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 Minor Notices 929 erroneous, it may be well to set forth the exact nature of the sittings of 1766-1769. A new House convened November 6, 1766, and sat until December 16, when it adjourned to March 12, 1767. On that date it re-convened, and sat till April 11, when it was prorogued. Since the interval in the winter had been due to adjournment and not to pro- rogation, all this constituted but one session. The second session of this assembly lasted from March 31 to April 16, 1768. It was then prorogued, and subsequently dissolved. This ended that assembly. A new House of Burgesses was elected in November, 1768, and sat from May 8 to May 17, 1769, when it was dissolved by Lord Botetourt. This, which Mr. Kennedy calls " the first session of the Assembly of 1769 ", was more properly the sole session of the first assembly of that year. What he calls " the second session of 1769 " was the first part of the first session of a fresh assembly, November 7 — December 21, 1769, for on the last-named day it adjourned, without being prorogued, till May 21, 1770, when it resumed its session, of the second part of which Mr. Kennedy gives the journal in another volume. If the editor had more completely grasped these distinctions, he would have made better work of his lists of members. In these three sessions and a half, the Burgesses carried on some of their most important contests and discussions. What with the ex- ternal conflicts aroused by the British revenue acts and the internal conflicts brought on by the defalcation of Speaker Robinson and the separation of the offices of speaker and treasurer, there was no lack of contentious matter for the training of young statesmen for an ap- proaching revolution. Of these struggles, and of those over the Indian boundary line, with the Six Nations and the Cherokees, the editor gives an account in his introduction. It is not always clear and well written, but it embraces a number of highly interesting documents, some of which, we believe, have not before been published. It would have been instructive if we might have had a firmer treatment of the case of Speaker Robinson. In later times Jefferson and Edmund Randolph and the biographers of Henry and Lee seem to have read into the matter a legend of party contest foreign to ante-Stamp-Act Virginia. An agricultural state without violent divergences of interest will often present few traces of political party.' Mr. Bryce, in his Impressions of South Africa, pointed out this fact in the case of the Orange Free State, and that its natural tendency is to throw power into the hands of the presiding officer of the popular assembly. This seems to be the explanation of Speaker Robinson, when coupled with the fact that he was also treasurer of the province. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789. Edited by Worth- ington C. Ford. Volume VII., 1777, January i-May 21. (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1907, pp. 374.) In Mr. Ford's seventh volume the most important matters are those connected with the Articles of Confederation and with finance. The latter is illustrated