• Irish municipal history has been much neglected, and the
' neglect, since the Irish Record Office was burnt in the civil -war, is now almost irreparable. Thus Dr. John J. Webb's unpretentious volume on The Guilds of Dublin (Benn, 12s. 6d.), based on records that the author consulted before 1922 or has found copied elsewhere, is of real value and interest. The Dublin guild system was essentially English with local variations and was maintained, long after it had ceased to have any industrial significance, for political reasons. No Roman Catholic need apply for membership : the guildsmen had the franchise up to 1840, and thus the Protestant minority ruled the city. Here was one reason for the incessant strikes which, in the late eighteenth century, went far to rain Dublin as an industrial centre. The goldsmith's' guild alone survives out of the many that once existed.
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