Mr. T. Sir, all I can say is I am a Tory and a Manchester Tory, and if that won't satisfy you I don't know what to say to you."

He assures us that "the whole dialogue ", of which this is apparently the cream, "is well worth reading". Another valuable bit is reproduced from "Leaves in a Note Book" made in 1842 by Mr. G. P. Kerr: “Mr. Sudlow informed me that a Mr. Walton married a daughter of Dr. E. E. Deacon, who had been educated in a convent on the Continent: he remembered that she had long yellow hair." We have to take the author's word for it that Deacon might have become "a famous theologian, a distinguished physician or a great bishop "; but the fact is certain that he passed "his time in a little backwater of the stream of life”. Such being the case, one concludes the perusal of this fine specimen of the printer's and binder's art with the query cui bono?

A. L. C.

La Fin des Parlements, 1788-1790. Par Henri Carré, Professeur d'Histoire à l'Université de Poitiers. (Paris, Hachette et Cie., 1912, pp. xxi, 382.) The opposition of the French parlements to the government precipitated the revolutionary crisis of 1789. To understand the rôle. played by these judicial-political bodies in the last years of the monarchy is a sine qua non to an understanding of the early Revolution. No writer has contributed more to the solution of this problem than M. Carré. For the last twenty-five years he has been a regular contributor to French reviews and publications of learned societies and as a rule his contributions have dealt with some phase of the relation of the parlements to the Revolution. Much of this material was utilized in his volume on Louis XVI. in Lavisse's Histoire de France. The present volume is not a synthesis of his previous articles but an additional monograph. After a description, in the first chapter, of the character, fortunes, social rank, and political rôle of the magistrates on the eve of the Revolution, M. Carré deals with the attitude of the parlements toward the States-General in the fall of 1788, their part in the elections of 1789, and in the estates of that year. In the following chapters, he describes the treatment of the parlements by the National Assembly, the mise en vacances, the formation of the new judicial system and the abolition of the parlements, the liquidation of offices, the counter-revolutionary tactics of some of the magistrates, the emigration of a third of the twelve hundred members of the old courts, the executions and, with the establishment of the empire, the entrance into office of a large part of the survivors of the old courts. It is a sober, carefully written narrative, one for which all of those concerned with the Revolution will feel grateful and of which they will make frequent use. The bibliography is very full, M. Carré having used both manuscript and printed sources. One noticeable omission from the secondary works is that of Wahl's Vorgeschichte. Among the sources, the division devoted to correspondence might be materially strengthened by the addition of the despatches

of the English, Venetian, and Parmesan ambassadors, and the letters of Duquesnoy, Biauzat, and a number of others, all accessible when M. Carré wrote. A very effective use has been made of a large collection of contemporary pamphlets. Here and there the critical work is not all that could be desired: as in the use of insufficient proof or in choosing a poorer source when a better was at hand; in using the Moniteur for 1789 instead of the sources from which the editors drew; in repeating without control Brette's unsound criticism upon the bulletins of a secret agent found in the French Archives of Foreign Affairs; and in the failure in the bibliography to arrange the titles in alphabetical order. The same period has already been twice treated; in a superficial way by Glasson, whose account rested almost wholly upon Bachaumont, and by Seligman, who approached the subject from a different point of view. Carré's volume forms an excellent supplement to Seligman's work.

Le Gouvernement Révolutionnaire, 10 Août 1792-4 Brumaire an IV. Par Paul Mautouchet, Docteur ès Lettres, Professeur à l'École Lavoisier. [Collection de Textes sur l'Histoire des Institutions et des Services Publics de la France Moderne et Contemporaine, publiée sous la direction de M. Camille Bloch, Inspecteur Général des Bibliothèques et des Archives.] (Paris, Édouard Cornely et Cie., 1912, pp. 406.) This is the second volume of the collection, the first being M. Marion's Les Impôts Directs sous l'Ancien Régime. The texts which it contains are designed to explain primarily the structure of the revolutionary government during its three stages: from the overthrow of the monarchy, August 10, 1792, to the passage of the law of the 14 Frimaire an II, December 4, 1793; from that time to the fall of Robespierre on the 9 Thermidor an II, July 27, 1794; and from the 9 Thermidor until the establishment of the Directory on the 4 Brumaire an IV, October 26, 1795. Other texts explain the measures of repression which were adopted to reduce the opponents of the government to submission or to destroy them, while still others illustrate the actual operation of the régime. To make clear the influences which resulted in decrees especially important, like those of October 10 and 14 Frimaire, a few reports presented in the Convention are inserted. In each part of the collection is also a division of pièces annexes", which show the practical application of the decrees in different localities. One of these is a "questionnaire" containing the replies of officials in a district of the Department of the Sarthe. There is a marked contrast between the tone of the questions, in the inflated style of the mid-revolutionary period, and the common sense and sobriety of the responses. These, brief as they are, reveal interesting features of the situation, particularly as regards the enforcement of the Maximum laws and the attempt to "extinguish fanaticism". The documents are chosen judiciously and well edited. Of course, questions of judgment arise as to what should be included in such a collection and as to what articles of particular decrees may be omitted. In printing the decree of March

28, 1793, upon the "Emigrés" M. Mautouchet has omitted sections 2, 7, and 8, which embody the principal aim of the decree, namely, confiscation of the property of the emigrants, and without which the decree leaves the impression of being conceived in the spirit of righteous vengeance upon traitors. M. Mautouchet has prefaced the collection of texts with an introduction of one hundred and thirty-nine pages, containing a clear and well-balanced exposition of the revolutionary régime. Especially illuminating are the passages on the manner in which the decrees were carried into effect. It is too often assumed that when a decree is adopted, it is obeyed as promptly as an order on the parade ground, but M. Mautouchet points out that in many places a decree so important as that of the 14th Frimaire did not become effective for weeks, either because the local authorities were not informed or because they could not overcome the difficulties arising from the local situation. At the close of the volume is a carefully selected bibliography.

H. E. BOURNE.

La Censure en 1820 et 1821: Etude sur la Presse Politique et la Résistance Libérale. Par Albert Crémieux, Agrégé d'Histoire et Géographie, Docteur ès Lettres. [Bibliothèque d'Histoire Moderne.] (Paris, Édouard Cornély et Cie., 1912, pp. iii, 195.) The assassination of the Duke of Berry in 1820 terminated brusquely a political crisis which had been developing since 1816 and terminated it in favor of the UltraRoyalists and against the Moderate Liberals who until then had had the upper hand and who appeared likely to be able to impose their doctrines definitively upon France. Enough Moderates were, by that crime, thrown into the camp of the Ultras to give them the final victory and then began that hazardous line of conduct which led to the Revolution of 1830 and the final overthrow of the legitimate monarchy. One of the first and most significant acts of the new party was the passage of a press law on March 31 and the issuance, on the day following, of a royal ordinance completing it. It is the application of this new law, which aimed to suppress all liberal propaganda, and which, to that end, re-established a preliminary censorship for all newspapers and periodicals, that forms the subject of this monograph. There was immediately established in Paris a general Board of Censors and, in most of the departments, special boards were appointed, whose duty it was to censor the contents of every newspaper before its publication.

M. Crémieux's work is based upon documents preserved in the Archives Nationales, namely, upon the minutes of the meetings of the supervisory board in Paris and, particularly, upon the reports sent up to it by the departmental boards. The latter are of great interest and enable the author to present a reasonably full and a very precise account of the agitation aroused in France by the return of the Ultras to power. The first describes the application of the law in Paris and then its application in a large number of departments and does it largely by letting the

documents tell their own story, quoting from them so liberally that the book is practically a source-book.

This monograph is admirably constructed, treats an important aspect of the history of France at a significant period, and is both instructive and entertaining. The harassing vigilance and preternatural fearsomeness of the censors, their marvellous sense of what might prove dangerous to throne and altar, which apparently did not include a sense of the ridiculous, were matched by the resolution and Protean ingenuity of many of the editors, while others were entirely docile. The vicissitudes of the sorry fray are amply shown. The spirit in which this system of obscurantist tracasserie was administered may be seen in brief in the reports of the censors of Isère (pp. 126–144).

The result of the system was the retardation of the very promising development of the French press and the driving of all liberal propaganda into the subterranean and tortuous channels of secret societies and conspiracies.

CHARLES DOWNER HAZEN.

La France sous la Monarchie Constitutionnelle, 1814-1848. Par Georges Weill, Professeur à l'Université de Caen. Nouvelle édition revue et corrigée. (Paris, Félix Alcan, 1912, pp. 311.) This little volume, a revision of one which appeared in 1902, is the work of a scholar who has won high repute by a number of substantial contributions upon important phases of French nineteenth-century history, most of them dealing with social and intellectual matters. The author aptly describes the book as a "tableau général, destiné à fournir une vue d'ensemble sur la vie de la nation française entre 1814 et 1848 ". As such it is mainly devoted to description and interpretation. Familiarity with the course of events being assumed, the narrative element is in general very slight and for some portions of the period almost entirely lacking. The descriptions, though sometimes deficient by reason of their brevity, are in general admirably done. But it is especially as a work of interpretation that the volume challenges attention.

The period from 1814 to 1848 is a singularly difficult one to interpret. Its real significance is apt to be lost sight of and partizanship is not easily avoided. M. Weill overcomes both difficulties in remarkably large measure. He depicts the period in its economic aspect as marked by the inauguration of profound changes, which, however, until later did not proceed far enough to alter fundamentally the general character of French society from the form which it assumed through the changes effected by the Revolution; while in the domain of ideas it was distinguished in its earlier years by the final conflict between the ancien régime and the Revolution and in its later years by the development of the conflicting conceptions of French conservatives and progressives over the larger and more important questions which still divide them. A large knowledge of the men and the writings which best represent

the two schools of thought in their many subdivisions, together with an unusual ability to enter into sympathetic understanding of their aims and environment, enables the author to make his treatment of the social philosophy of the period of exceptional value.

The method of treatment is topical. Two chapters are devoted to politics and one each, covering the entire period, to society, religion, literature and art, economics, and social philosophy. This arrangement, though doubtless convenient for the topics taken separately, seems unfortunate in two particulars. There was then, as the author shows, an exceptionally close connection between several of these subjects, while 1830 constituted for a surprisingly large number of matters the dividing line between sharply contrasted periods. There is a short but judiciously selected bibliography. A very large proportion of the foot-notes are citations to works which have appeared since the date of the first edition, but unfortunately there are few page references. An occasional acceptance of doubtful mémoire authority is the only serious defect in method of investigation which the reviewer has noted.

FRANK MALOY ANDERSON.

Three-Quarters of a Century (1807 to 1882): a Retrospect written from Documents and Memory in 1877-1882. By Rev. Augustus J. Thébaud, S.J., edited by Charles G. Herbermann, LL.D. [United States Catholic Historical Society Monograph Series.] Volume I., Political, Social, and Ecclesiastical Events in France. (New York, The United States Catholic Historical Society, 1912, pp. 334.) The author of this book of recollections "written from documents and memory" was a French Jesuit father who came to America in the third decade of his life and spent here the rest of his career, first as a teacher of sciences, and, later, as a rector in various Catholic colleges. He died in 1885. Between 1877 and 1885 he wrote a retrospect covering his early education in France, his life in Rome, and his forty years in America. After his death these recollections were published in the reverse order of their composition. Thus we get last the first volume dealing with "political, social and ecclesiastical events in France" during the declining days of the empire, the restoration and the reign of Louis Philippe.

Father Thébaud was born in Nantes, in 1807, of humble parents, whose profession he forgets to mention. He was brought up by ecclesiastical teachers, entered a seminary, was ordained a priest, and was, for a short time, at the head of one of the poorer parishes of his native city. He lived thus exclusively in the atmosphere of legitimist and Catholic Brittany.

It is doubtful whether the early impressions and pseudo-recollections of an unsophisticated boy, shut up in schools and churches, can be of great value to the historian. Except for some personal observations on Breton public opinion, as he witnessed it at critical moments, for instance in 1815, 1825, and 1830, this book contains only second-hand and