Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/327

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1922 SHORT NOTICES 319 great learning and labour. English readers will look in vain for mention, or for more than casual mention, of some of our epoch-making writers, or will find their names (not always rightly spelt) in connexion with some of their least important works. This defect may, however, be condoned in consideration of the great difficulty of obtaining books at Vienna during and shortly after the war. Learning, enthusiasm, breadth of view, and sometimes great aptness in expression mark this work and entitle it to the notice of teachers or intending writers of history. A. G. The third edition of the late Dr. Oppenheim's I international Law l has now been completed. The revision of the second volume, War and Neutrality (London : Longmans, 1921), unfinished at the time of the author's death, was carried out by Mr. R. F. Roxburgh. Q. Dr. W. S. Holdsworth has edited in the Law Quarterly Review (July 1921, vol. xxxvii, no. 147) the important tract in which Sir Matthew Hale criticized Hobbes's doctrine of sovereignty (Harl. MS. 711). As Sir Frederick Pollock, who adds a prefatory note, and Dr. Holdsworth show, the tract is ot interest, not so much as a commentary on Hobbes, but as a defence of the English legal system and of the historical and political ideas which underlay the doctrine of ' mixed monarchy ' favoured by the English common lawyers. In the October number of the Review, Dr. E. F. Churchill continues his researches into the history of the exercise of the English royal power. His article, ' Dispensing Power and the Defence of the Realm ' is a study in administrative policy rather than in the development of a constitutional problem. Statute law, intended to encourage English shipping or to control the movements of persons and military material between England and the Continent, was, of course, a continuation of purely administrative action. Only slight opposition was offered to a free exercise of royal discretion in the administration of the statutes. Indeed Dr. Churchill does not distinguish between an expression of the dispensing power and the issue of a regulative licence, such as a passport, permitted under certain statutes. Probably no clear distinction was or could be drawn in practice. But in the latter case no question of dispensing from a malum prohibitum arose. The offence under 9 Edward III lay, for example, not in the export of bullion but in export without a licence, and presumably, if royal protection were extended to offenders, it would take the form of a pardon. F. M. P. Some unpublished material in the ' Dutch and Walloon Strangers' Book ' of Norwich, which covers the years 1564-1643, is used by Miss Kate Hotblack in an article in History for January 1922 (New Series, vol. vi, no. 24). P. The Bodleian Quarterly Record for the fourth quarter of 1921 (vol. iii, no. 32) has as a supplement five poems of King James I, printed in the Library on the famous press of the late provost of Worcester College, Dr. Daniel. Q. See ante, xxxvi. 158.