tomarily been traced too narrowly through the generations of English Puritanism and French Rationalism.

In any such enterprise as this, there is some danger lest the authors be carried, by the momentum of their own zeal, into the fallacy of proving too much. The authors in this case are too well grounded to commit the error of identifying Catholicism with a particular form of government, in disregard of Leo XIII's clear statement that government "may take this or that form, provided only that it be of a nature to insure the general welfare" (cf. pp. 3, 28-29). Dr. Ryan and Father Millar are content to argue that American liberty sprang up and flourished in a soil enriched with Catholic doctrine; that American free institutions are perfectly compatible with Catholicism; nay more, that Catholic Christianity in America today is a potent incentive to good citizenship and true patriotism. But Quixote will not believe this.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

PARKER THOMAS MOON

Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific. By STUART DAGGETT. New York, The Ronald Press Company, 1922. vi, 470 PP.

In an earlier work, Railroad Reorganization, published in 1908, Professor Daggett analyzed the financial reconstruction of seven great railroad systems which failed between 1892 and 1896 and of one of a later date. In the book now under review, the same author treats of a single system, but for this system considers not merely the financial aspect-though this receives the chief emphasis-and not just one period, but the evolution of the Southern Pacific in its entirety. His book takes its place along side of those of Smalley, Davis, White and Haney; but as none of these extends its narrative beyond the nineties, this of Professor Daggett is strongly distinguished by a freshness and a sense of contact with the present. On the other hand, historical students may regret that Professor Daggett has given so little attention to the beginnings of railroads in California, and none at all to the schemes for a southern route for a railroad to California, so vigorously agitated in the years before the Civil War. There is no formal bibliography, the maps are inadequate, and the arrangement of topics is at times confusing; but the book is well documented and is scholarly in method.

The Union Pacific bill of 1862 included provision for a railroad

which, starting from California, should connect with the Union. Pacific. With this road, the Central Pacific, and with its extensions and absorptions in California, the first six chapters have to do. It is Professor Daggett's belief that Collis P. Huntington and his associates "went into the Central Pacific project as a speculation from which they hoped to retire with a profit derived largely from construction paid out of government funds". The author presents an enlightening analysis of the methods which the associates employed to effect this end, particularly the forming of construction companies through which they as contractors worked for themselves as a railroad corporation. The larger plan, the building of a new Pacific railroad, along a southern route, had its beginning when California, in December, 1865, chartered the Southern Pacific Railroad and when Congress, in 1866, gave to this road a land-grant without any subsidy in bonds or money. In the succeeding chapters Professor Daggett unravels the tangled mass of combinations and consolidations which mark the development of the Southern Pacific System, the efforts toward the state and federal regulation, and the thorny matter of rates, local and transcontinental. As of especial significance, in the history of the Southern Pacific System, the author stresses the incorporation, in 1884, by the legislature of Kentucky, of the holding company known as the Southern Pacific Company, "with a charter granting power to do most things in the world provided it did not operate in Kentucky"; the financial settlement of the Central Pacific in 1899; the sale, in 1901, of a controlling interest in the Southern Pacific properties to the Harriman System; the judicial dissolution of this merger in 1912-1913; and the further effort of the Government to break the long-standing union between the Southern Pacific and the Central Pacific.

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

ST. GEORGE L. SIOUSSAT

The Relations of French and English Society (1763-1793). By C. H. LoсKITT. New York, Longmans, Green & Company, 1920.-x, 136 pp.

This little monograph, written in 1911 and approved in that year as a thesis for the M.A. degree by the University of London, attempts to evaluate the influence of English society as a factor in the genesis of the French Revolution. For thirty years before the outbreak of the Revolution, thousands of Englishmen, the author shows, jour

neyed annually to France where, consciously or unconsciously, they widely disseminated English ideas of liberty, equality and independence. At the same time many prominent Frenchmen visited England where they had ample opportunity to observe English institutions and to mingle freely with various types of English society. Especially were they impressed by the fact that neither the laws of England nor the force of public opinion restrained any man from following, with some prospect of success, the natural bent of his genius. That men like Pitt and Walpole could attain high position by reason of capacity rather than birth; that nobleman and peasant traveled the same roads; that as a general rule arbitrary taxes were not levied, nor exemption from taxation granted, nor complaints made as to assessment and collection; that rural England was prosperous, and that religious toleration prevailed to a very considerable extent, likewise made a deep impression upon the French visitors. Such conditions, so strikingly absent in France, they attributed, either rightly or wrongly, to the English form of government, foster-mother of liberty and equality, and Frenchmen became passionately enthusiastic for things English. They copied or borrowed English modes, English customs and English ideals. The effect of this Anglomania as a factor in defining and developing the revolutionary spirit, Mr. Lockitt believes, can hardly be overestimated.

After thus carefully stating his thesis and devoting a chapter to a contrast of English and French society in 1763, he proceeds in chapter iii to trace the growth of English methods of dress and the introduction into France of English horse-racing, gambling and club life. As a consequence, he maintains that the idea of equality developed among Frenchmen and the airs and graces and "traditions of urbanity", so characteristic of French society in 1763, soon disappeared, revealing the "inward rottenness" of French social life, which, as the Revolution approached, degenerated into "the most vicious social order that the world had yet seen". In chapters v and vi he explains in some detail the levelling influence upon French society of the English drama and English political, religious and economic ideas. The age of Walpole, the author says, powerfully influenced French life; and the age of Walpole "was an age of political torpor, the principle of laissez-faire its lodestar, and innovation its bugbear". In chapter vi, entitled "Sentimentalism", he shows the influence of the English nobility and of English literary men like Fielding, Richardson and Sterne in causing numbers of the French nobility to return to their estates and to the enjoyment of

the beauties of nature. voted to the influence of English philanthropy on French life. In his last chapter the author, after comparing French and English society in 1789, briefly explains the failure of the revolutionary propaganda in England.

In this same chapter a few pages are de

In preparing and publishing this volume Mr. Lockitt has performed a most meritorious piece of scholarly work. For his material he has depended almost entirely upon the sources, especially the memoirs which were produced so prolifically during the last half of the eighteenth century. It is especially fortunate that he has made such a thorough investigation of an aspect of the period preceding the Revolution hitherto almost completely neglected. Throughout the volume there is a tendency to overemphasize and overrate the influence of the intermingling of the aristocracies of the two nations in bringing about the Revolution. Of this fact, however, Mr. Lockitt is fully conscious, as he frankly acknowledges it in his prefatory

statement.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

HARRY J. CARMAN

POLITICAL SCIENCE

QUARTERLY

THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM-A RETROSPECT OF EIGHT YEARS

A

PERIOD of eight years would not ordinarily be suffi

cient to furnish the basis for a conclusive judgment

of any new banking organization established on a national scale. The First and Second Banks of the United States were both granted twenty-year charters. In neither did the issues which finally led to the refusal of an extension become well defined until much more than the first half of their life had expired. Nor was it possible, even at that time, to form a sound judgment of the effects which these institutions had produced. A review of the history of the Bank of England, and of that of the Bank of France, enforces the conviction that many years must elapse in the life of a highly organized community before conclusive and final judgment can be formed as regards the essential effects of a new banking system. Particularly must this be true in the United States, because of the fact that the Federal Reserve System was grafted upon a parent stem, and was not a new implantation. In these circumstances, an even longer time must necessarily be allowed to pass before the modifying influence of a new and vast financial organization, making itself completely felt, affords a basis for judgment.

These qualifying factors are thus stated at the outset of this discussion, in order that they may be clearly borne in mind by the reader throughout. Yet it remains true that the past eight. years have been no ordinary period in the financial or economic, any more than in the political or social, life of the