Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/321

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1920 SHORT NOTICES 313 the oath of conformity to the civil constitution of the clergy, and con- tends that, because they had refused, believing that to do so ' c'etait accepter la mine du culte catholique et du sacerdoce ', and having been imprisoned for their refusal and perished with the other occupants of the prisons, they were therefore martyrs, both in will and in deed, to their faith. This may be so. But the thought in the minds of those who asked, ' Have you taken the oath ? ' was not ' Are you a good Catholic ? ' but ' Are you one of those reactionaries who are in sympathy with the enemy on the frontiers ? ' M. Welschinger would probably admit that any priest found in the prisons on 2 September 1792 for whatever cause would have perished whether he had taken the oath or not. M. A. P. The late Mark Hovell's Chartist Movement (Manchester : University Press, 1918) has been completed from a rough draft left by the author, who fell in the war, by Professor Tout. The editor expresses the hope ' that it will be recognized that the work was too good to put aside ' and that it will be received ' as a serious contribution to the literature of a great subject '. His hope will not be disappointed. Hovell's work is much the best thing about Chartism in English, and, had the author survived to give it its final form, it would probably have excelled the book with which one most naturally compares it, M. Dolleans's Chartisme,^ for its young author had, in some ways, more economic insight than his competitor ; he had real historical scholarship and the great advantage of a first-hand familiarity with the industrial environment of his subject. Insight is shown in every chapter. As a Lancashire man Hovell saw clearly the differences between the north and London, and as an historian he could trace them to their true causes. His chapter on the ' Anti- capitalist Economics' is remarkably just and balanced. The occasional introduction in this and other chapters of people and movements unex- plained is no doubt due to the way in which the book has come into being. Particularly good is the chapter called ' The Agitation against the New Poor Law ', a most necessary section as every one at all familiar with Chartist oratory knows. The narrative chapters are clear and supplied with plenty of fresh illustrative material. One feels through- out that yet another true historian has been lost to England. The bibliography, which Mr. Hovell had not finished, is just a little unsatis- factory. It is neither an exhaustive bibliography of the subject nor a list of those books which Mr. Hovell used. It omits, or through mis- description appears to omit, one book and three parliamentary papers quoted in foot-notes and two books quoted in the text (pp. 23 n., 38, 39 n., 81 n., 82). Its method of entering parliamentary papers is not quite clear. Any one unfamiliar with the originals would find it hard to decide what and how many reports this entry covers : ' 1843. Vol. xiii. First Keport of the Midland Mining Commission and Children's Employment Commission (Keport on Trades and Manufactures).' J. H. C. Professor C. D. Hazen has incorporated in Fifty Years of Europe, 1870-1919 (London : Bell, 1919) much of his earlier Europe since 1815 ^ ' See ante, xxix. 389. ^ See ante, xxvi, 634.