The abuses which marred the administration of the Dutch and of the English East India Companies present an interesting difference in their general character. The Dutch, up to the time when their Company was abolished, had never exhibited any high qualities of colonial statesmanship; and the officials of Netherlands-India occupied themselves chiefly with such matters of trade policy as appealed to the imagination of the directors in Holland. The result is that there is little record of action in the higher field of colonial government, but a vast literature of commercial transactions. In this, material evidence is not lacking of serious evils in the local administration, and of severe oppression of the lower classes by the native rulers, who exacted from the people the amount of forced labor necessary to secure the trade products required by the Dutch. What oppression there was, what injustice befell, what suffering was endured, concerned a people who, for the purposes of historical record, were inarticulate; and thus in the early accounts of Netherlands-India there is no Warren Hastings trial, and no detailed revelations under the searchlight of European investigation.

In British India the circumstances were utterly different. Here the record contains comparatively little about the Company's shopkeeping, but is filled with the narrative of great and stirring events. The abuses of the Company's rule in British India seldom touched the common people; they affected the affairs of the most powerful native princes; and each grievance, real or imaginary, was magnified a thousandfold before it reached Europe, because the aggrieved person had the power, as well as the desire, to make himself heard. It is very easy, therefore, to fall into the common error of believing that the Dutch East India Company was more humane in its relations with the natives than its English rival; but it must be remem2 bered that the evils of administration in British India, falling as they did chiefly on the upper classes, left the natives at large better off in many respects than they had been under their own rulers; whereas in Netherlands-India the worst

effects of the system of government were felt only by the lower classes, which were the least able to defend themselves, or to leave any record of their treatment.

The gradual improvement of administrative methods in the British and Dutch dependencies in Asia is due to a number of causes. The growth of popular interest in colonial affairs which has followed the universal spread of newspapers and magazines among the public, the eagerness with which, under our modernized form of party government, the Opposition seizes upon any colonial topic which .can be turned to political account, the increase of colonial travel and the augmentation of colonial trade which have taken place as a result of improved means of communication, the ability of instant protest and publicity at the seat of government which the submarine cable has placed at the disposal of every colonial malcontent-these factors have gone far towards removing all serious abuses in the government of those tropical dependencies which lie on or near the ordinary routes of commerce. But behind these elements of reform lies the mental development of the age, which has endowed us with such a keen sensitiveness to injustice or harshness of any kind that no evil which is great enough to reach the public, through any one of the numerous channels which are open to any one who has a tale to tell, can long remain unchecked.

The United States and France embarked upon their careers in southeastern Asia at the time when the principle of a just and tolerant rule over dependent races had already been accepted and applied by England and Holland. The French in Indo-China have based their administration upon the utilization of the native system of village government, and although the improvements in the mechanism of the higher control, which have been described in a previous article, are of very recent origin, there existed from the very first a certain sympathy with native ideas which can be traced in the record of administration, even when it shows most clearly a lack of wise adjustment to local conditions. In the final arrangements for the political

control of Indo-China the French were fortunate in this, that they combined with a democratic sentiment, no less real than that of the United States, past experience of a democratic régime in the tropics-the useful heritage of their West Indian adventures-and they were thus saved from the disappointments and vexations which would have followed any attempt to establish a Western form of government on the banks of the Mekong.

No consideration of the American Occupation of the Philippine Islands can lead to anything but confusion and misunderstanding unless at the outset emphasis is laid on the fact that none of the countries which have been the subject of our inquiry is in any sense a true colony, and that the whole significance of our data rests on the circumstance that there can never exist in any part of the Far Eastern tropics a population which is not, for all practical purposes, completely tropical in its general character. We have been dealing, then, not with colonies but with dependencies; and the vital importance of this distinction becomes more apparent when we consider, on the one hand, the general trend of development in each class of territory, and, on the other hand, the fallacies which have arisen in recent discussions of American expansion from the confusion of ideas due to an insufficient appreciation of the difference be tween the two kinds of subordinate countries. The War of American Independence was due to causes which had their origin in the inability or in the unwillingness of the British Government to realize the difference between a colony and a dependency; and the most important part of that war, as far as the British Empire was concerned, was the firm and final establishment of that difference in the public mind.

The nineteenth century witnessed the full expression of the new idea in the growth of British colonial policy. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, in a word, all the subordinate provinces of the British Empire in which white men are able to establish a permanent home, have been granted responsible self-government in a form

which leaves them a mastery of their internal affairs as complete as that which is enjoyed by the component parts of the United States. But if the political destiny of non-tropical colonies is clearly indicated by the experience of the great self-governing States of the British Empire, that of tropical dependencies is not less surely revealed by the history of the government of tropical countries by white rulers. In the whole range of British imperial experience there cannot be found an instance of any territory, in which white men cannot effect a permanent settlement on a large scale, where there has not been established and maintained a strictly dependent form of government; and even in those tropical dependencies which enjoy a rudimentary system of representation we find that the final word in all matters is spoken by the Colonial Office. The colonial history of France also affords an excellent example of the evolution of dependent governments, and it discloses a complete change of political practice as a result of actual experiment. The older dependencies of France (Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Réunion), which received their constitutions in the middle of the nineteenth century, at a time when the democratic enthusiasm of the French people was still in its first vigor, were endowed with representative institutions, and a vote was given to practically every negro. negro. Between this act and the growth of the new colonial empire of France there intervened a period of thirty years, during which an opportunity was afforded of observing the operation of the liberal constitutions of the old dependencies.

Every writer whose opinions have fallen under my notice has placed himself on record in condemnation of the use to which the natives of the tropical dependencies of France have put the power intrusted to them for the management of their affairs. The history of those French dependencies which were granted popular government fifty years ago has been one of disorder, injustice, brutality, incompetence, and dishonesty. These facts became matters of common knowledge in France; and in the new French dependencies not a single constitution has been established which grants any effect

ive control of affairs to the people of the country.

In the tropical dependencies of Holland, Germany, and Portugal the government is entirely under the control of officials of the sovereign State.

Even when we turn to the oversea possessions of the United States we find that, as a matter of fact, despite a great deal of talk about self-government and not a little complacent oratory in regard to the wide liberality of American policy as compared with that of the European Powers, neither Porto Rico nor the Philippine Archipelago has yet been-granted a constitution differing in any material political feature from that of a British tropical colony.

Finally, at the time this article goes to the printer, the United States has found it necessary to assume control of the financial affairs of Santo Domingo (one of the so-called Republics which reared themselves on the ruins of the Spanish Empire in America), which has gone from bad to worse during two generations of self-government.

The literature which treats of the recent expansion of the United States has already assumed the proportions of a library; but it is not necessary to make a very extended excursion into this field of study in order to discover that a great number of writers have drawn their arguments in favor of the establishment of popular self-government in the Philippines from a mistaken reference to the experience of the British non-tropical colonies or of non-tropical Japan.

If Canada and Australia are capable of self-government, why, we are asked, may not the Philippines look forward to a time when they too shall enjoy complete control of their internal affairs? To this query the facts which I have presented above should furnish a convincing reply. The reason why no such future is possible for the Philippines is that universal experience has shown that the inhabitants of a tropical country, where the native character has not been radically affected by the admixture of European blood, are not capable and cannot be made capable of maintaining a political system which can so admin

ister the government as to avoid serious complications with foreign Powers as a result of the disorder which is the invariable accompaniment of purely native rule.

As far as I am able to judge from a perusal of the general current literature of the day relative to the question of American oversea expansion, the appeal to past experience as a guide to present action is regarded as doctrinaire and wide of the mark. Although no attempt is made to controvert the overwhelming mass of facts which go to place the Philippine Islands in exactly the same category as all other tropical dependencies; although the United States has had some experience within its own borders of the political capacities of a tropical race which is for many reasons more favorably situated than are the Filipinos for the enjoyment of popular self-govment; although South and Central America, where the mass of the voters are greatly superior to what will constitute the same class in the Philippines, are speaking witnesses of the incapacity of tropical peoples for independent selfgovernment, the American people seem prepared to accept hope rather than experience as the basis of their policy. We are assured that in a few years the Philippine Islands will be enjoying complete internal self-government under a system of popular elections, and that the next generation is to witness a Filipino nation working out its own salvation as an independent State. As an ideal this leaves nothing to be desired; as a practical question of what is possible and what is impossible it lacks only a single hope of success which can be founded on any human experience of which the history of the tropics bears record. The experiment in the meantime is being undertaken at the expense and at the risk of the Filipino people; and it should not be overlooked that what for the United States is little more than a matter of interesting observation is for the Philippine Islands an affair of the most vital importance.

In conclusion, I may say that I should be very well pleased if I could be as certain, after fifteen years of study in the tropics, that my views on colonial government are right as a great many

people who have never been in the tropics are certain that they are wrong.

I have endeavored, in the course of the series of articles which is now brought to a conclusion, to present to the readers

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WO important historical works, widely contrasted in their mode of presenting the story of human life, have recently appeared the "Cambridge Modern History," and the "Historians' History of the World." The former is the latest development of the modern type. The readers of The Outlook are acquainted with its peculiarity of portioning the various chapters of United States History, for instanceamong a dozen or more specialists, severally limited to a small part of the field. The latter, on the other hand, is a modern improvement of the ancient mode of writing history seen in the Old Testament.

The documentary theory worked out by the higher criticism in its exhibition of the separate writings woven together into a single book, such as Genesis, has made this type of historical composition widely known. However uncritically the final editor, or editors, wove together those strands of earlier narrative regardless of discrepancies, the vigor and freshness that constitute their perennial charm were preserved as they could not otherwise have been.

This ancient plan, corrected by the critical editing that the modern spirit requires, not only bringing together the best material extant, but presenting it in the very form given by its writers, has evident attractiveness. There is a flavor in the story of Greece as told by Herodotus and Thucydides, or of Rome in the words of Livy and Tacitus, that is lost in the modern digests of these masters. Then, if one would follow the ancient historian with the critical interpretation that the modern has reached, it is much to have at hand in the same

The Historians History of the World, A Com prehensive Narrative of the Rise and Development of Nations as Recorded by over Two Thousand of the Great Writers of All Ages. Edited, with the Assistance of a Distinguished Board of Advisers and Contributors, by Henry Smith Williams, LL.D. In 25 vols. The Outlook Co., 225 Fourth Avenue, New York.

volume the judgments of such authorities for Greece as Curtius, Grote, and Mahaffy, or of Niebuhr, Merivale, and Mommsen for Rome. In still another way than this the" Historians History' draws from the modern specialist as well as from the early writer. Its continuous documentary web of more than two thousand writers, ancient and modern, is fringed by chapters in which the large and general aspects of this or that period are critically reviewed by eminent scholars. The " Principles of Law in Islam," the "Intellectual Development of Russia," a " Characterization of the Tudor and Stuart Periods," the "Political Evolution of France since 1815," the "Essentials of American Diplomacy," are specimens of this important series of special articles. Akin to these in importance are the great public documents that mark turning-points in national history, or stadia in human progress; for instance, the more important international treaties, as that of Vienna in 1815, which closed the Napoleonic wars, the recently discovered code of Hammurabi, B.C. 2300, the Capitulary of Charlemagne, A.D. 802, The Truce of God, 1085, Magna Charta, the English Bill of Rights, the Constitution of the German Empire, the Constitution of Japan. It is worth much to have such papers at hand in a single work.

The recent completion of this encyclopædic History by the appearance of its twenty-fourth volume requires a notice of it supplementary to that in The Outlook June 25, 1904, upon its small first installment. Amid twenty fresh volumes one naturally examines the nearest. Nearly six volumes are occupied with the history of English-speaking peoples, and nearly the whole of one volume with the history of the United States. Here the general description above given becomes especially appreciable by Ameri

can readers. The earliest data appear in the words of the pioneers themselves, and in their own curious spelling. The beginnings of the Virginia colony are related by Captain John Smith in his account of the landing at Jamestown, and by President Wingfield in the narrative of his colony's early privations. The beginnings of the Plymouth Colony are related in extracts from Governor Bradford's "Plimoth Plantation," the precious MS. recently restored to the State of Massachusetts by the Bishop of London. Then the great historians enter with Bancroft in Catholic Maryland and Puritan Massachusetts. Few American families possess the complete works of our four or five greatest national historians. Not many indulge themselves in more than a single volume of their country's story. It is a distinct satisfaction to find so many of the choice pages of Bancroft and Parkman, McMaster and Fiske, Schouler, and others of equal note, brought together in one book. Here are Parkman's brilliant narratives of the defeat of Braddock near where Pittsburg now stands, and of the destruction of the French power on this continent by Wolfe at Quebec. Here are Bancroft's famous story of the embattled farmers of Lexington, and Creasy's account of the overthrow of Burgoyne at Saratoga as one of "the fifteen decisive battles of the world." The record of the Revolution is condensed into about fifty pages, yet makes room for Charles Francis Adams's sharp critique, and a rebuttal of it, on the generalship of Washington, and is supplemented by a statesmanlike view of the struggle in a paper on "Some Important Aspects of the American Revolution" by Professor McLaughlin, of the Carnegie Institution. In the list of authorities quoted on the Revolutionary War one misses the brilliant and impartial work of Sir George Trevelyan.

The subsequent domestic struggle for National unity, and the struggle with England for the freedom on the ocean that had been won on the continent, are appropriately grouped in a chapter on "The Establishment of the Union." Here the rule, followed throughout the work, in cases of a disagreement of

authorities, of presenting the divergent views to the reader's judgment, is illustrated by the juxtaposition of the different estimates of the Constitution made by Professors Hart and von Holst. Relating to the war of 1812-15 several extracts are drawn from the writings of Mr. Roosevelt, and Professor Hart describes the formidable secession movement in New England, fortunately nipped by the return of peace. And so the history runs on through the succeeding decades to the close of the Civil War, embodying many reprints from copyrighted works on points of special importance, such as the Constitution of the Confederacy, or the battle of Gettysburg, and concluding with an original chapter on the period from 1865 to the election of last November.

Aside from such minor slips as may naturally occur amid a host of details, two serious points of criticism require mention. The war with Mexico was condemned at the time by many good citizens. Eight States of the twenty-five then in the Union had protested against the annexation of Texas as certain to provoke it. Enlightened public sentiment now regards it as a blot on our National record. Not only is the contemporary opposition to it glossed over, but a somewhat apologetic tone is adopted. As to the slavery question, and its part in bringing on the Civil War, there should have been some hint of the turnabout made from the time when anti-slavery societies flourished and manumissions were frequent in the slaveholding States to the time when, a generation later, slavery became, as Alexander Stephens confessed, the corner-stone of the Confederacy. Some account of this regressive movement is required for an understanding of the strange plunge made in 1861. In lack of this, the reader may suppose that Southern sentiment toward slavery had undergone no change, and that the slaveholding interest remained the same under Jefferson Davis as under Thomas Jeffer