Table E shows the character of the emigration from the aforesaid provinces for illiteracy, and for economy so far as the state of the savings banks is any criterion.

The statistics of illiteracy are of three different kinds: in those giving the illiterates over six years of age, of course all the very old men and women are included; those relating to marriage include both men and women of various ages, but most of them young; among the conscripts the illiterates are young men of twenty, all of whom ought to have had a chance of receiving instruction, and all of whom have been born since Italy became a united country. It must be added that such is the progress of education that the percentage of illiterates among

married pairs and among conscripts diminishes yearly, though more in the North than in the South of Italy. Of the emigrants coming to the United States in all probability 82 per cent or to take the figures in their most favorable aspect, at least 78 per cent· do not know how to read and write. We therefore have to deal with an ignorant class of immigrants.

But the poverty of the

Now as to their thrift. In the statistics of the savings banks are not included the monti di pietà or government pawnshops; the casse di prestanze agrarie or agricultural loan-banks; or the various opere pie, i.e., benevolent institutions. Into the condition of these last, and especially as regards the amount of money wasted in the management, an inquest is now in progress; and it is hoped that a complete reform will soon be made. The thrift of Southern Italy, as shown by the savings banks, by no means compares with that of Northern Italy; nor do the country districts approach in that respect the large towns. According to what has been quoted above, the savings institutions in some parts of South Italy have not been a benefit to the class from which emigration is derived. peasantry by no means argues a want of thrift; for we find that the emigrants who have returned with a little money are then able to display those economic qualities which distinguish Italians. For they are a frugal, temperate, and industrious race. The existence of the public lotteries has often been brought up as a proof of Italian thriftlessness; but statistics prove, curiously enough, that even in districts where the amount spent in lotteries increases, the amount deposited in savings banks. increases in even greater proportion. As the Italians are notoriously hard-working and industrious, they would prove extremely desirable settlers and, in the second generation, good citizens, for the habit of thrift is one to be encouraged rather than discouraged in America; and fears lest they might introduce a lower style of living to the detriment of the country seem, at least to the writer, unfounded. In countries like the Argentine and Uruguay, where (partly owing to their numbers and concentration) they do not have so many difficulties of language to contend with, the Italians have proved a very desirable class of

settlers; and in the province of Rosario, for instance, they are predominant. In other parts of the Argentine they have much of the trade in their hands and control most of the river navigation.

As to the general morality of the Italians, the reports of our consuls give a very favorable account. The percentage of illegitimacy is very small; but Italy is a country in which marriages are made very early. I have not attempted to give any criminal statistics, because, on studying them, I found that the districts of the Court of Appeal did not coincide with the territorial divisions and that the laws still varied in the different parts of the country-unity in criminal legislation and criminal justice not yet having been attained. Add to this that criminal. statistics are in general worthless, except in comparisons with other countries, and even then are worth little, unless there be a certain equality in civilization and a similarity in the modes of administering justice.

Perhaps I may be allowed to give my personal experience. I have travelled in almost every part of Italy at all times of day and night, and have never been in any way molested or had any suspicion of trouble. I have lived now for over three years on the outskirts of Alassio, a town of 6000 inhabitants, about half-way between Nice and Genoa. Theft here is rare, burglary unknown; so that we have slept for weeks with doors unlocked and even open-after the earthquake for instance- and never think of locking them during the day, though the house may be quite deserted. A murder has not been known here for fifty years, until recently in a quarrel between workmen from distant provinces. Illegitimate children are very rare; crimes produced by lust are almost unknown.

Taking everything together it would seem that the Italians, in spite of poverty and illiteracy, are- if they will remain in the United States a desirable element to fuse with our motley population. They bring to us the logical qualities of the Latin race, and they show in the long run the effect of an experience which no other people in Europe has had of over two thousand years of civilization.

EUGENE SCHUYLER.

THE MATERIALS FOR ENGLISH LEGAL HISTORY.

DISTINGUISHED English lawyer has recently stated his opinion that the task of writing a history of English law may perhaps be achieved by some of the antiquarian scholars of Germany or America, but that "it seems hardly likely that any one in this country [England, to wit] will have the patience and learning to attempt it." The compliment thus paid to Germany and America is, as I venture to think, well deserved; but a comparison of national exploits is never a very satisfactory performance. It is pleasanter, easier, safer to say nothing about the quarter whence good work has come or is likely to come, and merely to chronicle the fact that it has been done or to protest that it wants doing. And as regards the matter in hand, the history of English law, there really is no reason why we should speak in a hopeless tone. If we look about us a little, we shall see that very much has already been achieved, and we shall also see that the times are becoming favorable for yet greater achievements.

Let us take this second point first. The history of history seems to show that it is only late in the day that the laws of a nation become in the historian's eyes a matter of first-rate importance, or perhaps we should rather say, a matter demanding thorough treatment. No one indeed would deny the abstract proposition that law is, to say the least, a considerable element in national life; but in the past historians have been apt to assume that it is an element which remains constant, or that any variations in it are so insignificant that they may safely be neglected. The history of external events, of wars and alliances, conquests and annexations, the lives of kings and great men, these seem easier to write, and for a while they are really more attractive; a few lightly written paragraphs on "the manners and customs of the period" may be thrown in, but they must not be very

1 Charles Elton, English Historical Review, 1889, p. 155.

long nor very serious. It is but gradually that the desire comes upon us to know the men of past times more thoroughly, to know their works and their ways, to know not merely the distinguished men but the undistinguished also. History then becomes "constitutional"; even for the purpose of studying the great men and the striking events, it must become constitutional, must try to reproduce the political atmosphere in which the heroes lived and their deeds were done. But it cannot stop there; already it has entered the realm of law, and it finds that realm an organized whole, one that cannot be cut up into departments by hard and fast lines. The public law that the historian wants as stage and scenery for his characters is found to imply private law, and private law a sufficient knowledge of which cannot be taken for granted. In a somewhat different quarter there arises the demand for social and economic history; but the way to this is barred by law, for speaking broadly we may say that only in legal documents and under legal forms are the social and economic arrangements of remote times made visible to us. The history of law thus appears as means to an end, but at the same time we come to think of it as interesting in itself; it is the history of one great stream of human thought and endeavor, of a stream which can be traced through centuries, whose flow can be watched decade by decade and even year by year. It may indeed be possible for us, in our estimates of the sum total of national life, to exaggerate the importance of law; we may say, if we will, that it is only the skeleton of the body politic; but students of the body natural cannot afford to be scornful of bones, nor even of dry bones; they must know their anatomy. Have we then any cause to speak despondently when every writer on constitutional history finds himself compelled to plunge more deeply into law than his predecessors have gone, when every effort after economic history is demonstrating the absolute necessity for a preliminary solution of legal problems, when two great English historians who could agree about nothing else have agreed that English history must be read in the Statute Book?1 In course of time the amendment will be

1 Contemporary Review, vol. xxxi (1877–78), p. 824, Mr. Freeman on Mr. Froude.