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King's College, London, has won a reputation for its public lectures, especially on social and politicial ideas, which are afterwards printed. Thus, it is no surprise to fmd sound thought and good writing in the new volume, The Social and Political ideas of Some Representative Thinkers of the Revolutionary Era, edited by Professor Hearnshaw (Harrap, 7s. 6d.). Nothing could be better as an introduction to that turbulent period which in so many ways resembles our own age. The editor himself writes brilliantly on Burke, the one true Conservative in the list. The other contributors are concerned with Radicals of every degree from the self- satisfied Bentham, well portrayed by Professor J. W. Allen, to that queer anarchist, William Godwin, who, as Mr. C. H. Driver reminds us in his able and dispassionate essay, ended a long and rather discreditable career as a State pensioner. The American, French and German theorists are competently handled, as well as our English thinkers and dreamers, and to each chapter is added a really good bibliography.
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