REVIEWS 419
ago. Five of the twelve firms continuing the plan have- since aban- doned it, but several new ones have made good this loss.
Mr. Oilman's main motive, the'elevation of the lot of the employe", is most cordially approved, his work of investigation is commended, his presentation of facts is worthy of high praise, but his special contention as to the exceptional merit and the success of the one modification of the wage system can be accepted only in so far as profit-sharing is indicative of a fundamental principle not peculiar to itself.
PAUL MONIOE.
TEACHERS COLLEGE,
Columbia University.
The United Kingdom. A Political History. By GOLDWIN" SMITH, D.C.L. 2 vols. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1899.
WHEN six years ago there appeared from the pen of Goldwin Smith a Political History of the United States, the author was by no means unknown to the American public. During the twenty-five years of his residence in Canada he had written much upon current political and sociological topics ; he had even dipped into the more peaceful, but hardly less turgid, stream of literary criticism ; but no historical work had appeared from his pen since the publication of his Three English Statesmen, in 1867. His readers were hardly surprised, therefore, to find that even Goldwin Smith could not easily turn aside from the habits of thought and composition of a quarter of a century, and once more write history, pure and simple, out of the calm, serene atmosphere which is supposed to environ the viewpoint of the critical historian. To some the book was a disappointment ; it contained no contribution o the existing sum-total of historical knowledge upon American his- tory. The author claimed to have overhauled no new, or hitherto unpublished, manuscript. He fired no heavy shot in plethoric foot- notes at any of his contemporaries who had been unfortunate enough to let loose their books on the public first. He made no attempt to challenge any current fallacies, but repeated them all, and added some glaring inaccuracies of his own. And yet the book was read widely, and commented upon, for the most part favorably, as one of the most original and stimulating books on American history published within the century. It was Goldwin Smith; and Goldwin Smith shone through every page of the text.
Just such another book is Goldwin Smith's Political History of the
