THREE BOOKS ON AMERICAN POLITICS"

THESE works, which we have arranged below, not in the order of their literary merit, but in accordance with the comparative importance of their subjects, furnish, apart from their intrinsic value, gratifying proof that politics and political history are being studied with increasing seriousness and in an increasingly scientific spirit in the United States. Taking into consideration only books of this particular class which have been published within the last few years, none of these three-volumes will com- pare in erudition with the learned, if also somewhat dull, thesaurus of political facts which Professor Woolsey has issued under the title of The State Theoretically and Practically Considered; or the singularly eloquent, though too little known, work on The Development of Constitutional Liberty, of Mr. Eben Greenough Scott, which was published only two years ago. But the first of the three—Dr. Homer's People and Politics—is a grave though slightly amateurish philosophic treatise, an attempt at least to withdraw from the smoke and stir of an earth controlled by " bosses " and "rings," and to look at political phenomena from such a standpoint as that of Hobbes or of Locke. The second is a forcible effort, which, although written too much in the style of the political special pleader, indicates the possession on the part of the author of much historical knowledge, to show the necessity for a most important step in the direction of political revision in the United * The Peoyis and Politics; or, the Structure of States, and the Significance and Raation ef Political P071711. By G. W. Roamer, M.D. Boston : James R. Osgood and Co. 1883.

The ALolition of the Presidency. By Henry C. Lockwood, of the New York Bar. New York : R. Worthington. 1884.

Studies in History. By Henry Cabot Lodge. Boston Houghton, Miia. and Co. London Trilbner and Co. 1884.

States. Mr. Cabot Lodge's Studies in. History, which constitute the third volume, are, to a considerable extent, reflections on old United States' political problems and still more politicians, such as Hamilton, Pickering, Strong, Gallatin, and Webster.

Dr. Hosmer's political treatise is by no means a satisfactory book. It has an amateurish look, as we have already said; it bears marks of a philosophic mind, but not that best and safest of philosophic minds which the years bring. Dr. Hosmer goes round and round his subject in a very serious and solemn fashion, without proving much, except, perhaps, that he has a distrust of Democracies. He deals with ancient politics under the heads of "Primary Personal Sovereignty, Oligarchy, De- mocracy, and Tyranny ;" and with modern politics, after a dis- sertation on" Variations Due to Modern Civilisation "—which is, perhaps, the most satisfactory piece of reasoning in the whole book —in chapters bearing the titles, "Absolute Monarchy," "Consti- tutional Monarchy," "Republican Government," and "Military Despotism." Yet we seem, after having completed the reading of the whole, to be not a whit wiser than when we started,—we have found nothing, that is to say, which is fitted to guide us in the future, for we have been in contract with phrases rather than with thoughts. Sometimes, however, Dr. Hosmer puts familiar facts in a rather startling way. Thus he reminds us that,—

" Either directly or indirectly, Germany has given monarchs and an aristocracy to every European country. The Lombards, who founded in Italy, amid the ruins of the Roman system, the only Monarchy that endured any time, were Germans from the banks of the Elbe. That the Franks were Germans is, of course, familiar to all, though it seems to be forgotten in France that the aristocracy which gave splendour to the brilliant periods of French history was of this odious race. Russia was organised into a Monarchy by Scandinavians, whose German origin is not open to doubt ; and the Normans had the same general source as the Saxons and Danes, who went to England before them ; as had also the founders of the Gothic Monarchy in Spain. Thus England and Italy, Russia, France, and Spain drew on the same apparently inexhaustible store for kings and nobles, and, in a succession of ages fruitful in thrones, Germany was the only country in which no durable monarchy was founded,—a fact obviously due to the circumstance that Germany was the only country not conquered in that age by a foreign people, for the Huns were merely like an inundation that spent its fury and disappeared."

Dr. Hosmer's experience of " bosses " and other monstrosities of Transatlantic democracy impress him to write in this some- what bitter fashion

The practical political difference between aristocracies and democracies is that, while in both sorts of States, the action of the whole people will be controlled by certain groups of persons, in aristocracies the groups will be men of wealth, and great families, and education—groups of defined character and position ; and in democracies they will be crafty and impudent adventurers Aristocracies recognise that privilege and position involve obligation ; but this is not recognised by the adventurers who come to the front in the political melees of democracy, who recognise no limit to the depredations they practise in the pursuit of their common industry against the public purse. One of the most certain results of this is the peril to freedom ; for the people displaced from the manage- ment of public concerns, lose their political habits and perceptions ; yet the body, which had taken this duty on itself, disappears in any emergency, and the people are left without a protecting organisation or the capacity to create one."

Mr. Lockwood's volume is largely, though not entirely, of interest to Transatlantic readers. As its title indicates, it is a political essay, dealing with the functions of the President in the American Constitution, and endeavouring to show reasons, in the career of Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and other Presidents, why the office should be abolished. Mr. Lockwood wishes, indeed, to return from the present American Constitu- tion, so far at all events as Executive authority is concerned, to something like the Government created by the original Articles of Confederation, which consisted of one representative body, combining in itself all powers executive, legislative, and judicial. Mr. Lockwood would abolish President and Senate, and vest the supreme power of legislating and executing all laws of the United States in Congress, which is to consist of one Chamber only, and to lie the final judge of its own powers, subject to the

right of an Executive Council of its own nomination to dis- solve it and appeal to the nation,—this Council to be com- posed of a Chief Secretary of State, a Secretary of the Treasury, a Secretary of War, a Secretary of the Navy,

and a Secretary of the Interior. This scheme of political revision has rather too French and clean-cut a look ; and in any case, it is, as we have already said, essentially for Ameri- can digestion. We are bound to say, however, that Mr. Lock- wood writes vigorously, and that his record of the political crimes committed under the segis of the Presidency is very formidable. It is rather curious, too, to find at a time like the

present, an American political writer declaring the British Con- stitution as it exists to be "a complete and harmonious blending of the legislative and the executive," and declaring,—

"That the effect of the American Revolution in England was to destroy the personal power of the King, and, strange as it may appear, to create a Government here with many of the ancient prerogatives of the Monarch. There the Revolution established parliamentary and here kingly Government. So far as executive power is concerned, the War of Independence made Great Britain more Republican, and

our own Government in many respects more Monarchical To- day we find ourselves under a form of Government abandoned in England nearly two hundred years ago. We have a King, and an irresponsible Council about him, with enough power to overthrow the liberties of the nation at any moment he may desire to be despotic."

The more impatient political revisionists among ourselves should read Mr. Lockwood's work, reflect,—and hesitate.

We had occasion some time ago to speak well of a monograph by Mr. Cabot Lodge on Daniel Webster. His new volume of essays will add to his reputation as a careful student and a thoughtful and moderate writer. Some of his papers are on subjects quite as interesting to Englishmen as to Americans, such as "The Early Days of Fox," "The Puritans and the Restoration," and "William Cobbett ;" but these are the least satisfactory in the book. Mr. Lodge is at his best in his estimates of the founders of the American States, as distinguished from the American Constitution. We like most his papers on Timothy Pickering, Caleb Strong, and that able Swiss, Albert Gallatin —like every notable Swiss, an eminent financier. Perhaps, how- ever, we know them less intimately than Hamilton and Webster. But we have not come across more discriminating estimates of these two remarkable but by no means perfect men and states- men. In two minor articles, Mr. Lodge shows himself very jealous for American prestige and nationality, and very con- temptuous of the Anglomaniacs among his own countrymen. But somehow we think of him less as a typical American than as a fair-minded, well-bred, and well-read Englishman. At all events, he writes like one.