Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/777

 REVIEWS 755 Community ' has revealed to us for the first time the inner life of medimval England.' te denies that there is any clear documentary evidence for the free village community in England. ' The great majority of the early grants of land, beginning as early as 674, ex- pressly transfer with the soil the cultivators upon it, and speak of them by precisely the same terms, assati and manentes, as were in contem- porary use upon the Continent to designate praedial serfs' (Preface p. xv). The conclusion implied is that the Engsh manor is the lineal descendant of the Roman vil/a, and that the freedom of the cultivator is comparatively modern. With reference to the Indian village, Professor Ashley suggests that in India, as in other countries, common. property may be reduced to common cultivation. ' Where the culti- vating group are in any real sense proprietors, they have no corporate character, and where they have a corporate character they are not proprietors' (Preface, p. xlvii). Whether we accept or reject this view, we must allow that Maine's theory of the Indian village commu- nity was coloured by his acquaintance with the theory of the Teutonic mark elaborated by Von Maurer and other German writers. The Indian evidence must be re-examined. It is the chief merit. of the Essay and the Preface that they compel a new testing of accepted theories. F. C. MONTAGUE Iuiustrial History of England. By H. DE B. CrIBBINS, M.A. (London: Methuen & Co., 1890.) THE difficulties of compressing a vast subject into a small book are so great that cordial acknowledgment is due to the writer who succeeds in that thankless task. Mr. Gibbins has in little more than two hundred pages given a clear and vigorous sketch of the industrial history of England. In writing so brief a history it is impossible to be very original, and Mr. Gibbins frankly owns his especial debt to the late Professor Rogers. That he should have freely helped himself from the stores of that learned writer was reasonable enough; but it is regrettable that he should have copied the dogmatism and asperity which might be pardoned in Mr. Rogers but are inexcusable in a younger man. First, as regards dogmatism. Mr. Gibbins not merely avoids discussion of doubtful points which might overload his book and bewilder the young students for whom it is designed, but he rarely, if ever, hints that on any subject there can be any view other than the one which he adopts. Thus he follows Mr. Rogers in asserting that the fifteenth century was the golden age of the English labourer without the least reference to the qualifications suggested by such writers as Dr. Cunningham or Mr. Denton. Industrial history must be simple indeed if we can always be sure that there is one view which is absolutely right whilst all other views are absolutely wrong. Then as to asperity. Mr. Gibbins has an ill word for almost everybody who has had a chance of doing 3c2