Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/610

 602 REVIEWS OF BOOKS October to the encomendero as his vassals. After the institution of corregidores or district magistrates, the encomendero was forbidden to live on his encomienda — that is to say, the territory whose inhabitants were his vassals — or to visit it, except twice a year for the collection of tribute. Solorzano defines the encomienda as ' un derecho concedido. . . para percibir y cobrar. . . los tributes de los Indios '. The incorporation of an encomienda in the Crown did not mean the transference of a landed estate to the king : it meant that the Indians constituting the encomienda thenceforth paid tribute to the Crown and not to the encomendero to whom they had been tributary. Indeed many encomiendas in South America ceased to exist owing to the disappearance of the Indians wherein they consisted. The fact that encomenderos often exceeded their rights, particularly in the exaction of forced labour, does not affect the constitu- tional question. But upon the main subject of the book, the audiencia, the value of materials accumulated by Dr. Cimningham can hardly be over-estimated ; and liis work claims from all students of Spanish- American history the most grafeful welcome and the closest study. F. A. KiRKPATRICK. Thoughts on the Union between England and Scotland. By Albert V. Dicey, K.C, and Robert S. Rait, C.B.E. (London : Macmillan, 1920.) Analysis, if not like repetition (with which it cannot always conceal a certain family likeness) the mother of studies, is often an invaluable aid to research ; and no learner, of whatever grade, who desires clear and definite instruction as to the inferences to be drawn from the history of the union between England and Scotland, and of its antecedents and con- sequences, will rise without profit from the perusal of this masterly volume. The authors have laid under contribution, together with the personal communications of eminent historians who have treated the history of the subject, the writings of several of these scholars con- cerning it, more especially, we do not doubt, those of one to whom they refer as ' alas, now for ever silent '. They cite the late Professor Hiune Brown only with regard to a not particularly pointed piece of irony by Voltaire ; but their readers could hardly do better than supplement a perusal of this elaborate essay by a re-reading of the Ford Lectures for 1914, which, together with some valuable new material, furnish an excellent historical summary of the theme of both. With the method of the present work there can be no reason for quarrelling ; for didactic purposes it is unexceptionable, and possibly the arrangement of the argument under the headings of ' Thoughts ' and ' Comments ' may be thought preferable to a less exacting and more customary terminology. The introduction to these Thoughts — a superscription not monopolized by either Defoe or Burke — comprises two ' Considerations ', of which one has now lost its chance of surviving, viz. : ' The ignorance, even of educated Englishmen, ^vith regard to the Act of Union, 1707.' It is by no means improbable that the ignorance in question was, for a long time at least, especially marked in the case of the subject of