Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/609

 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 601 trative, military, and juridical capacities ; provision for ad interim rule in case of vacancy ; relations with the church in respect of patronage and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. These various functions, problems, and con- flicts of authority are not peculiar to the Philippines, since similar con- ditions prevailed in the audiencias of Spanish America. It is true that, in the Philippines, the greater distance from the Spanish court, whence a reply to a dispatch might not be received for at least-three years, and the greater prominence of military and defensive needs gave greater scope to local, initiative, personal action, and the occasional setting aside of incom- petent riders. Yet such incidents can generally be paralleled in Spanish America. Indeed Philippine history furnishes nothing comparable to the disputes and tumults which agitated the turbulenta repOMica of Asuncion in Paraguay, where, in the absence of an audiencia, the munici- pality constituted the most stable and most aggressive authority. The most notable Philippine example, which shows how the working of the constitution counted for more than its theory, is the history of the British occupation of Manila in 1762, when the oidor Anda, having been sent to the provinces as the governor's deputy, defied the authority of the incompetent archbishop-governor, refused to recognize his sub- mission to the British, and declared himself governor and captain- general of the Islands. Anda subsequently received the thanks of the sovereign and, seven years later, was sent to the Philippines as governor. The story is not unlike the events which followed the British occupation of Buenos Aires in 1806, when an incompetent viceroy was replaced by a subordinate officer, who was proclaimed on the spot as viceroy and afterwards confirmed in that appointment by the king. In this case the cabildo of Buenos Aires, not the audiencia, was the effective authority. This book abundantly illustrates the familiar defects of the Spanish system, the overlapping of authorities as well as the cumbrous mode of administration and legal process through endless documents in duplicate or triplicate. But justice is also done to the genuine effort of Spain to give the best she had to give, namely her own institutions and methods. The system often produced ' men and acts of an exceedingly well-balanced and statesmanlike character ' (p. 5). As the author observes, an inquiry into the activities of the audiencia covers in some sort the whole range of administration. This being so, the book would have gained in lucidity if a brief summary had been given defining the attributes of all the institutions and officials mentioned. The description of the encomiendas as ' settlements or agricultural estates ' and as constituting ' the unit of the Spanish colonial land system until the close of the eighteenth century ' (pp. 33 and 35) is not applicable to Spanish America. It is true that, in the earlier and experimental period of American conquest, the distinction between the repartimiento of lands and that of Indians was not always observed. But the encomienda, as granted during the later phases of conquest and as authorized in America by the Crown, conveyed in itself no possession of land whatever. There is a clear distinction between landed property (usually called ' hacienda ') and ' Indios encomendados ', which term is a synonym of ' encomienda '. The encomienda was a gift not of land but of Indians, who paid tribute