The Rise and Growth of American Politics. By Henry James
Ford. (Macmillan and Co. 5s.)—This is one of the most useful books that have ever been published upon American politics. Being a small volume of less than four hundred pages, it does not compete with large and comprehensive works like those of De Tocqueville and Mr. Bryce. It is simply what it professes to be, a sketch of constitutional development in the United-States, arranged in four chapters, the titles of which speak for them- selves,—" Origins of American Politics," " Political Develop- ment," " The Organs of Government," and " Tendencies and Prospects of American Politics." But the author is a scholar and a thoughtful man in the best sense of these words, and his book should be especially interesting in this country and at the present time with its talk of " alliances," as the author maintains that " our politics do not become in- telligible until they are viewed as an offshoot from English politics, and the growth of the variety is studied with regard to the characteristics of race." Mr. Ford has studied the history of British politics with the utmost care. He knows his Burke and his Bagehot as well as he knows his Adams and his Hamilton. How many Englishmen, one wonders, could tell off-hand that in 1820 Sir Robert Peel spoke contemptuously of "that great com- pound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong-feeling, right-feeling, obstinacy, and newspapers paragraghs which is called public opinion " ? This book ought to be welcomed with especial heartiness by those who see in recent events the apparently definitive entrance of the great American Republic upon the scene as a World-Power, for it tells of a series of almost equally important transformations in the past. Though Mr. Ford is cautious, as becomes a student of history ; though he has, bite every level-headed American, to confess to " the baleful confusion of our politics," he is not without his hopes and his dreams. "If it is the minion of ' America to adjust to democratic conditions all that civilisation has now to offer, the accomplishment of that task will provide math .opportnifitied fer the frea;lexpreleicin of the noblest capacities of, humanity as May:produce an- epoch of incomparable
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