Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/625

 1922 SHORT NOTICES 617 late the pacific example of Numa Pompilius. As to Saint-Pierre's own ' system', neither it nor even Rousseau's judgement of it satisfies his most recent censor. The true obstacle to the solution of the problem, Dr. Michael thinks, lies beyond the question of politics, absolutist or other, and is to be sought in the nature of states, of peoples, and of mankind. If the evidence of history is to be held to warrant this fundamental pessi- mism, then not Saint-Pierre alone was a dreamer. A. W. W. Dr. H. J. Tiele's book on De Zending van Pesters naar Hannover Augustus-December 1723 (The Hague : Nijhoff, 1921) is the beginning of a larger thesis on the genesis of the treaty of Hanover, 1725, the conclusion of which is awaiting publication in a Dutch periodical. It supplements the articles published in this Review by Mr. Basil Williams on ' The Foreign Policy of Walpole ' * and by Mr. G. B. Hertz on ' England and the Ostend Company ', 2 and it shows the fear of this imperial company entertained by its English and Dutch rivals to have been the key to most of the political negotiations of those early years of Walpole's premiership. Dutch diplomacy, of whose records in the Rijksarchief and in the com- munal archives of Haarlem Dr. Tiele has made full use, was at that time peculiarly typical of the saturated bondholder capitalism of eighteenth- century Holland, where not only the republikeinen under the raadpen- sionaris Isaac van Hoornbeeck and Buys pensionaris of Amsterdam, but even the majority of the stadhouderlijlcen, among whom Ernestus de Pesters had been bred, were pacifists from reasons of political and financial disorganization as well as mutual jealousy between the provinces. So even the one great statesman Holland then possessed, the secretary to the council of state, Simon van Slingelandt, had reason to doubt the sincerity of King George IV's ministers, Townshend and Carteret, who were themselves far from agreed as to the best ways of making the Continent serve the interests of the East India Company. C. B. In Bonaparte, Membre de VInstitut (Paris : Gautier-Villars, 1921), M. Lacour-Gayet has, to quote his own words, attempted to add ' a modest stone to Napoleon's centenary monument '. The history of Napoleon's election to, and occupation of, Carnot's vacant place in the ' Institut National des Sciences et des Arts ' is interesting as being yet another illustration of the versatility of the future emperor's genius, but it adds little or nothing to our real knowledge of him. The book is well provided with illustrations and reproductions of documents from the archives of the ' Academic des Sciences '. v E. The qualities of Dr. Eduard Fueter's work are now so well and widely known that it is hardly necessary to say that his Weltgeschichte der Letzten Hundert Jahre 1815-1920 (Zurich : Schulthess, 1921) is a book which few men could have written. In about six hundred not very closely printed pages it gives not merely the most necessary information but also an interpretation of the whole vast subject : it combines the services of a text- book and an explanatory essay. This is a remarkable piece of exposition 1 Ante, xv. 251. * Ante, xxii. 255.