BOOK REVIEWS

The Budget in the American Commonwealths. By EUGENE E. AGGER, Ph.D. (New York: The Columbia University Press, The Macmillan Company, Agents. 1907. Pp. 218.)

Mr. Horace White, in his introduction to an English translation of Cossa's Scienza delle fiananze, said in 1888: "A compilation of the tax systems of all the States would be interesting and valuable, but I would not advise anybody to undertake the task unless he has a great deal of unemployed time to dispose of." Aside from the pioneer work by Professor Ely, entitled Taxation in American States and Cities, published twenty years ago, and the study by Professor Seligman on Finance Statistics of the American Commonwealths," published about the same period, scarcely anything of the nature of a general discussion of the finances of the American States has been attempted until recently. Professor Plehn has now achieved the task Mr. White was not eager to undertake, in his convenient digest of the revenue system of every State in the Union. In his Science of Finance, Prof. H. C. Adams presented to American students an admirable account of budgets and budgetary legislation. His discussion, however, so far as the United States is concerned, is confined to a consideration of the federal financial system. The monograph by Ephraim D. Adams on The Control of the Purse in the United States is likewise limited to a treatment of federal finance. The lack of any thorough consideration of the budgets and financial legislation of the various State governments is now met in the volume by Dr. Agger.

The debt of the author to the work of Professor Adams was necessarily large and is freely acknowledged. In the order of presentation Dr.

2

1 Publications of the American Statistical Association, 1889.

826.

Special Reports of the Census Office, Wealth, Debt and Taxation, 1907, pp. 615

3 An Article by E. L. Bogart on Financial Procedure in the State legislatures in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1896), is not intended to be more than a brief sketch of the subject.

Agger follows Professor Adams, who himself admitted that in this respect there was no room for original method in treatment."4

In his chapter on The Budget Right in American Commonwealths the author aims to confine himself to a discussion of the budget right, or the right of the people "to vote the taxes and the expenditures of the State," as it has been developed in our State governments. The wellestablished and long-recognized constitutional principles on which is based the right of the people to control the public purse are re-stated and this is followed by a section on the constitutional restraints on the exercise of the budget right. Among such restrictions treated are found those relating to public debt and public credit, legislative procedure, the tax rate, and the purposes for which taxes may be levied.

Chapter ii deals with the preparation of the budget, which, following the method of Professor Adams, considers the budget first as a report and secondly as a project of law. Dr. Agger's conclusion is that State budgets, considered as reports, are very unsatisfactory-the system followed being fundamentally at fault. The difficulty is that "nowhere in the States does an auditor or a comptroller exercise any real control over the estimates" (p. 51). Budgetary procedure in reality begins in the legislature, the finance committees are the real finance ministers. The legislators are apparently not guided at all by the wisdom and expert knowledge of administrative officers. This is, of course, generally recognized as a serious defect in American government; Professor Adams discusses it at length in relation to federal budgetary practice. Our cities, as Dr. Agger suggests, have been forced into a practice much more nearly in accord with the demands of theory. In the preparation of estimates for presentation to State legislatures the advice of experienced administrative officials has no weight with legislative committees. "There is a complacent self-sufficiency about the normal legislator which defies attack. He admits only with painful reluctance that anybody has qualifications superior to his own to judge of the essential wisdom of any particular course of action and especially in the matter of appropriations the idea that a mere official should have more authority than he is utterly repugnant and offensive to him. Therefore he will never consent to bind himself to the finance officer's estimate and almost uniformly certain considerations make it seem advisable to him to depart from them. * * * A dozen examples could be adduced to show that our

Science of Finance, p. 117.

State legislatures, as a rule, pay no attention to the 'plans and recommendations' which they require from the finance officer" (pp. 54-55). No responsibility being given to administrative officers, the natural result is that none is felt. The law makers fail to secure the information necessary for intelligent action. Ill-advised legislation, carelessness and extravagance have consequently characterized our State finances. Dr. Agger is unable to entertain much hope for the future. There is no power to impose sounder methods on the States; nor is an increase in activities, such as has occurred in the case of municipalities, likely to make a reform imperative. Nevertheless it is possible, the author thinks, that the tendency toward a separation of State and local revenues whereby the States are assigned the changeable and less certain sources, may lead to the desired enhancement of the influence and authority of the chief financial officer of the State.

The remedy proposed is not exactly one which these criticisms would lead the reader to expect. To give the executive branch of State governments the influence it ought to have in financial matters, it is recommended that general responsibility for the preparation of estimates of expenditure to be presented to the legislature should be placed upon the governor. This is preferred to fixing responsibility on the auditor or comptroller, because this official is already burdened with other administrative duties, and because there is already manifest a tendency to hold the governor personally responsible. The comptroller or auditor is, moreover, usually elected and not answerable to the governor. It is recommended that under officers should not be allowed to appeal to the legislature over the governor's head. If, however, these suggestions should prove to be impracticable, the governor should be given veto power over items in the appropriation bill, which should be minutely itemized. The latter power, it should be noted, is already possessed by the governors of all but sixteen States. A budget prepared in this way would, it is hoped, carry much more weight of authority with the legislatures than the estimates as now drawn up.

A chapter on The Execution of the Budget, referred to by the author himself as "wearisome," is devoted to a detailed discussion of the assessment, equalization and collection of the chief kinds of taxes levied in the States. The general property tax is, of course, condemned as an "anachronism," although the author does not venture to discuss critically the theory of the several taxes referred to.

Sections on the centralization of revenue and the safekeeping and disbursement of funds are full of interesting detail as to methods in vogue

in various States. In a chapter on The Control of the Budget the "means employed for ensuring the honest execution of the budget" are thoroughly discussed. Here is touched the extremely vital problem of an efficient audit. With careful and honest auditing such frauds as those connected with the Pennsylvania State capitol could not have been perpetrated. The general criticism of our State systems is that the auditing power is not sufficiently independent of partisan politics. Apparently no good and sufficient reason can be advanced for this condition, for with ample provision for appeal to the legislature in most States there need be no fear of placing with the auditing authority a power too independent and arbitrary.

Dr. Agger has done a thorough and painstaking piece of work. The volume cannot fail to be one of value to students of public finance, as well as to those interested in the legislative and administrative methods of our State governments.

CHARLES C. WILLIAMSON.

Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History. Compiled and Edited by a Committee of the Association of American Law Schools. Volume I. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company. Pp. 847. 1907.)

The appearance of this, the first of three volumes of selected essays dealing with Anglo-American legal history, is an event of considerable importance, marking as it does the interest which the associated law schools of this country have in the history of the subject which it is their province to teach. This historical interest is, in turn, an evidence of an increasing perception that the law is a subject which, for its proper comprehension, requires not simply a memorized knowledge of its present substantive principles and a working acquaintance with the actualities of its practice and procedure, but a philosophical appreciation of the principles upon which its specific principles are based. This philosophical appreciation, it is recognized, may be gained only by the employment of the comparative and historical methods.

The value of the comparative method is especially manifest in the field of legislation. Here, where the aim is the repeal or amendment of existing laws, or the enactment of new ones, a knowledge of the experience of other communities is practically indispensable. But if the comparative method is especially useful in the enactment of law, the his

torical method is preeminently valuable in its explanation. Especially, of course, is this true as to the common or non-statutory law. Here the connotations of the terms employed are often so special, and the principles so qualified that an exact understanding of them demands a knowledge of the peculiar circumstances out of which they have arisen. In this way there is learned the special facts to which the rules have been applied, and the corresponding extensions and limitations of meanings which they have received. Thus, when the present time is reached, the principles appear not as abstract propositions but as completely interpreted in the history of the lives they have lived.

For legal instruction the historical method has merits to recommend it other than that of its interpretative efficiency. In the first place it is adapted to pedagogic use in that it proceeds from the simple to the complex. Principles are first disclosed in their elementary form, and their subsequent refinements gradually and logically explained. In the second place, it is a method by which the student is kept in constant contact with realities and thus his interest continuously maintained. The late Professor Thayer, addressing the American Bar Association in 1895, upon The Teaching of English Law at Universities, said: "I set down. first in importance thorough historical and chronological exploration, because in this lies hidden the explanation of what is most troublesome in our law, and because in this is found the stimulus that most feeds the enthusiasm and enriches the thought and the instruction of the matter. The dullest subjects kindle when touched with the light of historical research, and the most recondite and technical fall into the order of common experience and rational thought."

More important, however, than even pedagogic merits is the value of legal history in giving to the student a knowledge of the law as a living developing force in the community. Its history shows that the great body of the laws of a country has its roots far back in the past, is closely interwoven and identified with the nation's institutions, and with the thought and life of the people-that legal principles are in fact, in most cases, the definition of the people's customary habits, and the crystallized statements of their deepest ethical ideals. Thus the doctrine is taught that while in a developing country, no specific laws are to be regarded as immutable, the entire legal corpus constitutes an organic whole, an alteration of one part of which is apt to affect other parts, and that, therefore, changes should be made in such a manner as to preserve, as far as possible, existing rights, and that, above all, these changes should correspond to real needs, and reflect the true ethical