THORPE'S CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.*

Professor Thorpe's "The Constitutional History of the United States" is a record of the rise and progress of the American constitution, from a new point of view. While this work differs from all those on the subject which have preceded it, it does not aim to displace any of them, but constitutes a distinct addition to the group. Though the author extends his observations over the entire period of our national history down to 1895, he is less discursive than Von Holst, whose work included an elaborate presentation of our political affairs, such as are generally considered not a part of our constitutional history. Mr. Thorpe aims to elaborate such political movements only as were fundamental in their bearing. His treatment of his subject somewhat resembles that of Curtis, but he covers a longer period, thus requiring more pages. The three volumes of his work are not unduly expanded. Indeed, in view of one consideration noted below, the treatise might well have been made larger.

The present work serves either as a supplement, or as a companion treatise, to Mr. Thorpe's earlier "Constitutional History of the American People." That work was intended as an exposition of the State side, and the present one as an exposition of the National side, of our dual system of government. References are here frequently made to passages or chapters in the former treatise. Those who possess both works, or who find them together in the same library, can utilize them jointly by means of these references. But the two parts of our dual system are so far one, as the author's present references to his earlier volumes indicate, that his readers could have no ground of objection to the size of the new treatise if it had been expanded to five volumes, by embodying in it all the matter which was included in his first "Constitutional History." The two elements of this dual system may well be considered together as parts of one whole; and there are certain advantages to be gained by this mode of studying them which are not secured when these elements are examined separately. As Mr. Thorpe said in his earlier work: "Originally as well as lawfully, the commonwealth constitutions are a part of the national."

The plan of construction adopted for this treatise by Mr. Thorpe is advantageous, and is

THE CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 1765-1895. By Francis Newton Thorpe. In three volumes. Chicago: Callaghan & Co.

well adapted for the presentation of those details which he has assumed to be of prime importance. To treat with fidelity all the minutiæ of so vast a general theme, or to give even slight attention to every detail for which any one of a thousand readers might perhaps be expected to make a demand, would be ob viously impracticable. Some limits must be set to the size of the work, and only those details which are of more general interest can be allowed discussion in the text. A happy compromise between vague generalization and interminable minuteness has been adopted. The period of time from 1765 to 1895 has been divided into six epochs, of varying length, to each of which is devoted a section of the treatise, called a "Book." The transition of thirteen detached colonies into one national State, during the years from 1765 to 1787, is presented in Book I., under the title of "The New Nation." Book II., devoted to "The Formation of the National Constitution," relates the preparations for and the drafting and submission of that instrument. Its reception by the people, and their adoption of it with its early amendments, including the twelfth in 1804, occupy the space allotted to Book III., with the heading, "The Constitution before the People." Then follows the period of "Contest and Compromise," from 1804 to 1861, in Book IV., wherein is traced the path of controversy over the compromises of the Constitution concerning slavery, down to the time when swords took up the quarrel. Book V. presents the four years of the Civil War, under the name of "Emancipation," the word which sums up the great change effected by that war in our governmental system. "The Extension of the Suffrage" is the theme of Book VI., describing the next great change in that system, which was adopted as a logical development from the immediate results of the war. is attained an easy analysis, into periods of varying duration, of our entire constitutional progress as a Nation, down to the advent of the present entirely new era.

Thus

The mode of treatment chosen by Mr. Thorpe, for the presentation of the constitutional features of each of these epochs, is to illustrate them by drawing largely upon the current debates and discussions, and expressions of individual and aggregate opinion, in legislatures, conventions, and other public assemblies. The controversies of the time, reproduced in condensed form, speak for themselves, in the arguments advanced, the clashing of

contrary views, the statutes or resolutions adopted, and the constitutional amendments presented and considered. Those who have read with pleasure the pages of Mr. Thorpe's earlier work will find here the same vivid and picturesque presentation of the living issues of each of these epochs in our history. It is most interesting reading to trace, in practically the language of the time itself, the course of debate, not only upon the framing by the convention and the discussion by the people of the original Constitution, but also upon the consideration of the early amendments; of the compromise legislation, prior to the Civil War, respecting slavery; of the unsuccessful movements toward further compromises; and finally, of the successive post-bellum amendments, each advancing to a constitutional outpost not previously occupied. The movement of an epoch, a century old, is thus brought before us with the freshness of the present time, and the vital interests of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in questions fundamental to our system of government, become vital to us to-day.

One agreeable instance of Mr. Thorpe's method is in his paraphrase of the President's arguments for nationality in 1861. Lincoln stepped into his office with an authoritative and categorical statement of the constitutional rights and powers of the central government, and the utter unconstitutionality of secession, which were to be the basis upon which his administration would wage a defensive war for the preservation of the Union as its prime object. Mr. Thorpe wisely adopts the ideas advanced by Lincoln, in this and his later state papers, and the language in which they were presented, as the best exposition in our literature of the nationality which underlies our Constitution. His argument was clear and vigorous, befitting his high theme; and his presentation of the national idea was then, and still remains, unanswerable.

Graphic is our author's picture of the institution of slavery entrenched in the compromises of the Constitution, the inertness of the national government, and the general torpidity of the public mind on the subject, as indicated in the projected thirteenth amendment of 1861 which was to perpetuate the institution. Graphic, too, is his representation of the change of public sentiment, even in the border States, and the movement toward State constitutions declaring against slavery, when the progress of the war had proven the institution effete, and the adoption by the States of the doctrine of

the paramount allegiance of citizens to the National government.

It is refreshing to observe that Mr. Thorpe finds no warrant, in the facts of our history, for the theory of the rightfulness of secession. The Declaration of Independence was a joint, not a several act. "In practical politics it announced the birth of a new nation." Months before, Congress had advised the people that "it would be very dangerous to the liberties and welfare of America for any colony separately to petition the King or either House of Parliament." The Provincial Congress of New York, in 1775, had declined to declare in favor of independence, leaving "a so general and momentous concern to the Continental Congress." The recommendation of Congress to Massachusetts, that she take steps toward a provincial government in that colony, until the King's governor should consent to govern the colony according to its charter, "proves the truth of the saying of Lincoln, that the Union is not only older than the Constitution, but older than the States." The mere fact that in the Continental Congress each colony was allowed one vote "cannot in justice be made the basis for the later claims of the advocates of State sovereignty."

Though it may seem ungracious to question, in any respect, so excellent a treatise, it must be confessed that this work is in one way disappointing. The author seems inclined to treat with less than justice the efforts of the colonial Fathers in resisting the British aggressions. Their opposition to the Parliamentary claim of right to tax the colonies is clearly stated, but is pronounced groundless.

“The right, though successfully questioned by the Americans, seems now, when we may calmly reflect over it, to be well founded in the principles of government."

"The best argument against parliamentary taxation must be economic rather than legal, and must proceed from a revolutionary interpretation of government."

"They denied the supreme power of Parliament to tax America, though without good authority for the denial." "Thus the Congress attempted to put the British government in the wrong."

So it was that "Acts of Parliament, strictly legal and constitutional, became the ostensible excuse for American Independence."

These impeachments of the legal ability of the colonial bar are coupled with two significant admissions the accused were diligent students of the Constitution, and they were honest in their convictions.

"The Americans were thoroughly convinced of the truth and justice of their own interpretation of consti

tutional principles, [and] it is not unjust to say that, at this time, the idea of constitutional government was more clearly recognized in America than in England." Yet he compares these colonials with those who in 1861 proposed to sever the Union, and says that, with the beginning of the Revolution, "nullification was rapidly becoming secession." These are our author's generalizations, without either explanation in argument or citations of authority. The constitutional arguments of John Dickinson against the Parliamentary power of taxation over the colonies, and of John Adams and James Wilson against the existence of any legislative power of Parliament whatever over the colonies, in 1774, were based on numerous early British precedents. If these arguments are to be condemned by the impartial historian as groundless, they should be shown to be either inherently weak, or overweighted by sound adverse arguments. There are other generalizations in our author's work which seem to be hastily made. It is said of the introduction by Randolph into the Federal convention in 1787, of the Virginia plan, contemplating a national government, consisting of a supreme legislative, executive, and judiciary, that "this was the first use of the term national, in the sense in which it is now commonly understood." If it be desirable to fix the earliest use of this term, further investigation may be needed. Aside from its use by individuals, as by Washington and Paine, in 1783, it is found in the Report of the Committee of Congress, drawn by Madison, under date of September 25, 1783, on the memorial from Massachusetts respecting the grant of half-pay to the officers of the army, wherein that measure is referred to as "an act finally adopted, and the national faith pledged to carry it into effect." Again, it is said:

"It is difficult to fix the exact time or occasion when the word Nation was first employed to describe the government of the American people, but there is reason to believe that one of the first uses of the word in this

sense was made by President Lincoln in his Gettysburg address, in which he spoke of the Government of the People as that of a new Nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.""

complete in all its parts, with powers legislative, executive, and judiciary, and in all these powers extending over the whole nation."

It is with regret that the reviewer has found occasion to qualify, by these discriminations, his commendation of a work so well conceived, and, in most respects, so admirably accomplished. JAMES OSCAR PIERCE.

A JOURNEY TO NATURE.*

About six months ago, a series of papers appearing weekly in the New York "Evening Post" attracted our attention. They were written in a style that was noteworthy even among the excellent literary papers that one habitually finds in that journal, and as the chapters went on from week to week, we found ourselves eagerly awaiting the Saturday issue of the "Post" in which a continuation of the series might be expected. Presently they came to an end, but we were confident of their resurrection in a book, so clearly deserving they were of the more substantial form of publication. The confidence was justified, and the entire series is now reproduced under the title "A Journey to Nature," while in place of the mysterious initials "J. P. M." (which suggested to us nothing but the name of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan), we find upon the title-page the name of Mr. J. P. Mowbray.

The book is remarkable in more ways than one, and is sure to attract much attention. Its humor, its philosophy, its pungency of style, and its wholesome view of life are qualities that go to the making of literature rather than of journalism, and more than once, while reading the several chapters in their original form, we felt that we were enjoying some such rare experience as was enjoyed by the fortunate discoverers of "My Summer in a Garden" in the columns of the Hartford " Courant," or even of the "Essays of Elia" in the pages of the "London Magazine." Now re-reading the papers in their collective form, our early impression is deepened, although we are conscious

an occasional reservation of praise of the sort

in his answer he said:

"The people of the United States intended to form themselves into a nation for national purposes. They instituted, for such purposes, a national government

attitude is shifted from that of a skimmer of newspapers to that of a reader of books. But these reservations are very slight indeed, affecting only a word or a phrase here and there, and more than adequate compensation is offered for * A JOURNEY TO NATURE. By J. P. Mowbray. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.

a few trifling defects in the sense of continuity and artistic unity that we get when the book is taken at a single reading.

In a way, the book is a story-book, although the whole of its story may be told in a few words. Briefly, it deals with the experiences of a Wall Street stock-broker, plunged in the thick of business and social life, and suddenly confronted with the vision of sudden death. An attack of heart failure pulls him up short, and hurries him into the country for a cure. He is a man in the forties, a widower, with one small boy, Charlie, whom he takes along. The place of refuge provided is a cabin, an appanage of a decayed manorial homestead, somewhere in Central New York. In this cabin the man and the child and a yellow dog set up a primitive form of housekeeping, being cared for in the grosser ways by Gabe Hotchkiss, the farmer who occupies the homestead, and ministered unto in somewhat more delicate fashion by his niece Griselle. These are the dramatis persona of the story, these, and the Doctor, who, delighted to have found a patient who will take his advice, comes out now and then to see how things are getting along. The book is made up of communings with nature, the natural incidents of vagabond life, occasional dialogue, and Griselle. This young woman seems to be merely a lay figure in the earlier chapters, but her personality is gradually insinuated into the substance of the story, until she more than shares the interest with the narrator himself. The author's management of this charming person is the most artistic feature of his work. Casual observation, curiosity, sympathetic attention, sentimental interest, affection, love, and chastened disappointment, these are the successive notes in the gamut of the relationship between the man and the maiden. It is a familiar sequence, but one not often presented with such delicacy and charm.

But quite enough has been written about and around this book; let us turn to the more convincing task of illustration. The exile has arrived at his cabin, and has set his teeth in grim determination to "stick it out."

"This was the bravado of the will, and even while it was flourishing I was conscious that I would give the hovel and the two big boxes that had been set down at its door for a cocktail.

"I asked the two men who had driven us and the boxes up where I could get some ice and a lemon. They looked at each other as if I had asked them for a French menu. Ice?' said one of them. You might git some at the butcher's in Spelldown. It's four miles and a

The Doctor comes up for a few days of rough life, and is highly pleased with his patient's condition, until a chance remark awakens dark suspicion.

"You're convalescent- that's all. You must keep this jig up for one year. I do not propose to let up on my prescription, if you expect me to carry you through to a good old age. You see, I've got a good deal at stake in this matter. You've been a pretty good boy so far. I did not believe you could do it. In fact, you're the first man I ever met who could give up female society entirely and take to the woods on sanitary principles, and you will make a shining example when you go back to Broadway and Wall Street.'

"At that moment Charlie came to the door and shouted, " Say, Dad, where do you suppose Griselle keeps the pepper and salt?'

"I remember that the Doctor, who looked very absurd in his bare feet, came over and stood in front of me, and said with as cavernous an intonation as he could command, Who in thunder is Griselle?'" One night the invalid drinks coffee recklessly, has a nightmare, wakes up with violent heartthrobs, and loses his nerve completely. Thinkyellow dog that they have a wood fire. ing of nothing else to do, he proposes to the

"I might as well put down that dog's reply, if for no other reason than that it is a true dog's reply, and not man's, which dog talk is so apt to be. This is what he said, exactly: I can't make out what it is that you propose to do, but I understand in a general way that you are going to do something, and I'm with you whatever it is. Let's make as much hullabaloo about it as we can.'

"I have learned that a dog apprehends a man's meaning very much as a man apprehends the meaning of a symphony. It is purely a matter of tones and not of articulations. He seizes upon your moods, not upon your ideas, with the marvellous generalizing capacity of a sympathetic ear. He responds to the allegros and andantes, appropriates the rhythms without consciousness, and keeps time to the feelings as they slip and merge. Man must be a continual Beethoven to a dog, uttering mystic strophes that he cannot analyze. A dog is thus superior to a man in that he is always saved from being a critic."

One more passage may be given, illustrative of the graver moods of the book, and showing how well Nature did her work, no less for the soul than for the physical frame of her patient. It takes the form of a soliloquy.

"I feel confident that a healthy adjustment of faculties, and the suspension of an agressive egotism, put a man en rapport with new harmonies that he never before suspected. If he walk in the cordial but silent woods, he finds that the defiance goes out of his vertebræ, and he is acquiring the bowed head; and if we look narrowly here we shall find, I think, that the bowed head of the savant and the saint are the tokens of a similar but unequal humility. These conclusions bore into one's old timbers unobserved like the teredo,

when one lives apart from his fellows for a while; so that I grew to think, like the Doctor, that it was good for every man to have hermit hours, and to keep a wilderness somewhere into which he can escape from himself. In such sequestered moments tides of soft intimations come from afar, and there are apt to be astral banners fluttering in one's outreach-whisperings of origins and outcomes, never before heard in the soft procession of the universes; faint, kindly voices reaching up from the lowliest processes, trying to speak of kinship and fatherhood. There are new and tiny links far down the inscrutable depths, and they glitter in the gloom

with threads of promise, forever weaving the continuity

and indestructibility of life in a majestic synthesis."

On the walls of the Doctor's city office, we are told, there was a Scriptural motto, "For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel. In returning and in rest ye shall be saved. In quietness and confidence shall be your strength, and ye would not." It is the lesson of this passage that "A Journey to Nature" inculcates, and the lesson is one that we Americans, more than most other people, need to learn. The book is an evangel of the quiet life, the life freed from the unnecessary perplexities of man's own making, the true life of the spirit for which so many of us vainly strive. It is a beautiful book, and we count it a privilege to have had this opportunity of saying even these few inadequate words in its praise. WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE.

OUR CONTEMPORARY STAGE.*

Mr. Norman Hapgood's volume, "The Stage in America, 1897-1900," treats those aspects of the acted drama which have played the most important part in American theatrical history during the past few years, besides presenting a purely critical consideration of the histrionic notabilities connected therewith. The purpose of the book so far as any chief purpose can be discovered in the work of one who is so emphatically a critic of detailseems to be to rescue from unmerited oblivion records of those productions worthy of a more enduring place than that which is given in the daily newspaper. Says the author:

"So many influences enter into the formation of a dramatic opinion, or even into a mere narration of theatrical incident, that to select among the facts, impressions, and beliefs of four years those which sum up the period is full of peril. After reversing my view of Henry Esmond's ability in comedy, or of the degree of Mrs. Fiske's talent, what shall I think of my next conviction? The difficulty is not new: even Goethe has

* THE STAGE IN AMERICA, 1897-1900. By Norman Hapgood. New York: The Macmillan Co.

written foolish things about Hamlet; the sharp difference between him and Schiller over Egmont was on a subject where both were masters; the meanderings of Tolstoi's What Is Art?' are matched by aberrations of Hume, Voltaire, Johnson, and Dryden."

As a corollary to this we may add that dramatic criticism is one of the most difficult forms of criticism, for it has no written formula, no stereotyped standard, to fall back upon. It is man's opinions based on man's knowledge of preexisting and present conditions, on man's

accepted and preconceived conclusions as to

what should constitute the ideal form of that

particular branch of art under discussion, and of man's understanding of the technique of the drama. The highest and brightest achievement in dramatic criticism is reached when the critic remains true to his own convictions,

albeit his ultimate conclusions may be at variance with the world at large, for every thought of the true critic assimilates, respires, and enlarges in that sphere of art which he has chosen to study; and in arguing with oneself one has always a respectful antagonist to whose objections every attention must be given.

Mr. Hapgood touches upon the problems of the stage in a manner which reveals a clear and comprehensive insight. In speaking of the theatrical trust (a product of one of the gloomy qualities of American life: the excessive love of wealth) he says:

Its growth was rapid, its power immense, and the history of its rise, if intimately known, sounds like a melodrama or a satirical romance. This syndicate can say to the theater owner: If you do not do business with us on our own terms, we will not let you have first-rate attractions. If you do, we will destroy your rival, or force him to the same terms. For the bookings we will take a share of the profits.' To the actor or traveling manager it can say: You must play in our theaters or in barns. For our theaters we make our own terms.' To both it can say: Nominally, we act as your agents. In reality, we are your absolute masters."' These sentiments are voiced by the majority of our actors and critics.

In his chapter on "The Drama of Ideas," the author proves himself to be a diseur de bon-mots, as the following quotations, picked at random, will attest:

"It was a sadly demoralized man who said he had three rules for the conduct of life; of which the first was, never to see the plays of Henry Arthur Jones, and the other two did not matter but it was an artist also and a critic who spoke."

"The kinship between intellectual innocence and real culture is what makes bad melodramas so good and good melodramas so bad."

"The greatest literary ideas are dramatic ideas; most of the world's highest literature is poetry, and most of its highest poetry is drama. We need not fear that