Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/806

796 Reviews of Books be cited as evidence of the oppressive character of the Acts of Trade. It is impossible in a review to follow Mr. Ashley into the detailed con- sideration from which he concludes that their residue was small. He devotes most space to the apparent confirmation of his conclusions by Lord Sheffield's Observations on the Commerce of the American States (first ed., 1783, sixth, 1784). Now Sheffield was opposed to a treaty with the United States. So he asserted that England would hold the trade of the Americans without it. His reason was that the Americans could not buy what they wanted on better terms of any other nation. This he attempted to prove by taking up the various articles severally, making abundant use of such phrases as " a great," " very great," " in- considerable," "not of capital amount." But, with one ejiception, to be noted presently, he gives no figures. To call him in amounts to little more than saying that somebody else, and that a person not free from sus- picion of political interest, had anticipated Mr. Ashley's rf/;wr/ argument. The argument is, perhaps, somewhat strengthened by Sheffield's author- ity, but it is by no means rendered conclusive. It still remains true, as Mr. Ashley says, that the point at issue cannot be settled " until the economic history of New England [and the other colonies] has been subjected to a more thorough and scholarly investigation than it has yet received" (p. 337), for here, as in nearly all departments of inter- national trade, it is a question of relative values, of the proportion [author's italics] of the illicit importation of European goods to the total importation " (p. 341). And on this crucial question Sheffield gives us one, and but one bit of precise information. In the years 1 767-1 7 70 nineteen per cent, of English exports to the colonies were commodities of foreign origin, over eleven per cent, of the whole being East Indian, and less than eight per cent. , presumably, European goods. Mr. Ashley quotes the figures in a foot-note, apparently regarding them as a measure of the colonists' small demand for European goods. But they might also be interpreted as indicating the extent to which such goods were smuggled direct. The three remaining sections of the book are predominantly not his- torical. The volume is handsomely printed, in clear type, upon paper which, though surprisingly light in weight, is opaque, of a pleasant dead finish, and takes ink admirably. The table of contents is very full, but that by no means atones for the absence of an index. Charles H. Hull. History of the Nezu World Called America. By Edward John Payne, Fellow of University College, Oxford. Vol. II. (Ox- ford : Clarendon Press. 1899. Pp. xxviii, 604.) The second volume of Payne's History is entirely devoted to an ethnographic account of the aborigines, or, as they are now termed by anthropologists, the Amerinds. The opening pages contain an essay upon military organization and advancement and the creation of an