History of the Reform Bill. By the Rev. W. N.
Molesworth, M.A. (Chapman and Hall.)—An extremely full, well-written, and clearly- thought history of the passing of the Reform Bill. Mr. Molesworth is evidently a man of wide information, who has given great pains to a favourite subject, which he is able to treat with adequate power. His work has not a fault of any kind, and had no other history of the Reform Bill existed would have been read with eager interest, probably occasioned a fierce controversy. As it is, it may fall dead simply because the world has exhausted the information existing on the subject, or rather thinks it has exhausted it. The facts are all known, and new deductions are almost impossible. Like all men who have studied the great straggle, Mr. Molesworth would extend the operation of the principles which gave the Whigs their victory, and like most of them he overrates the effect which those principles exercised on men's minds. He thinks, as Mr. Roebuck thinks, that had the Reform Bill been rejected force would have been employed by the people, that Throne, and Peerage, and Church might alike have fallen. We wish 'we could believe that the English people could be thus far in earnest on any political question, but we doubt it greatly. We question even now whether if the Lords had held out, some compromise would not have been introduced giving to the nation a semblance of self-government, but reserving real power where so much of it remains now, in the owners of land. To any one who wishes to read a vivid history of the great straggle told by an impartial man who writes excellent English and is thoroughly informed, this book will be most valuable.
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