3 SEPTEMBER 1927, Page 27

ENGLISH DEMOCRATIC IDEAS IN THE SEVEN- TEENTH CENTURY. By G.

P. Gooch. Second Edition. With Supplementary Notes and Appendices by H. J. Laski. (Cambridge University Press, 10s. 6d.)—Students of the philosophy of history will welcome the reappearance of this valuable book, which went out of print twenty-one years ago. In the appendices, contributed by Professor Laski, attention is called to the influence of Harrington's Omuta on the con- stitutional development of the American Colonies and also to the influence exerted in France by the English Revolution of 1688, which " persuaded the French Huguenots to recover that contract theory of the State which had been their main- stay in the Civil Wars of the sixteenth century."