Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/157

 1922 SHORT NOTICES 149 and enjoying the protection of neither, found themselves in danger of annihilation at the hands of the Pindari freebooters ; and in this plight they appealed to the British to abandon the policy of non-intervention and to assume that responsibility for the security of smaller states which appeared to be the manifest duty of a predominant power. In 1818 Colonel James Tod was appointed political agent for the states of Western Rajputana, and for five years he acted as the guide and counsellor of the chiefs, and as the trusty mediator both in their internal feuds and in their dealings with the British. His zeal for their interests seems to have been regarded as somewhat excessive by his own government ; and in 1823 he retired to devote his energies to the work on which his fame now chiefly rests. His book preserves for us an intimate picture of a most interesting group of peoples proud aristocratic classes whose geographical seclusion has enabled them to escape Muhammadan influence and to retain the ideals and even some of the institutions of the heroic age of India as depicted in the Sanskrit epics. E. J. R. ' The purpose of this monograph ', says Dr. W. T. Morgan of his English Political Parties and Leaders in the Reign of Queen Anne, 1702-10 (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1920), ' is to ascertain the part played by Queen Anne in English politics during the period when Godolphin acted as her first minister, and to note the relative influence of the Marlboroughs, Harley, and Godolphin and the reasons for their downfall ' (p. 17). With regard to the queen the author's conclusion is that English historians have greatly underestimated both her ability and her influence (pp. 45, 186, 395), and he has no difficulty in finding quotations from modern writers to illustrate this thesis. On the other hand, he himself, confining his attention too exclusively to domestic affairs, is inclined to overstate the case for the queen. Sir A. Ward's article in the Dictionary of National Biography is a judicious summing-up of the question at issue. However, Dr. Morgan demonstrates that the political influence of the duchess of Marlborough was much less than is generally supposed, brings out the importance of Godolphin more clearly than most historians of the period, and traces the rise of Harley (by the aid of the Portland Manuscripts) with more fullness and exactness. He gives us also very good accounts of the general elections of 1702, 1705, and 1708. The chapter containing an account of ' Conditions in England in 1702 ' is less satis- factory. Those conditions are far better stated by Lecky in his analysis of the principles and composition of the whig and tory parties, and Dr. Morgan does not adequately discriminate between the authorities he employs, and cites sometimes with too much respect secondary works of slight value. There are also a number of small errors and slips. He quotes, for instance, Anne's letter complaining that ' Mr. Caliban ', as she terms William III, would not allow her to put her lodgings in mourning for her father, in support of a mistaken statement that William, already embittered against Anne, ' determined to punish her severely by refusing the usual formality of mourning at court for her son ' (p. 43). Again (p. 154), he refers to a letter of Anne's in the Godolphin Papers in the British Museum about Queensberry as evidence that she trusted him,