Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/160

152 SHORT NOTICES January detail what proposals were to be embodied in a treaty ? This was found to be unwise, and it became established that ' the senate should not attempt to participate formally in treaty-making until after the process of negotiation had been completed '. Was the senate bound to ratify a treaty signed by American ministers in accordance with their instructions ? If so, and if it was not consulted till the negotiations were completed, its independent powers had gone ; but if not, and if it refused ratification, would it not make America guilty of a breach of faith and upset the usual practice of diplomacy ? The senate held to its constitutional powers and modified treaties the executive had negotiated, and foreign governments in time came to realize that the working of the American constitution was incompatible with the ordinary rule that a nation ratifies the treaties signed by its plenipotentiaries. The history of these decisions and of other relevant matters, such as the establishment of the senate committee on foreign relations, Mr. Hayden has elucidated in his able, concise, and fruitful study of this subject, and he has added considerably to the value of his work by a careful and critical description of the material he has used. E. A. B. It is now seventeen years since the first edition of Herr Max Lehmann's well-known Freiherr vom Stein was completed. It is an unfortunate sign of the times that the new edition in one volume (Leipzig : Hirzel, 1921) has had to be somewhat abbreviated, though mainly in the parts less directly relating to Stein's career, and to be published without foot-notes. For many readers it will thus be more convenient, but for serious students it does not supersede the earlier edition. G. In Pan-Americanism its Beginnings (New York : Macmillan, 1920) Mr. Joseph Byrne Lockey traces the origins of this idea in the years of re volution and political reconstruction that folio wed the downfall of Spanish power in the new world. Some form of union between the revolting colonies of Spain would have been a not unnatural result of their past history and their common struggle for independence. But it was never realized, and the congress that met at Panama in 1826 to consider such a project completely disappointed the ardent hopes it had awakened. The idea of a wider union including all American states never entered practical politics. Latin America in these years looked as much to Great Britain for support and protection as to the United States. It received the declaration of President Monroe ' with no more than moderate enthu- siasm ', and scarcely welcomed the idea of the preponderance of the United States among the nations of the New World. In the United States itself, though opinion was divided about Latin America, and Henry Clay spoke of his country becoming ' the centre of a system which would constitute the rallying-point of human wisdom against the despotism of the Old World ', there was little inclination to enter any sort of alliance, much less a political union, with other American states. Nor would Great Britain, though she did not object to a Latin confederation, have approved of an American confederation opposed to Europe, with the United States at its head. Thus, though a sense of continental solidarity was born