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The Green Bag
of view of the modern historian, but interpre tations by living writers of past events have not been excluded. The book is, however, to be considered as treating of economic his tory rather than of the economic conditions of the present day. The editor has himself furnished little of the text. His short intro ductions to the chapters, however, are dis tinctly worth while. The chapter titles are as follows: (1) " The United States in the Economic History of the World"; (2) “Colonial Economy"; (3) “Colo nial Policy"; (4) “Economic Aspects of the Revolution"; (5) "Economic Situation and the New Government"; (6) “Foreign Influ ences"; (7) “Rise of Internal Commerce"; (8) "Transportation"; (9) “Rise of Manu factures"; (10) “Representative Views of the Protective Tariff"; (11) “Currency"; (l2) “Settlement of the West"; (13) "The Public Land Policy"; (14) "The Organization of Labor and Capital"; (15) “The Economics of
Slavery."
CONANT'S MODERN BANKS OF ISSUE A History of Modern Banks of Issue; with an Account of the Economic Crises of the Nineteenth Century and the crisis of 1907. By Charles A. Conant. 4th ed. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London. Pp. 72l+bibliography and index 30. ($3.50.)
HIS treatise, the first edition of which appeared in 1896, is the best and almost the only work in English which treats fully of the history of modern banking in all parts of the world. The book is a compact volume which contains an enormous amount of well sifted information invaluable to students of banking and currency problems. In this new edition, Mr. Conant did well
to omit three chapters on banking theory, owing to the fact that he had presented his views more fully in his two volumes on "The Principles of Money and Banking,” published in 1905. He thus saved fifty pages, adding in place of them one hundred and fifty pages of new matter. There is a new chapter on banking in Japan, one on exchange in the Orient, one on the events of 1907-8, and a helpful though incidental passage about the Vreeland-Aldrich Emergency Currency bill. Since the appearance of the original edition, the gold standard has been successively adopted in the United States, Russia, Austria Hungary, Japan and Mexico. In all respects the work has been brought down to date, and several phases of banking development have
received more special attention, such as the growth of the discount policy, the division of profits between the bank and the state, and revision of charters so as to deprive share holders of a portion of the privileges and profits which they previously enjoyed.
HOLDSWORTH'S ENGLISH LAW A History of English Law. By W. S. Holds worth, M.A., D.C.L.. Fellow and Lecturer in Lawin St. John's College, Oxford. Little, Brown & (30., Boston. V. l. id, 421, appendix and index 38; v. 2, xxvii, 507, rap dix and index 64; v. 3, pp. xxxirg, 495, appendrx and index 34. ($4 per vo ume.
THESE well printed volumes deal with the history of English law up to the reign of Henry VII (1485). The author discovered on the completion of the first volume that more than two would be necessary to cover the field. The work is not yet complete. A fourth will be necessary to bring the treatise down to the present time, and in that we may reasonably look for an account of the expansion of the common law brought down to the twentieth century. Dr. Holdsworth has not devoted much of his labor to the investigation of original sources, but his work is distinctly valuable as a summing up and impartial review of the widelyscatteredcontributionsof other scholars. Pollock and Maitland's history forms the basis of the work, and he freely acknowledges his indebtedness to it. As a history of English law up to Edward I, the period with which Pollock and Maitland's work closes, it is apparent that his history ofiers scant improvement on their invaluable researches. Apart from this objection, which may or may not be serious, it does assemble in a single work materials never before brought together, and will be prized for its compre hensive and luminous account of the growth of institutions which will always excite the profound interest of all Anglo-Saxon peoples. The style, though it misses something of dramatic vividness, is suited to the compre hension of the lay reader, but the work will primarily serve the needs of the profound student. The first volume is devoted to the history of the courts and of the jurisdiction exer cised by them at various periods. The second volume covers “Anglo-Saxon Antiquities, and the Mediaeval Common Law," the latter topic
being also treated in the third volume, and being subdivided into two parts, (1) “Sources
