, for safeguarding the exercise of which the legis lature in the role of a vigilant critic can

doubtless be relied on.

To accomplish this no new measure is

deemed necessary, but only a revival and permanent establishment under suitable regulations of the practice followed by Washington and his Cabinet. This was, in fact, proposed in 1881, in a bill to give the Secretaries of the executive departments seats on the floor of the Senate and the House, with the right of debate on matters relating to their business, and with the duty of answering inquiries and giving information thereupon. This bill was signed by all the members of the committee reporting it, but was never heard of after its introduction. Mr. Bradford enters at great length into the reasons that may be urged for it and against it. It would, of course, make it impossible to pay election debts by Cabinet seats. Only men of the highest ability could "fill the bill." The chief benefit would be in locating responsibility. A politician President could hardly play into the hands of Congressional intriguers, were independent members or the minority to have the right of publicly " heckling " his represent atives on the floor. In recommending such a measure Justice Story emphasized this point in 1833, saying, "If corruption ever eats its way silently into the vitals of this republic, it will be because the people are unable to bring responsibility home to the executive through his chosen ministers." Add to this that the President, if represented in public debate by his lieutenants, is no longer in a retirement which discloses his views and policy only in an occasional message. Brought into direct and open contact with all important public questions, he has at least the opportunity of a real leadership in place of a titular.

"Then," argues Mr. Bradford, "would become possible that which is at once most needed and most lacking in our politics-personality." We regret lack of space to quote at length. The same measure is, in his mind, even more urgent in the State governments. Thus to invig orate and purify State administration is required for the maintenance of that political equilibrium between the States and the general Government which is an essential part of our constitutional theory, but is threatened by the centralizing tendencies that have been at work since the Civil War. Mr. Bradford quotes from the late Covernor Russell's address to the

Massachusetts Legislature in 1893, urging the importance of "the reform of existing machinery for the discharge of executive duty-machinery now without system, and destructive of that executive responsibility and supervision which the Constitution devolves upon the Governor, and for the proper exercise of which it meant to make him at all times amenable to the people." But since legislatures care nothing about that, Mr. Bradford thinks that some candidate for the Governorship will have to carry the demand directly to the people, and make it the winning issue in the canvass, before the change can come. The beginning of such a return to the way of the fathers of the republic seems to him more practicable and promising if tried first in the States rather than in the Federal sphere.

We lack space to follow Mr. Bradford in regard to city executives and city charters, or in his criticism of various propositions for curing our political disorders, as by the election of Senators by the people, proportionate representation, the initiative and referendum, etc., none of which he regards as a plaster that will cover the sore. Aside from his main proposition, there is nothing which seems to him of great moment but a return to the abandoned principle of election by a majority, with a second ballot when necessary between the two highest on the poll, as in Prussia. The abandonment of majority for plurality rule, with evils notably illustrated in New York City, has had, he judges, a more pernicious political effect than any other single measure. To the student of our constitutional theory and practice, the value of Mr. Bradford's work is in its cogent plea for return to the true theory of government by a responsible executive, as still practiced in the New England town, from the false practice of government by an irresponsible legislature, which inevitably falls a prey to bossism in the pay of private, class, and corporate interests against the interests of the people-a practice which grew from a traditional fear of the executive, and now is doubly condemned by the fact that executives are no longer feared and legislatures no longer trusted.

But, as the average reader does not sit down to a work of eleven hundred pages, a considerable section of which is given

to an instructive study of popular government in other countries, we strongly recommend Mr. Bradford to make an abridgment of his elaborate and convincing argument for popular use.

Books of the Week

[The books mentioned under this head were received by The Outlook during the week ending August 18. Prices

will be found under the head of Books Received in the preceding issue of The Outlook. This weekly report of current literature will be supplemented by fuller reviews of the more important works.]

The Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge has pub. lished, through Messrs. Harper & Brothers (New York), a stout volume of four hundred and fifty pages on The War with Spain. It is the only complete history of the war yet offered by so able a historian, and it will undoubtedly commend itself to deservedly wide reading. It is really not necessary to read it to obtain a graphic and comprehensive idea of the march of events. This may be gained by looking at the eighty full-page illustrations, many of them of exceptional merit. They are by such artists as Messrs. Remington, Zogbaum, Thulstrup, Chapman, and Christy. However, they only whet one's appetite to know more in detail about the picturesque events of the war itself, its conduct, campaigns, and battles. The first part of Mr. Lodge's volume comprises a discussion of the Cuban question, and the relations which have existed between the United States and Spain during the present century. The account of recent happenings is given with evident intimate knowledge of the inside history of those happenings. The author's position on the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, and his wide acquaintance with present makers of history, have stood him in good stead in writing this book. While his style is clear, compact, and vigorous, he allows it at times to lapse into a somewhat spread-eagle and spouting vein; in so much it detracts from the work's his torical value. Mr. Lodge brings out well, however, the salient fact that the final expulsion of Spain from the Americas and from the Philippines is but the last act in the long strife between those who have stood for liberty and those who have stood for tyranny.

Jacobus de Voragine, who died in 1298, after seven years of office as Archbishop

Its

of Genoa, was the author of a "Historia Longobardica seu Legenda Sanctorum, better known by its later title of The Golden Legend. This was a compilation arranged to supply a course of religious reading for the church calendar year. material consisted of acts of the martyrs, patristic writings, church lessons, and popular traditions. In this last field fancy probably had more than fair play, but, taken as a whole, the work became not only a storehouse of medieval lore, but also a picture of contemporary as well as traditional religious conditions, ideals, and history. As Renan says, the stories in the Golden Legend are marvelously instructive as regards the colors and manners of the period to which they belong, and, as Mr. Madge, in the preface to his selections from the Legends, reminds us, it was the favorite manual of the most popular literature of the Middle Ages. Few books have passed through so many or so famous editions, and no one was more frequently printed during the last quarter of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the sixteenth. The earliest printed copy is a substantial folio, dated Basle, 1474, two centuries after its compilation by Jacobus. The largest edition was Caxton's, in which the original matter was expanded to no less than four hundred and forty-eight chapters. As Caxton himself said of it, "The Legende named in latyn, Legenda Aurea,' that is to say in englysshe, The Golden Legende,' as gold passeth in valewe alle other metalles, so thys legende excedeth alle other bookes." The most recent edition, before the one issued last week, was that fine example of Kelmscott Press work in 1892. The edition now before us consists of a judiciously made selection, exquisitely printed on exquisite paper. Both Mr. H. D. Madge, the editor, and Messrs. E. P. Dutton & Co. (New York), the publishers, are to be congratulated on the appearance of this altogether charming little volume.

the previously published volume on “Ethnology," which was concerned mainly with mankind as a whole, the present volume deals chiefly with the four great divisions of mankind. These-the Negroes, the Mongols, the American aborigines, and the Caucasic peoples-are regarded as having been specialized in their several geographical areas at some time between the Old Stone and the New Stone Age; not less, probably, than one hundred thousand years ago. Their common ancestry is held to have overspread the world at least three hundred thousand years ago, in a period when the globe was warmer than now and with more of intercontinental land. The cradle of the race is placed in the now vanished Indo-African continentwhere the late Professor Winchell placed it a dozen years ago. Confirmation has been given to this view by human remains discovered in East Java in 1892. The first two chapters deal with this primitive race, and the remainder of the work with the main groups and sub-groups derived from it. By critical discussions of the facts the author seems to have reconstructed the ethnical history of the Mediterranean peoples, and to have lighted up some obscure questions concerning African, Asiatic, and American races. (The Macmillan Company, New York.)

The Elements of Public Finance, by Professor Winthrop More Daniels, of Princeton, is satisfactory in its plan and clear in its historical statements, but is at times unexpectedly feeble and careless in its discussion of present problems. For example, in discussing the general property tax, the author, after saying that the taxation of personalty burdens unfairly the farmers who uphold it-continues as follows: "Another piece of unfairness involved in the general property tax is that those who hold their property unencumbered by mortgages or debts pay taxes upon their entire property. Those whose property, on the contrary, is mortgaged, pay taxes only on the unencumbered part of their estates." If there is any State in which the borrowing of money rids the citizen of taxation on his property, it should be named in the text. In discuss ing the railroad problem the author as sumes that all stocks and bonds of railroads represent "capital invested," and declares the danger of extortionate rates

if pooling is legalized rather imaginary than real, because the rates "would continue to be subject to review by the Federal Commission." He has evidently not read what the Commission itself says of its powers to review rates, in the light of recent decisions. (Henry Holt & Co., New York.)

The Modern Farmer, by Edward F. Adams, is a wordy and commonplace discussion of the business relations of the present-day farmer to the world at large. It contains, however, several chapters of value on the co-operative associations through which fruit and vine growers of California are now marketing a large part of their product. According to the author, the sales of the co-operative fruit associations now aggregate $5,000,000 a year. (N. J. Stone Company, San Francisco.)

In 1857 Mr. William Allen Butler wrote Nothing to Wear. The poem instantly obtained a wide popularity, which it has retained ever since. It is now published by Messrs. Harper & Brothers in a new and charming edition, together with others of Mr. Butler's verses-there are many good things in the book besides "Flora McFlimsey of Madison Square." We read the following dedication: “To my wife, this volume, published in the fiftieth year of our wedded life, is inscribed." It is a satisfaction to know that in this exhausting world there are husbands and wives who round out half-centuries of united life.

Lord Rosebery's Appreciations and Addresses have a distinct charm of manner. One sees in the author the versatility and ready adaptiveness which mark the political leader, the man of the world, the lover of literature, and the close student of literature. Burke, Burns, Wallace, Gladstone, Stevenson-such are the subjects of the "Appreciations;" while the addresses are on such topics as "Bookishness and Statesmanship," "The Duty of Public Service," and "Parliamentary Oratory." Lord Rosebery is evidently an easy public speaker; his reported speeches are uniformly free from stiffness and restraint. In every case he evidently had something definite to say, some common-sense message to give, and he carried out his intention simply and effectively. This volume is, we believe, the one the sale of which was enjoined through the courts because of an interest

ing copyright decision to the effect that a newspaper whose reporters make for it a verbatim report of a public address holds the rights for that report to the exclusion even of the speaker himself. (John Lane, New York.)

A congenial literary task for Sir Edwin Arnold is the translation of Sa'di's The Gulistan, the famous Persian classic, in which are verses, anecdotes, tales, moralizings, epigrams, and other choice morsels of Eastern lore and romance. Sir Edwin describes Sa'di as "really the Horace and Marco Polo of the Far East combined," and his "Rose Garden" as a literary curry, a kabab of versatile genius, where grave and gay, humor and wisdom, laughter and tears, are threaded together on the skewer of wit, and spiced by a soft worldliness and gentle stoicism that make the dish irresistible, however jaded the mental appetite." The translation has all of Arnold's customary facility and felicity of phrasing. (Harper & Brothers, New York.)

The College Warden, by Dr. Henry A. Fairbairn, tells in a distinctly readable way the story of the life of Robert B. Fairbairn, who was for many years Warden of St. Stephen's College, Annandale, N. Y. Dr. Fairbairn died last winter at the age of eighty, fifty-five years after his ordination to the priesthood. This book is neither a formal biography nor a perfunctory tribute; it is written with a keen eye for that which was picturesque, individual, and instructive in Dr. Fairbairn's long life of usefulness. His educational experience, his zeal in philanthropic work, his skill in gaining influence over boys and young men, his sense of humor, are all well brought out. Thus the memoir is a character-study of positive and general interest. (Thomas Whittaker, New York.)

Cordially welcome is a new edition of George William Curtis's Prue and I. The book is of the kind that may become old but does not become antiquated. It is rich in Mr. Curtis's gentle humor, wide sympathy, and sound social philosophy. (Harper & Brothers, New York.)

Mr. Julian Ralph has collected half a dozen or so of his magazine stories into a volume called A Prince of Georgia and Other Tales. They are cleverly written,

and one or two of them at least are worth

re-reading. (Harper & Brothers, New York.)

To the fine "Outward Bound" edition of Mr. Kipling's works, published by Charles Scribner's Sons (New York), has been added The Day's Work, Part I. This contains about half the matter in the book recently published under that title, with one story not heretofore included.

Tousled Hair is the unfortunate title given to the description of life in a boys' boarding-school, by Frederick Stanley Root. (F. Tennyson Neely, New York.) The story has so much of the real boy spirit and is so just to boy nature that the putting of the story in such a cover is unjust.

A translation of Japanese fairy tales by Susan Ballard, of the St. Hilda Mission, Tokyo, is published under the title of Fairy Tales from Far Japan, illustrated from Japanese originals. Translator and artist are so dominated by the modern spirit that the book, founded on the folklore of a people whose characteristics mark them from the rest of the world, is devoid of any national characteristics; the illustrations, at times, suggest a modern caricature. Fleming H. Revell Company (New York) are the publishers. They also publish Three Times Three, a Loyal Temperance Legion story in nine chapters by nine writers.

Books Received

For the week ending August 25

ADVANCE PUBLISHING CO., CHICAGO

Sheldon, Charles M. John King's Question Class. 75 cts.

A. I. BRADLEY & CO., BOSTON

Tomlinson, Lena. The Triangle. $1.
Thurston, I. T. A Village Contest. $1.25.
Rand, Edward Augustus. The Whistle in the Alley. $1.
WILLIAM DRYSDALE CO., MONTREAL
Tait, Rev. James. Christianity Without Conscience. $1.
HINDS & NOBLE, NEW YORK
Stout, G. F. A Manual of Psychology. $1. (The Uni-
versity Tutorial Series.)

THE INLAND PUBLISHING CO., TERRE HAUTE, IND. Practical Physical Exercises. Arranged by Louis Lepper and William H. Wiley. 80 cts.

A. N. MARQUIS & CO., CHICAGO Who's Who in America, 1899-1900. Edited by John W. Leonard. $2.75.

THE PENN PUBLISHING CO., PHILADELPHIA

The Shakespearean Plays of Edwin Booth. Three Volumes. Edited by William Winter.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK Norman, John Henry. Money's Worth.

FLEMING H. REVELL CO., NEW YORK

Connor, Ralph. Black Rock: A Tale of the Selkirks. With an Introduction by Prof. George Adam Smith. $1.25.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA Thoburn, Wilbur W. In Terms of Life.

THE UNITED SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR. BOSTON

Wells, Amos R. The Missionary Manual. 35 cts. Chapman, Rev. J. Wilbur, D.D. The Secret of a Happy Day. 50 cts. The Spiritual Life of the SundaySchool. 35 cts.