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 1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 291 settlement made him turn to railway building, railways led him to politics. But he never felt at home in a party ; had he been born a few years earlier he would have been Sydenham's ideal minister, prepared to work with any group of men provided the business of the country pro- spered. After his unopposed election to the Canadian assembly in 1849 the chairman of his committee had to ask him on which side of the house he would sit — and party feeling was running high that year. In 1850 he left politics, returned to the house in 1853, and remained there till 1872. At first he was counted a conservative ; in 1844 all his influence had been used to help Metcalfe to carry the country against Baldwin and Lafontaine. In 1853 Gait drifted to the radicals of Canada East, and became a ' rouge ' ; in 1857 he called himself an independent, but soon was again a conservative. In the years 1870-3 he flirted with the liberals only to retire from active political life an independent conservative. Gait's views on the future of Canada were even less fixed than his party preferences. With the repeal of the corn laws he thought the only imperial tie — that of commerce — had gone, and he approved though he did not sign the annexation mani- festo of 1849. But railways made him see the need for confederation, which he advocated steadily from 1858, and confederation created or made possible a Canadian nationality that led him to dislike the idea of joining the United States. From 1867, if not even earlier, he held strongly to the view that the near future would see Canada independent ; in 1883 he changed again, and became converted to imperial federation. Each of his changes had much to be said for it ; Mr. Skelton seems to approve them all. But something of political failure can be expected from such elasticity, and Gait's fluctuations seem to show a lack of real political philosophy. It was a time when the man of business was needed in public life ; in Hincks and Gait the type was developed. Then it passed, and the parliamentarian of more rigid ideas came again to the front. One of the best things in the book is its continual emphasis on material factors. That the United States had no bonding system before 1846 was of great importance to Canada — it was one reason for the Union Act — but the ordinary history has ignored it. The establishment of a decimal currency in 1858, the too rapid railway building between 1850 and 1870, the importance of Elgin's reciprocity treaty, fisheries negotiations with the United States : all these are well brought out. Not least, the maps showing John and Alexander Gait's activities in Quebec, Ontario, and the west are of real use. E. M. Wrong. A History of the Peace Conference of Paris. Edited by H. W." V. Temperle y . Vols, i, ii, and iii. (Published under the auspices of the Institute of International Affairs. London : Frowde and H odder and Stoughton, 1920.) At the outset of any attempt to appraise this work let it be said that it is a useful book, and that both Mr. Temperley and the Institute of Inter- national Affairs have every reason to congratulate themselves on the first three volumes of their projected history. Whether in the remaining U2