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 Rditorial Department. capacity as advisory counsel to the Transvaal Republic on the legal questions arising under the Conventions with the Imperial Government. As a result of his study and investigations we have a valuable book. The history of the British and Dutch in South Africa is outlined; the va cillating attitude, in the past, of the Imperial Government towards the Boers calls forth the strong condemnation of the author. To this he lays much of the blame for the present serious trouble. While he treats, at some length, the wrongs of the Uitlanders, giving both versions, he finds that the real cause of the conflict does not lie there. For, in Dr. Farrelly's view, war was inevitable, sooner or later; the Boers had accepted with enthusiasm the so-called young Afrikander propaganda, which spread over South Africa immediately after the retroces sion of the Transvaal, following the unavenged defeat of Majuba Hill. What this propaganda sought was nothing less than the complete ex pulsion of the British from South Africa, leaving them only a naval and army station, and the establishment, in their stead, of an independent Afrikander nation. Such a blow might threaten the stability of Imperial rule the world over; so that the present war became in fact a fight for the very existence of the British Km pire. To our minds, this is the ground, if any, on which the war can be justified. And if, as the author holds, " the continued existence of the Empire turns on the inclusion or the exclusion of South .Africa from its sphere of influence," he is clearlyright in insisting on the necessity of finality in the settlement after the war is over; a settlement in which, he maintains, British supremacy must be established beyond question, by making, for some time at least, the two Boer Republics into a Crown Colony. BOOKS RECEIVED.

THE MASQUE OF JUDGMENT. A MasqueDrama in Five Acts and a Prelude. By William Vaughan Moody. Boston : Small, Maynard and Company. 1900. Cloth: $1.50 (pp. 127). FORTUNE AND MEN'S EYES. New Poems with a Play. By Josephine Preston Peabody. Boston: Small, Maynard and Company, 1900. Cloth: $1.50 (pp. i n). CONCERNING CHILDREN. By Charlotte Per kins [Stetson] Gilman.. Boston : Small, Maynard and Company. 1900. Cloth: $1.25 (pp. 298).

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NEW LAW BOOKS.

THE LAW OF INSURANCE AS APPLIED то FIRE, LIFE, ACCIDENT, GUARANTEE, AND OTHER NON-MARITIME RISKS. By John Wilder May. Fourth edition, revised, analyzed, and greatly enlarged by John M. Gould. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. 1900. Two volumes. Law sheep. $12.00. (xciv -f- vi + 1510 pp.) May on Insurance first appeared in 1873. There has been a new edition every nine years. Here is an emphatic verdict by the profession that the book is useful. The noticeable feature of the work is that it omits marine insurance. This omission, though thoroughly in accordance with the present taste of most American lawyers, indicates a great change in point of view since the time when marine insurance was much the most impor tant application of the general doctrines of in demnity. Insurance, as a branch of legal literature, has had an interesting history. The earliest English books into which one must look for the law upon this subject are hardly law books at all. They are books made for merchants. The most im portant of them are Malynes' Lex Mercatoria (1622), Molloy's De Jure Marítimo (1676), and Magens on Insurances (1755). In early days lawyers and the ordinary courts had few dealings with the subject. Insurance was simply one of the incidents of foreign trade. Underwriting was in the hands of merchants — largely foreigners. Disputes were settled by arbitration, or at any rate in tribunals foreign to the common law. The principles applied were not local, but world-wide. Thus it happened that for several centuries after insurance was known in England, the topic was not conceived to be one on which some knowledge should be possessed by an English lawyer. Even before 1756, however, — which was the beginning of Lord Mansfield's chief justiceship, — insurance cases became not unusual in the ordinary courts. This was because war with Spain and with France produced a great increase in marine underwriting and gave rise to many losses and disputes. After Lord Mansfield had been on the bench a few years, war with the United States and with the greater part of conti nental Europe led to a still greater amount of liti gation. Then came lawyers' books on insurance.