A. Catholic View of James II.

James the Second, By.Hilaire BelloC. (Faber and Gwyer. 15s.)

Ma. BELLOC'S Catholicism is so all-pervading a passion that his history often seems to degenerate into special pleading. But although Mr. Belloc is as fiercely pro-Catholic and pro-

Stuart as Macaulay himself was Pro-Whig, he has written a goOd history: We are not, of course, comparing Mr. Belloc's

slight study to Macaulay's magna opera ; - but in his supreme glister and his undeniable and infectious appetite for history

there is soinethhig nf a topsy-turvy Macaulay in Mr. Belloc. The two factors which make the present study, with all its faults, delightful reading (and condone the author's irritating partisanship) are, first, the style, which has a splendid

bravura swing. Take this passage, for instance, on the Character of James "What kind of man was it that passed through this doubly repeated ordeal of Splendour and poverty, of power and dishonour I That had such courage, such energy, such tenacity, such a mis-

rehension of the forces about hina—and of the social scheme I

t saw so clearly. the true proportion of things, never sacrificing the eternal to the temporal, yet that saw men s baseness so little and mild. never grasp its effect ? That was so amative of women; so excellent a leader m combat, so capable a master of -ships, and yet raised no devotion in his kind—dying almost alone 1' '!

This is goOd-stuff-..-.-apt,.perhaps; to. pall after :a_tiore,- yet, -on the whole,. well and discreetly nianaged by. Mr. -13e116e: sa that we do not get these purple patches too often to enjoy them. But the second and more important quality of the book lies in-Mr. Belloc's insight into historical causes. He has grasped the fact that the struggle between King and Parliament was not: some meaningless and inexplicable feud between the Stuart Kings and some vague entity called " the People of England," but was a death grapple between the rising gentry, determined to become the governing class, and the waning power of mediaeval kingship. Mr. Belloc sees this, and it enables him to and the right clue to the whole of this period; . Yet to our mind he takes a hopelessly contrary view of the struggle. • He points out that the Parliament men did not represent the people of England ; that the poor were probably better off under the Stuarts than under Cromwell, or_ undet the Whig oligarchs ; that what was at issue was no empty abstraction about Liberty. It was the stark issue of who should be master—the King or the gentry. What he seems to miss is the historical role of those English gentry. He doeS not see that they had to take over the government of their country if they were to play their supreme part in the-destiny of civilization. For it was the English gentry who first learnt to accumulate. It was they, drawing their revenues both from the lands: which they had acquired-from the Church and from the yeomen, and from the -sudden -growth of- overseas trade, who in the hundred years between 1650 and 1750 made that first critical accumulation of capital which alone made

the industrial revolution possible. The whole birth of the modern world would have been quite impossible without the

" Great Rebellion " and the " Glorious Revolution." Aad so, despite all the knavery, all the trickery, and all—the hypocrisy, that rebellion was great and that revolution was glorious. One need take this view, however, only if one

considers that the invention of the steam engine_ and the control over natural forces which man has now attained are,

on balance, great gains. If, as Mr. Belloc would, we suppose, argue, one considers these things as valueless, or even

harmful, then, of course, one may-logically regret and oppose the English revolution..ef the seventeenth century. But for those of us who believe that, with all its horrors, modem civilization marks one great stage forward on the road of humanity, then the insurrectionary oligarchs of the seven- teenth century were playing a great and valuable part in history. And, in spite of Mr. Belloc, how worthily, on the whole, they played it ! How adequate to their high destiny were such men as Eliot, Hampden, Cromwell, Vane, Halifax, and even Shaftesbury !

An interesting section of Mr. Belloe's book deals with the

subject of James, then Duke of York, as Admiral, whom he claims to have been the founder of the British Navy. But

surely Cromwell had a full right to share with James the title of its creator ? Mr. Belloc admits that :-

" For the better part of twenty years (1642-60)—with one inter- lude of mutiny—a considerable naval force was 'kept in being, rapidly acquiring cohesion and a professional spirit. During the latter part of this interval—under the despotism called the Common- wealth—the very large resources in money which an absolute ruler can command by force, and which Cromwell chiefly devoted to his armed supremacy, maintained great strength at sea, and the already long experience of naval warfare was confirmed."

He advances no sufficient grounds for saying that there was a real breach of tradition between this fleet and the naval force which James organized after the Restoration, and with which he so stoutly fought the Dutch. But it .is tedious to pull Mr. Belloc up on his facts whenever he has to deal with a Parliamentarian or a Whig.

A reader would get what we consider to be an utterly dis- torted view of the conflict of the seventeenth century from Mr. Bellew, but he would, at any rate, realize that there was a conflict and would know what it was about. We can therefore recommend the book.