Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/633

 1921 SHORT NOTICES 625 imposts and restrictions, and the infiltration of new ideas from abroad. Conditions in the several ' kingdoms ' of South America are illustrated by an accumulation of facts, not always confined to the period under review. The reforms and innovations introduced under Charles III and his successor are narrated ; also the expulsion of the Jesuits, the British invasion of the River Plate, and various revolts or conspiracies in Peru, New Granada, Chile, Venezuela, and Trinidad. Some of these events, notably the Chilian conspiracy of 1781, have not hitherto received due attention from historians. Much of the information collected by Mr. Moses is not easily to be found elsewhere. F. A. K. William Shirley, who dearly loved to be in the foreground, would have rejoiced could he have known that some two hundred and twenty-five years after the date of his birth he would be the subject of at least four authori tative volumes. A few years ago two volumes were devoted to his public correspondence, and now Dr. G. A. Wood, in his William Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts, 1741-56 (Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, 1920), deals with his life up to 1749 ; with the promise of a future volume relating to his work as commissary at Paris, for the settlement of the Nova Scotia boundary, as governor and general in the early phases of the decisive struggle for Canada, and lastly as governor of the Bahamas. The most fastidious critic could find few flaws in Dr. Wood's present volume. Not only has he apparently read and digested the authorities, printed and in manu- script, bearing on his subject ; but he is also the possessor of a lively style and of an acute critical faculty. It is the more satisfactory to find that Shirley's reputation emerges enhanced from a most careful investigation. Some reasons are given for doubting Hutchinson's sugges- tion that Shirley's active intrigues led to Belcher's downfall. We are accustomed to regard Shirley at a later date as a somewhat absurd civilian soldier ; but we find him as early as 1746 recognizing the impor- tance of the future site of Halifax, and his policy with regard to the Louis- bourg expedition is here fully vindicated. Dr. Wood writes with strong, though natural, animus against blundering British ministers, and perhaps ascribes to malice in the Duke of Bedford's behaviour what admits of other explanations ; still the general conclusion holds good that, if attention had been paid to Shirley's advice, the conquest of Canada might have taken place under much easier terms, and the heritage of debt have been, in great measure, avoided which was the immediate cause of the American Revolution. H. E. E. The third volume of Mr. Arthur Charles Cole's Centennial History of Illinois (Springfield : Illinois Centennial Commission, 1919) covers the period of the struggle about the expansion of slavery, the civil war, and reconstruction, 1848-70. The part which Illinois played in the history of this period is important. At its beginning Illinois was still in the condition of the frontier ; towns were few, railway building had hardly begun, the industrial future of the state was as yet unrealized, but population was flowing rapidly in. At its end the frontier had passed VOL. XXXVI. — NO. CXLIV. S S