demands important changes in the French law relative to labor, which, in his opinion, is altogether inadequate.

M. Béchaux gives an unwarrantably broad meaning to the term economics, including within it many matters which others would include only within the far wider limits of social science. But his work is most valuable, not only as a criticism of the present method of legal instruction, but as a succinct analysis of the effects on social and economic relations of the most widely adopted modern systems of law.

F. J. G. Penological and Preventive Principles, with special reference to Europe and America, etc. By WILLIAM TALLACK, Secretary of the Howard Association, London, 1889.414 pp.

Crime, its Causes and Remedy.

London, 1889.-264 pp.

By L. GORDON RYLANDS.

Mr. Tallack's work embodies the fruit of long experience seconded by careful reading. Its merit lies in a happy combination of enthusiasm and insight. The author's aim has evidently been to write a readable book, in which he has succeeded by the use of a wealth of concrete matter, sometimes slightly to the detriment of continuity and clear arrangement. Preventive principles occupy the first place, but the discussion of the causes of crime and the means of diminishing it, a subject so intimately bound up with the whole moral and economic condition of society, is necessarily scant. We have a forcible presentation of the evils of ill-advised charity, of the mistake of looking at things isolated from their surroundings, of the folly of being guided by popular opinion, and finally of the good to be accomplished by the spread of religion.

All prison systems are generally unsatisfactory-such is our author's introduction to the discussion of penological principles. This conclusion is reached after an account of the state of prisons in the principal countries, together with a statement of a few of the plans for their reform presented and put into practice. Certain conclusions which the author does not express force themselves upon the reader. Thus it clearly appears that very few countries have a prison system, i.e., a fixed, definite, plan of organization and work. The state of prisons is in most countries the result of a modification of the totally inadequate institutions of earlier days with an occasional ingrafting of new principles. Belgium is the only state with a penal system logically carried through. England is making efforts in this direction, but that inequalities remain is amply testified by Mr. Tallack's work. Is not the ill-success of so-called systems to be ascribed in large part to what is in reality a lack of system? Certain much-vaunted plans have upon trial been gradually discontinued

after passing into the hands of others than those who founded them. Their first success was undoubtedly due to the personal force of the founders. Their ultimate failure was, we believe, as often due to the lack of anything like plan and arrangement running through all the prisons as from inherent defects. Nowhere have the smaller local prisons been brought into line with the reforms carried through in prisons of the first degree. The reform of jails is felt to be the question of the hour in penological science. That reform is in its infancy, and perhaps to this fact must be attributed in some degree the failure of systems. One cannot escape the conviction that, however unsatisfactory systems may have been, many unreasonable demands have been made upon them.

In the following discussion of special topics (prison discipline, labor, etc.) the reasons why prison systems are unsatisfactory are given and the possibilities of improvement indicated. The suggestions of the author are often instructive. He believes in punishments increasing in severity with repetitions of the crime, and pleads for more just proportions in the sentences pronounced. The cause of justice is not promoted by long sentences for trivial offences; yet English courts have sent men to prison five years for stealing shirts, etc. (Page 170.) If there were any absolute ratio between the punishment and the crime, English judges would not show a predilection for the terms five, seven and ten years, almost neglecting the intervening periods. From similar facts American penologists have drawn the conclusion that it is advisable to leave the determination of the length of the sentence to the discretion of prison wardens, rather than to the unrelated efforts of a score or more of judges.

The book reviews the existing agencies for the suppression of crime, and seeks to find the correct proportions for their operations. Sentences should, the author believes, be short and sharp, served as a rule in solitary confinement, and not prolonged beyond the time when prison life may be said to have ruined the physical constitution. Hence he urges a maximum sentence of twenty years, with the abolition of capital punishment and life sentences. In the treatment of minor offences the use of fines, police supervision, in some cases of corporal punishment, might be more effective than that of prisons.

The conclusions are based upon extended observation, and give evidence of insight that carries conviction. It is clear that the prison question is not a single problem, but an aggregate of questions of detail. The indirect lesson of the book is that deep-seated changes and reforms. are the result of general causes affecting the motives of human actions, and not of the perfection of institutions. This may be a truism among men of science, but there must be constant recurrence to it to check the zeal of popular reformers.

Mr. Rylands' work shows also our limitations in the discussion of the causes of crime. Beyond the generalities, heredity and environment, we find no satisfactory formulation of these causes. Our present method of treating crime has almost reached the maximum of its efficiency. If further progress is to be made we must abandon the deterrent principle which lies at the bottom of it. Hopes for a betterment of our present condition can be founded only upon a more vigorous treatment of juvenile delinquents, and those who threaten to become such, in industrial and reformatory schools where habits of industry and morality must be ingrained into them. This would greatly diminish the number of adult criminals and permit a more satisfactory treatment of them. The sentence should be adapted, not to the crime, but to the criminal, perhaps by a system of classification. The aim of the plan must be the reformation of the prisoner, and, where this is impossible, his permanent incarceration, eventually execution. It is a necessary corollary that the parents should contribute to the support of the schools proposed, and that the prisons should be self-supporting.

Mr. Tallack shows the possibilities of the present system at its best. Mr. Rylands discusses needed changes. He does not pretend to have solved the question in all its details, but to have indicated the broad general lines upon which progress must take place. The two works supplement each other in an agreeable manner, and each is in its own way a contribution to our knowledge which will be welcomed.

ROLAND P. FALKNER.

American Constitutional Law. By J. I. CLARK HARE, LL.D. Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1889. — 2 vols., viii, 1400 pp.

This is a book for the practitioner and the advanced student of private law. It is very full and very satisfactory upon that side of the constitution which we may term the civil rights side. The author manifests a very comprehensive and accurate knowledge of the latest decisions of the courts, both of the United States and of the commonwealths, upon all the questions of personal rights and private property falling within the purview of the constitution. He treats them all with vigor and perspicuity and places his reader fully abreast of the existing judicial interpretation of this side of the constitution.

This is hardly, however, a text-book for beginners in the study of private law. Its arrangement is not sufficiently logical for that. It is topical rather than systematic. It is a collection of lectures instead of a treatment of subjects according to scientific classification. With this, however, I do not find any fault. I simply point it out as determining the class of readers and students to which the book naturally appeals.

The part of the work which I find to criticise is what we may call the political science side. The author has, indeed, mastered all the judicial decisions upon this side of the subject and has followed them with scrupulous faithfulness. Judicial decision, however, plays but a secondary rôle in political science and public law. Philosophy, history, comparative legislation and governmental custom are the more important sources of these sciences. I do not think the author manifests any greater command of these sources, to say the most, than Kent and Story displayed. I do not think he has developed the political science of the constitution, the theory of our public law, a single stage beyond the point at which they left it. He holds to the same doctrine of natural rights. He confounds the nation as an ethnological concept with the nation as a political concept. He does not clearly distinguish the nation from the national government. He does not accord the Continental Congress, as the revolutionary organization of the American state, its proper place. He attributes sovereignty indiscriminately to the nation, the general government and the commonwealths. These are the old faults of American political science. These are the old obstacles in the way of advance in the development of the theory of our public law. Moving in the circle of such conceptions, and embarrassed by such a nomenclature, it was impossible to do more than reproduce the old confusion in theory, out of which, with equal justification, two conflicting views of our political system have sprung. It is the old story of the jurist endeavoring to do the work of the publicist.

It must be said in justice to the author, however, that he is more consistent in his work than many of the lawyers who have undertaken to deal with the subjects of public law-more consistent, indeed, than many of the judges who have rendered decisions in this field. For example, the Supreme Court of the United States, the body charged with the ultimate defence of private rights, has recognized to the commonwealths the possession of a widely extended, an undefined, absolute power over individual liberty, which it terms the police power. It is strange that, while viewing almost every other part of the constitution from the standpoint of private rights, the court should determine the powers of the commonwealths over personal liberty and private property from the principles of a most despotic public law and an excessively particularistic political science. Our author evidently feels this inconsistency, and manifests some dissent from the exaggerated conception of the police power of the commonwealths now entertained in our jurisprudence. He does not, however, help us to a more exact definition of this power, whereby we may place it under such limitations as will render it less hostile and dangerous to the rights of person and the security of property.

While, therefore, I cannot class this book among the works which the

German scholars would call "bahnbrechend" or "epochemachend,” still I would recommend it to the readers of the QUARTERLY as a most thorough, excellent and timely exposition of that portion of our private law which is guaranteed and protected by the federal constitution.

JOHN W. BURGESS.

Publications of the American Statistical Association. New Series. No. 1 Statistics of Water Power employed in Manufacturing in the United States. By GEO. F. SWAIN. Nos. 2 and 3: I. Park Areas and open Spaces in American and European Cities. By E. R. L. GOULD. II. Key to the Publications of the United States Census, 1790-1887, etc. By EDWARD CLARK LUNT. No. 4: Life Insurance in the United States. By WALTER C. WRIGHT. Miscellany, etc. Boston, 1888. — 8vo, 181 pp.

The American Statistical association was established nearly fifty years ago, and began the publication of papers as early as 1847. For many years, however, it has lain in a quiescent (not to say moribund) condition, and regular publication ceased after the issue of the first volume of the proceedings. During this period it has accumulated a statistical library of considerable value, including the books of its former president, Dr. Edward Jarvis, bequeathed by him on his death in 1884, and a fund of some thousands of dollars. Recently, under the presidency of Francis A. Walker, the society has shown signs of new life. Its library has been removed to a room in the building of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where it is being arranged and catalogued by the energetic secretary, Professor Davis R. Dewey. Finally, the association has determined to use its funds for publishing quarterly the papers read at its meetings. The first numbers of the new series form the subject of this notice.

These papers, if not very ambitious, are useful and are carefully done. Professor Swain's paper on water power in the United States presents in a readable form the results gained by the tenth census with further additions of his own. Dr. Gould's paper on city parks is a careful comparison of European and American cities in this respect, and urges the importance of such open-air spaces for the health of urban populations. Mr. Lunt's extended classification of the subjects covered by the different censuses of the United States will be extremely useful to all statisticians or other persons seeking information. Mr. Wright gives valuable statistics of life insurance in this country, with criticism of the "assessment " and "tontine" systems. It is to be hoped that the association will feel encouraged to keep up the publication of these papers.

R. M. S.