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Mc Master: People of the United States i-] ^ Its editors hoped that it " would be polished by the labors of the learned, and occasionally glitter with the gayety of wit, and would be found worthy to shine among the gems which sparkle on the regalia of liter- ature. " Another topic is "The Common School in the First Half-Century," an outline of history beginning with an act of the Massachusetts General Court in 1647, and then confining itself mainly to the development of schools in New York and Pennsylvania and to the land-grants and other efforts in behalf of education in the south and west. " Political Ideas in the First Half-Century " is the subject of the last essay in the series. The crop of new state constitutions that sprang up in the path of the Jeffersonian revolution is examined with reference to the gradual disappearance of religious and property qualifications upon the suffrage. The historian does not, however, do justice to the close relation between these political notions and the religious and social con- tentions which embittered political feeling, especially in New England. Other prevalent ideas were the general reluctance to concede the right of courts to annul laws by declaring them unconstitutional, the widespread desire to define more clearly the limitations upon executive power, and the fear that the expansion of the country would involve it in ruin. When Louisiana, a territory outside the original boundary of the United States, was an applicant for admission to the Union (1812), Josiah Quincy voiced the apprehensions of New England in words that have a familiar sound: "You have no right to throw the liberties and prop- erty of this people into hotch-potch with the wild men on the Missouri, nor with the mixed though more respectable race of Anglo-Hispano- Gallo-Americans who bask on the sands at the mouth of the Mississippi. Do you suppose the people of the Northern and Atlantic States will or ought to look with patience and see representatives and senators from the Red River and Missouri pouring themselves on this and the other floor, managing the affairs of a seaboard 1500 miles at least from their resi- dence ? " Twenty New England members voted " No." These somewhat disconnected studies, excellent as they all are, leave something to be desired in historical perspective as well as in symmetry of arrangement. In the review of events that contributed to popular progress there is no sacrifice of clearness or interest. The style is terse, the perception of the human interest is acute, the argument or narrative is straightforward, logical and accurate. And yet, sometimes, the author seems to lack that large firm grasp of relations which should unite the different parts of the story for a common purpose. The dramatic sense that is needed in order to make the whole story impressive is not often perceptible in these pages, and while the author may gain thereby in sanity he may lose somewhat in force. If he must give as much atten- tion to political history as he seems to think, one might wish for a keener analysis of the political and social reactions that precipitated, out of the Jeffersonian elements, here an Adams party and there a Jackson party. There are signs that Professor McMaster is becoming more liberal in his VOL. VI, 25,