Professor A. B. Keith, whose standard works on Imperial relations
should be familiar to all political students, has sup- plied a long felt need by writing a Constitutional History of the First British Empire (Clarendon Press, 21s.). That Empire was shattered by the secession of the American colonies in 1776-83, but., through nearly two centuries, it had been guided and regulated with no little wisdom, and its merits no less than its failings deserve to be studied. Professor Keith's exact account of the "Old Colonial System" at its best in the first half of the eighteenth century is singularly clear. He does not fail to point out how the American colonies declined to co-operate, even for defence, and allowed the mother country to bear the burden of protecting them. On the other hand, he condemns North for failing in 1774 to see that the old constitutional relations with America must he modified, and compares his mistake with that of the Coalition Government in its early dealings with the Sinn Feiners in Southern Ireland. Professor Keith's book will be indispensable to all students of our Empire history.
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