Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/185

Minor Notices 1 7 5 Mr. Nelson P. Mead's Connecticut as a Corporate Colony (printed at Lancaster, New Era Press, pp. x, 119) is a Columbia University disser- tation, constructed upon the same well-known formula as those of Messrs. Shepherd, Mereness, Smith, Raper, and Spencer on Pennsyl- vania, Maryland, South Carolina, North Carolina, and New York re- spectively. Connecticut institutions have been so .much studied hereto- fore that Mr. Mead, careful and thorough as he has been, makes no very signal contribution to knowledge, unless in the chapter on military institutions. Perhaps the most striking statement in the book is that (pp. 20, 21) " In fact the Charter was no more ' fundamental ' than was the original constitution. Its provisions were changed or modified by the General Court with the same freedom as had been done with the ' Fundamental Orders '." There is a lack of shading in such a frank acceptance of colonial public opinion as necessarily decisive. Surely VVinthrop vs. Lechmere and Clark vs. Tousey show that such doctrines were by no means accepted as law by certain authorities to whom history may properly listen. Constitutional Conflict in Provincial Massachusetts. By Henry Russell Spencer. (Columbus, Ohio: Fred. J. Heer, 1905, pp. 134.) This monograph is a useful addition to the now familiar Columbia studies of provincial government in the Anglo-American colonies. Mas- sachusetts brought to the provincial relation the independent traditions and peculiar ideals of the old " Colony " government, and Mr. Spencer describes effectively the conflicts and compromises by which the province reached a kind of rough adjustment between " imperial " and " com- monwealth " ideals. Nevertheless, the reader who is already familiar with the earlier studies of this group must be struck with a certain sameness in the plot. This is no fault of the writer's ; it means simply, that, in the purely constitutional experience of, let us say, Massachu- setts and South Carolina after they had once been organized as royal provinces, the resemblances are more important than the differences. There was the same conflict between the " prerogative bodies " and the " popular house " ; and for both the vital issue, in one form or another, was the control of the purse. Without attempting a complete description of the constitutional sys- tem, Mr. Spencer limits himself closely to the conflicts between the governor and the house of representatives on distinctly constitutional issues, covering, roughly, the first fifty years of the provincial period. He selects for emphasis the salary question, the control of the treasury, and the control of military and diplomatic affairs. Without containing much that is strikingly novel to the student of provincial institutions, this essay may be commended as a scholarly and really readable treat- ment of a subject not easily made interesting. It gives us the most satisfactory account we have of the Massachusetts government during the first third of the eighteenth centurv.