the great men with whom he labored. The careful and painstaking work of Mr. Conway is a long step towards rescuing the name of Paine from undeserved forgetfulness and setting aright before the world the man whose pen wielded such mighty influence in two great revolutions. Mr. Conway has brought to his task the carefulness of a scholar combined with the enthusiasm of an admirer; his notes are few and to the point; his research has brought to light a few articles which have hitherto been unknown, as well as a larger number that have not been recently republished. The first three volumes contain Paine's early and political works, while the fourth is devoted to his religious, poetical and scientific writings. LESTER G. BUGBEE.

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS.

Social Changes in England in the Sixteenth Century, as reflected in Contemporary Literature. Part I: Rural Changes. By EDWARD P. CHEYNEY, A.M. Boston and New York, Ginn & Co., 1895.

114 pp.

In this brochure the changes that came over English society in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are examined by Professor Cheyney from the point of view of contemporary literature, which is, as all familiar with English economic history know, peculiarly rich in complaints over the distress and hardships of the times. The study is in many respects a particularly useful one; and through its quotations and maps it gives a lively picture of English rural life in an important period of transition. The quotations are practically complete, and the maps, the first, a photograph of open fields of to-day in Germany; the second, a photograph of four of the facsimile maps published by the University of Oxford in 1889, - although too limited in number, are distinctly new contributions.

The editor begins with the old régime, when the open-field system of cultivation was still in force - when tenure was fixed by custom and the legal relation of the tenant to the land was not well defined ; when the universal characteristics of the social organization were the large coöperative element in everyday life, the connection of the people with the soil, and the dependence of the system on custom and not on law or contract. He follows the movements of the next one hundred and fifty years (1450-1600), and traces the yielding of corporate life to individual freedom, the separation of the population from the land, and the substitution of contract and law for custom, in consequence of which the people at large, unable to accommodate

themselves to the changed circumstances, were in great distress and poverty.

To illustrate these changes Professor Cheyney introduces quotations from contemporary prose and verse writers, who speak of the wide and rapid increase of sheep-farming, the greater demand for English wool at home and abroad, the need of good investments for unemployed capital-which resulted in the enclosure of the champaign, the eviction of tenants and the substitution of pasture for grain land - and who complain especially of the loss of grain-farming and the diminution of the population. In commenting on these complaints the editor shows that the new system of farming was superior to the old, and that the decay in the towns was due to the shifting of population rather than to an actual loss. He notes that by reason of the greater productiveness of sheep-farming, with the gradual substitution of competitive for customary rents and the increase in the currency, a rise in rents and an increase in the size of farms occurred; that speculators in the towns bought up lands in the country, either to occupy them, or more often to rent them at an advanced rate; that the dissolution of the monasteries, by inducing absentee ownership and encouraging inclosure, increased the size of parks and game preserves, and caused new evictions to be effected.

Professor Cheyney introduces further quotations containing the writers' remedies for what they considered to be the great evils of the time; he notes the revolutionary attempts to check the progress of these evils — the Pilgrimage of Grace, Kett's Rebellion, the riots in Northamptonshire and Warwickshire; and he traces the gradual subsiding of distress and disorder, due to the attainment of a more satisfactory equilibrium in economic production. He closes with the end of the period of transition, calling attention to the feeling of individual independence and the conception of national unity that characterized the people of the sixteenth century.

In doing this work Professor Cheyney has proceeded with the care and discrimination of an unprejudiced editor, and has avoided speculation and hypothesis. That he has not gone further and entered into a discussion of the legal and economic questions involved, is to be commended, partly because of the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, which is as yet inadequate, and partly because he would not thereby have altered his conclusions as to the economic effects of the change. Professor Ashley's speculations have not convinced those who believe that historical conclusions should be preceded by long and thorough investigation; and Mr. Leadam's laborious researches,

although adding valuable evidence of a legal character, show fully the difficulties of the problems, and are enough to deter students on this side of the water from entering into the controversy. It is idle to discuss the question of the legal status of the evicted tenants, the security of their tenure and the character and rank of the evictors without access to manuscript material. More studies like Professor Maitland's analysis of the Wilburton manor rolls and Mr. Leadam's "Inquisition of 1517" are needed; and it is to be hoped that the Selden Society will some day do for the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries what it has already done for the thirteenth and fourteenth. CHARLES M. ANDREWS.

BRYN MAWR College.

Staatswissenschaftliche Arbeiten: Festgaben für Karl Knies zur Fünfundsiebzigsten Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages, in Dankbarer Verehrung dargebracht. Von Prof. DR. EUGEN VON BÖHM-BAWERK in Wien, DR. O. von Boenigk in Breslau, Prof. DR. J. B. CLARK in New York, Prof. DR. EB. GOTHEIN in Bonn, Prof. DR. Eм. Leser in Heidelberg, Prof. DR. EDW. R. A. SELIGMAN in New York. Herausgegeben von OTTO FREIHERRN VON BOENIGK. Berlin, O. Haering, 1896.- v, 338 pp.

Few books are invested with the degree of sentiment which attaches to a congratulatory volume addressed to a revered teacher by a body of students who have themselves long attained to scientific distinction and academic influence. Such a work, however notable, arrests attention by its occasion rather than by its content, and even the formal reviewer is tempted to substitute a general estimate for a detailed examination. This is preeminently the case with the present Festgaben, inscribed to Karl Knies, upon his seventy-fifth birthday, by a group of his most distinguished students in two continents. In an admirable but brief introduction the editor, Dr. Otto von Boenigk, has voiced the sentiment of devoted students. But a wider circle claims recognition. Knies is a name that the economic world delights to honor, and in every quarter of the globe economic writers and thinkers, bearing in mind the distinguished services of this "Altmeister der Volkswirtschaftswissenschaft," will repeat with grateful earnestness the fervent wish of the editor, that Karl Knies may continue his fruitful activity for many years, and that the evening of his life may approach in serenity.

The essays in the volume fall naturally into three groups: Dr. von Boenigk and Professors Gothein and Leser write on economic his

tory; Professors Clark and Böhm-Bawerk on economic theory; and Professor Seligman on finance.

Dr. von Boenigk presents the characteristic features of "The AntiChinese Movement in America," as revealed in a mass of literature, for the most part ephemeral, which is here catalogued in a useful preliminary bibliographical note of nearly two pages. The entire dependence of the writer upon secondary material renders his narrative somewhat stale and trite to the American reader, and emphasizes the need of an adequate study of this significant chapter of American social history. Dr. von Boenigk makes the most of his opportunities, however, and reaches the conclusion that the problem is ethnic and social rather than economic, and that the exclusion of the Chinese from Western lands is entirely warranted.

Professor Leser makes a brief but interesting "Contribution to the History of Option-Trading" by calling attention anew to Joseph de la Vega's treatise on stock speculation, written in Spanish and published in Amsterdam in 1688, and to John Houghton's Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade (London, 1692– 1703). To the reader wont to regard "dealing in futures" as a distinctly modern form of commercial activity, this revelation of an ancestry of more than two hundred years is at once curious and striking.

Of greater importance than the two preceding papers is Professor Gothein's detailed study of "Changes in Agricultural Conditions in the Rhine Country." The paper is an expansion of an address before the Social Science Union of the University of Bonn, and combines directness and simplicity of style with fullness and accuracy of treatment. The evolution of land tenure, the influence of varying industrial environment and the radical changes in agrarian economy are traced with easy precision. The monograph reveals the inductive method at its best, and we are again reminded of the unique opportunities afforded in this country for kindred investigations, the results of which shall be at once of scientific moment and of practical influence.

The appearance of the third and final volume of Karl Marx's Capital enables Professor Böhm-Bawerk to supplement the acute analysis of socialistic theories contained in his Capital and Interest with an incisive critique upon "The Completion of the Marxian System." The central point of attack is the fundamental analysis in Marx's posthumous volume-the attempt to harmonize the corollary of the labor theory of value, that capitals of like size but of unlike

texture yield unlike profits, with the practical fact that capitals of like size normally yield like profits, regardless of their composition. The solution lies in the formulation of a law determining the average rate of profits. At such a law Marx ultimately arrives; but its consistent acceptance is possible only-as Professor Böhm-Bawerk demonstrates with characteristic completeness of argument and pertinence of illustrationby a virtual repudiation of the cherished labor theory of value.

Of the two remaining papers in the collection - Professor Clark's on "The Unit of Wealth" and Professor Seligman's on "The Theory of Betterment ❞— it is unnecessary to speak to American readers. Few who have attempted to grapple with the problem of an ultimate standard of value—the ignis fatuus of economic analysis — have failed to find help and suggestion in Professor Clark's remarkable article in the Yale Review for November, 1892, the essential thought of which is here reproduced. Similarly Professor Seligman's differentiation of the special assessment as a distinct category in the classification of public revenues, and his scholarly exposition of its origin, theory and practice, already familiar to the readers of his Essays in Taxation and earlier papers, represent real contributions to fiscal science, the significance of which will be more fully appreciated as the field in which the special assessment preeminently figures municipal finance receives more general examination. J. H. HOLLAnder.

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY.

The Law of Collateral and Direct Inheritance, Legacy and Succession Taxes. By BENJ. F. Dos PASSOS. Second edition. St. Paul, West Publishing Co., 1895.-xxiv, 654 pp.

The revised edition of Mr. Dos Passos's treatise is to all intents and purposes a new work, with between two and three times as much matter as its predecessor, an amended title and a new publisher. Making allowance for legal verbosity, the increased size of the book is due in part to the long appendix and very full index, and in part to the rapid extension of the inheritance tax in recent years. Since the first edition was published in 1890, this form of taxation has been adopted by Massachusetts, Tennessee, New Jersey, Ohio, Maine, California, Michigan and Illinois, and has been extended to direct heirs in New York, Michigan, Ohio and Illinois. The second edition was published too soon to record the new laws in Iowa and Virginia, and it omits to mention the progressive tax of Missouri and