30 JUNE 1900, Page 38

Some Social and Political Pioneers of the Nineteenth Century. By

Ramsden Balmforth. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co. 2s. 6d.) —Mr. Balmforth has reprinted this series of articles from the Co-operative Review with the modest hope that they will be "of service to those who are interested in social questions." And an interesting little book he has made of it, with concise biographies and appreciations of such very different reformers as Cobbett, Place, Owen, Shaftesbury, Carlyle, and Morris. He has four non- biographical chapters on Chartism, Trade-Unionism, the later Co-operative movement, and educational reform, in which he writes with much earnestness and good sense. Sometimes there is too much parade of obvious learning, but perhaps this was necessary for his semi-didactic purpose. Mr. Balmforth is a type of the modern reformer who has lost the narrowness and bitter-

nese of his predecessors, and is willing to find allies in many who maY differ fimdamentally from him in creed. We may think his judgment incorrect in many cases, hat we are attracted by a book written with so much enthusiasm and fairness.