Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/377

Brooks: Hoiry Knox 367 been accepted by them as admitting the writer to the guild of historians. It seems needless therefore to say that the materials of his work have been diligently collected from many sources, some of them archival and un- published, and that he has mastered all of them thoroughly. The course of events and the consequent diplomacy which led up to the peace of Amiens will probably not be better outlined than in these pages until our knowledge is vastly expanded, and of that there is no immediate ])robability. Two characteristics of the pamphlet seem noteworthy : first, the confirmatory details drawn by the writer from unprinted mate- rial in the London Record Office ; second, the rather startling confession of his concluding remarks, that it was Great Britain which deliberately broke the peace of Amiens and brought on the Napoleonic wars. Of the former the probable course of negotiations between Great Britain and Austria in 1800 (p. 46) is highly interesting, as indeed are some others. If the latter conclusion had been earlier accepted by the Tory historians of England, pounds of printers' ink and paper would have been saved for other than controversial purposes. Mr. Bowman clearly struggles to hold an even scale and keep himself open to conviction. Justification by the plea of necessity is, however, not always the refuge of ripe scholarship : it certainly does not close the debate. Trafalgar, I^ipsic and Waterloo settled many things, but the question of moral re- sponsibility was not among them. We note one tendency which we consider dangerous. Known writ- ers distinguished for logical exactness may sometimes state conclusions as facts ; even they should be very chary in this practice, and others should not indulge in it at all. For example, and this is only one of many that might be quoted, it is a matter of opinion pure and simple what Bonaparte's relations were to the day of Fructidor (p. 14), and this should be stated. As to the perennial question of the invasion of England (p. 17) the reference is utterly misleading, for that was a notor- ious instance of the ever-recurring use by any and all French govern- ments of such a menace in order to wring money from the public. The First Consul's direct appeal to George III. is represented on page 24 as a breach of English constitutional practice : we fancy the French execu- tive was perfectly clear in his mind that the King of Great Britain ruled as well as reigned. Possibly our caution is not needed, for Mr. Bow- man's readers will in the main be the wary ones of his own profession. Henry Knox. A Soldier of the Revolution. By Noah Brooks. (New York; G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1900. Pp. xvi, 286.) It is not often that an historical writer of to-day finds so unworked a mine of interesting and valuable biographical matter as Mr. Brooks has exploited in his life of Henry Knox, or one in which the veins of informa- tion are so easily accessible. A brief and rare sketch by Francis S. Drake, prepared for the " Memorials for the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati," has been hitherto the only, and a very unsatisfactory, memoir