Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/164

 156 SHORT NOTICES January narrative is, however, nowhere tinctured by the writer's own views, but is an unbiased, historical, and philosophical treatise on its subject ; only in his summary (p. 263) does he allow his own judgement to peer out. From an oriental despotism to a limited monarchy ; from monarchy to republicanism and back to monarchy for a day before the restoration of the Republic ; from a parlia- mentary Republic to a division into two States, each ruled by a group of irresponsible military chiefs, with the Parliament a dummy rather than a board of control ; such have been the political mutations in China during the past twenty years. After tracing constitutional development in modern China, seemingly we come back to our starting- point, semi-irresponsible government certainly we do not find such a logical and ordered development into a democratic State as seemed to be indicated by the events of 1911-12. The conclusion of the whole narrative cannot be better expressed than in these words of the author ; but on a few unimportant points of detail, barely affecting the main issue, some criticism may be made. Mr. Vinacke has the usual American tendency to exaggerate the importance of the open door (p. 50). The Szechwan rebellion of 1911 is ascribed (p. 101) to the deprivation of the Szechwan gentry of their ' squeeze ' on expenditure for railways. A much more probable cause is the prohibition of opium pro- duction. Tang Shao-yi was not a ' lieutenant ' (p. 109), nor a ' henchman ' (p. Ill), nor a ' follower ' (p. 130) of Yuen Shih-kai, but was his rival ; his position in Yuen's administration was that of Jefferson in Washington's, the leader of the radical party serving in the cabinet of the leader of the conservatives. Tang Shao-yi was the leader of the men of action, as Sun Yat-sen was of the idealists, among the Cantonese, who were the backbone of the radical republicans ; his true position is indicated (p. 134) by the fact that, when he resigned the premiership, he fled from Peking to the refuge of the foreign settlements at Tientsin, and thence to Shanghai. This book is an admirable piece of work, and it might be a permanent work of reference for the period were it not for the want of an index. H. B. M. Partisans of proportional representation will find many warnings against great expectations in Dr. Elaine F. Moore's History of Cumulative Voting and Minority Representation in Illinois, 1870-1919 (Urbana : University of Illinois, 1919). The system, introduced in 1870, of enabling each voter to cast as many votes for one candidate as there are representa- tives to be elected or to distribute his votes as he may think fit, has secured for the principal minority party in Illinois at least one-third of the members of the house of representatives and occasionally an actual maj ority. It has, however, increased what the author describes as ' machine control and party bossism '. It has not raised the general level of ability. By tending to make parties equally balanced, it has stimulated party bitterness, played into the hands of any group which can control the balance of power, and paralysed controversial legislation. G. B. H. The second instalment of Professor Burnam's work Palaeographia Iberica, Fac-similes de Manuscrits Espagnols et Portugais (IX e -XV e Siecles) (Paris : Champion, 1920), is, despite its faults, a contribution to our knowledge of Spanish manuscripts. Unlike Dr. C. U. Clark's Col-