Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/888

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878 Reviews of Books the only really valuable part of the work and justify its publication. No other history of the Reformation has treated the subject so fully. The chapter on "Germany: 1555-1648 " is also far better than those on the Reformation proper, as are also those dealing with what we call the Counter-Reformation, including the work of the Jesuits in various lands. His account of the English Reformation is of course strongly colored with Anglo-Catholicism, but is not without merit. The author's concluding note on " Justification by Faith " is not particularly illumi- nating. A somewhat poor bibliography and a good index are other features of the work. Albert Henry Newman. The English Patents of Monopoly. By William Hyde Price. [Harvard Economic Studies, Volume I.] (Boston: Hotighton, Mifflin and Company. 1906. Pp. x, 261.) This is really a twofold work. On its economic side it has to do with a certain class of monopolies during the reign of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I. These are patents, nearly in the modern sense, tem- porary monopolies granted to claimants of special processes of manu- facture, miniixg, or other industrial processes. Mr. Price is interested in the rise of these patents of monopoly and in the experiences of the patentees, the crown, and the community under them, during this early and experimental period. In his interesting " Part 11., Industrial His- tory ", he tells the story of some eight of these monopolized trades, with their most unsatisfactory results for their holders, for would-be partici- pants, for the crown, and for the community. Among the appendices also six of these patents are printed in cxtcnso. So far the monograph is a comparatively simple study, the result of which, as pointed out with perhaps unnecessary asseveration by the author, is to show the unde- sirability of monopolies granted and protected by the government under the conditions of the period he is describing. But combined with this is a more complicated and more ambitious study, performed with less success. This is a discussion of the whole subject of government monopolies during the period adverted to. Some- times Mr. Price is treating his narrower subject, sometimes his broader one; and without always indicating to his readers or perhaps perceiving for himself, which he is engaged with. One of the most familiar popular complaints in the later Elizabethan and early Stuart period is of the possession by private men or partnerships of what are variously called monopolies, patents, licenses, impositions, dispensations, commis- sions, privileges or grants. These were for many purposes, from a grant of the export duty on rabbit skins, or the privilege of licensing brewers in London, or a copyright for the printing of the Psalms of David, to the monopoly of manufacture of glass in all England or a license to suspend the provisions of the law regulating the tanning of leather in certain cases. One of the greatest needs in the discussion