the Monroe doctrine." (See correspondence between General Santo Domingo, Minister of Colombia, and Mr. Evarts, 1881.)

Whatever may be the reasons of the author and others for thinking that the Monroe doctrine obliges us to maintain supreme dominion over the Isthmian canals, there is no evidence that Mr. Monroe held such an opinion, or that he would have held such an opinion, if the matter had been brought to his attention. It would be more complimentary to Mr. Monroe to assume that he would have pursued a consistent policy, and that he would have approved an international agreement for the removal of Central America from the danger of foreign control. The Clayton-Bulwer treaty was a step in this direction. That treaty provides for the neutrality of the canal routes; it prevents England from acquiring new possessions in Central America; and, for the last forty-five years, it has kept her from extending her dominion on the Isthmus.

It is to be observed, moreover, that at the time when the treaty was negotiated, England already had colonies planted near Central America, and she also controlled the eastern outlet of the proposed canal. She was in a commanding position. The United States could not dislodge her by force, but were, fortunately, able to remove her through the diplomacy of Mr. Clayton. Yet this is the treaty which Professor Keasbey (as well as some of our Senators) considers a mark of our "naïve stupidity "-an infraction of the Monroe doctrine—“ a damaging contract entered into during our youth.'

"The contest over the canal route," he says, "was hardly fair, between nations of such unequal age and experience," and he regrets that "there is as yet no tribunal in international law which looks after the interests of diplomatic minors."

If the United States was a diplomatic minor in 1850, the Monroe doctrine must have been uttered during "the years of indiscretion."

Professor Keasbey concedes, however, that having entered into the treaty, we are still bound by it.

But what shall we say then? Shall we continue under the treaty that peace may abound? He will not have it so. He admits that the efforts of Mr. Blaine and of Mr. Frelinghuysen to wriggle out of the engagement were vain and foolish.

"In trying to avoid an inevitable issue with Great Britain," he says, "our statesmen had committed one diplomatic blunder after

another, until it was impossible for us to disentangle ourselves. In trying to do so, Blaine and Frelinghuysen only drew the cords the tighter. There was but one thing to be done-to break through the diplomatic web which enveloped us, and stand forth before the world naked, and ashamed no doubt, but still young and vigorous and ready for a wiser future."

This is the author's solution of the matter-a cutting of the Gordian knot. But it is not only a diplomatic web that would be broken, our honor would be shattered with it.

We have entered into the compact, not lightly nor on compulsion, but discreetly, advisedly and soberly. Several years after the treaty had been ratified, when the United States objected to certain British possessions in, or near, Central America, England offered to abrogate the treaty and to return to the status quo ante, but we would not. England then modified her possessions in accordance with our views, and Mr. Buchanan confirmed our adherence to the treaty. The tendency of our diplomacy at that time was in favor of a canal that should be for the use of all nations, but under the exclusive control of none. This is the historic policy of the United States.

It was not until after the civil war that our policy began to change. General Grant took a deep interest in the canal question, and Mr. Seward, who had invited England and France to join in guaranteeing the Panama route, and who, in the Senate, had praised the Clayton-Bulwer treaty as "the first universal fact in the history of the human race," renounced his former policy and attempted to gain exclusive privileges as to the canal routes, in defiance of the treaty which he had so grandiloquently approved. The attempt failed then, but afterwards Mr. Blaine and Mr. Frelinghuysen took up the policy in a still more expanded form, and added to our diplomatic archives dispatches which were as useless as they were unedifying.

The treaty has been to us a valuable instrument for nearly half a century. Had it not been for the treaty, England, by this time, might have been firmly entrenched in Central America, and in that event, the canal routes would be practically under her control. Her policy of inaction in the Isthmus was adopted in consideration of our promise made in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. We have received some of the benefits of that policy, and we should not now refuse to fulfill our part of the agreement. It would not be consistent with good faith or with honor to repu

diate our solemn engagements whenever, influenced by a shortsighted policy, we consider those engagements inconvenient.

Apart from the question of honesty, and even assuming for the moment that the policy of exclusive control be the true policy and the historic policy of the United States, it can not be for their benefit to secure that end by such means as the breaking of a treaty. As the intercourse of individuals is founded on faith, so is the intercourse of states. In the case of the individual there are laws which may be invoked in order to compel him to fulfill his contracts. In the case of a sovereign state there is no higher power to enforce treaties. It is, therefore, the more necessary that international compacts should be kept faithfully in order that confidence may be felt in the binding force of treaties. The faith of treaties is one of the foundations of international intercourse. Pacta sunt servanda is a fundamental rule of international law, and it is to the interest of every nation to observe it, even though treaties be inequitable and pernicious.

This was the view taken of the matter by the great powers of Europe in 1871, when they declared "that it is an essential principle of the law of nations that no power can liberate itself from the engagements of a treaty, nor modify the stipulations thereof, unless with the consent of the contracting powers by means of an amicable arrangement." JAMES GUSTAVUS WHITELEY.

Baltimore.

The History of Local Rates in England. Five Lectures by Edwin Cannan. London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1896,-12mo, 140 pp. The task which Mr. Cannan set himself in these lectures before the London School of Economics and Political Science in the winter of 1895, was to explain how it comes about that in England rates are paid only in respect of immovable property, and are levied on occupiers and not on owners. In doing this, Mr. Cannan has written, within the compass of 140 pages, an excellent history of English local rating from 1601 to modern times. He begins with the Acts of 1597 and of 1601, which form the basis of the English poor law as it existed until 1834, and which were the first Acts of Parliament by which the payment of poor rate was made compulsory. Payment had been semi-compulsory until 1597, as the clergy had had large powers for dealing with people who could, but who would not, make their contributions to the poor at the collections in the churches.

Although Mr. Cannan makes these laws of Elizabeth's reign the starting point, he has embodied in his lectures much information respecting customary or non-statutory rates-rates collected in accordance with local usage, prior to the beginning of the seventeenth century. He explains how church rates had become well established in the beginning of the fourteenth century; and he cites some that would now be regarded as curious instances of local taxation, such as the rates levied at Chichester for the city fortifications. One wishes that Mr. Cannan had gone a little further into local rating in the early period of English municipal life, and that he had dealt more fully than he has done with the early local rates, scots as they were called, paid by householders in the old boroughs. Until the system of paying Members of Parliament was broken down early in the fifteenth century by the lawyers whose professional interests were advanced by being of the House of Commons, and later on by the courtiers and the landed gentry, Members of Parliament were paid by the municipalities, and all householders were liable for contributions to these charges. Mr. Cannan incidentally brings out the fact that as late as 1535-6, when Calais was called upon to send Members to the House of Commons, and again in 1543-4, when Wales was first represented in Parliament, laws were enacted for levying in Calais and in Wales rates for the wages of the members; but he gives little information as to how the rates for meeting these expenses had been levied prior to this time.

Mr. Cannan explains with much detail and with the aid of many useful footnotes the lack of uniformity in levying poor rates which existed from Elizabeth's time until a generation ago. He shows how in some places, particularly in the old centres of the wool industry in the South and West of England, people were frequently rated on their stock-in-trade; while in one place at least, at Poole in Dorsetshire, until as late as 1792, poor rates were levied on household goods and on the wages of clerks and master mariners. These rates at Poole, however, were founded solely on local usage, and were not permitted to survive when they came within the cognisance of the courts.

It was not until 1840 that uniformity was established; that rates ceased to be levied on stocks in trade; and not until 1874, that finally the poor rate came to apply to all immovable property. Mr. Cannan also traces from the seventeenth century the practices of local authorities, the decisions of courts of law, and

the enactments of Parliament, by which nearly all English local rates have been added, or based upon, the poor rate. This plan was followed by Parliament when the present municipal system of England, that dating from 1835, was in its infancy; and as time has gone on, the same plan has been adopted in connection with burial boards, school boards, and all the newer or reformed local governing bodies which have come into existence since the era of Parliamentary reform in England came to an end in 1885. For readers in this country, where all direct governmental charges, Municipal and State, are described as taxes, it may be useful to quote the statement of an expert, such as Mr. Cannan, as to the difference between a tax and a rate in England. It is well known of course, that the word rate has come to include all local, as distinct from imperial, taxes. The reason for the differentiation, however, may not be a matter of such general knowledge. "The real difference between a rate and a tax which is not a rate," writes Mr. Cannan, "appears to lie entirely in the manner in which the financial problem of raising money is approached. In the case of a tax, the taxing authorities decides. that individuals shall make particular payments on particular occasions, and the aggregate sum it receives depends on how much these payments add up to. In the case of a rate, the taxing authority decides how much it wants in the aggregate, and this amount is raised by apportioning the payment of it between the various rate-payers in accordance with some definite standard made for the occasion, or already in existence. Thus in the case of a tax, the procedure is by way of addition, and in the case of a rate by way of division; in the case of a tax, the taxing authority hopes it will get a certain sum. In the case of a rate it knows that it will get it."

E. P.

The Indian Village Community examined with reference to the physical, ethnographic, and historical conditions of the provinces; chiefly on the basis of the Revenue-Settlement Records and District Manuals. By B. H. Baden-Powell, M.A., C.I.E. London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1896-8vo, xvi, 456 pp. and map.

De Tocqueville's observation made a half century ago, that the conquest and government of India are really the achievements which give England her place in the opinion of the world, is still profoundly true, but Englishmen themselves remain curiously indifferent to the truth. They administer, as they conquer, by the