That the mid-seventeenth century in some way marked a turning point in English history now seems generally accepted. It witnessed, Professor Davis tells us, the beginning of a commercial revolution; it saw, Mr Hill has argued, the country converted to a vigorous new style imperialism. These are large questions which cannot be debated here. But what particularly concerns us is the corollary to such assumptions, that before this grand climacteric England was negligible at sea; and that, as it has recendy been put, ‘the basis on which England established itself in 1588 as the first naval power of Europe was created only during the previous two decades.’

A Major source of difficulty in interpreting the political thought of Dr Robert Brady, the high tory historian who imparted a new dimension to the political quarrels of late Stuart England, arises out of a limitation that he imposed upon himself in writing history. He deliberately included very little political reflection in his writings, observing that he would not ‘inlarge further upon the great Use and Advantage Those that read Old Historians may make of these Discourses, but leave that to the Judgment of Understanding Readers’. This limitation may be offset, it is suggested here, by placing Brady securely within the intellectual framework created by the contemporary theories of legal sovereignty mat had originated during the English civil war and were fast becoming tradition by the late years of Charles II. When Brady made his researches public, almost all the elements were present that were required for fashioning a theory of legal sovereignty on the lines made famous in Blackstone. Englishmen were reading Sir Thomas Smith and Sir Edward Coke on the uncontrollable authority that resided in parliament for making, confirming, repealing, and expounding laws; and many of them were by this time accustomed to associating the legislative power, itself a new expression, with sovereignty in the state. They had also learned during the civil war years to recognize law-making as the characteristic function of their high court of parliament. All that remained for the whole to fall

During the War of American Independence, the Treasury Board contracted for a wide range of army supplies. Opposition, both in parliament and the press, persistendy criticized the methods employed in the allocation of contracts. It was widely believed that contracts were awarded in the interests of ministerial influence, not public economy; contractors were the friends of government and enjoyed excessive profits. The most frequendy proposed alternative was to contract through public advertisement and accept the lowest tender received. This method was normally referred to as open contracting. Isaac Barre was the main opposition spokesman on matters relating to army supplies and it was his view, expressed in the House during April 1778, that ‘contracts ought to be open, and offered to the lowest bidder'. Government spokesmen and contractors sitting in the House regularly countered this argument with the assertion that open contracts’ would be prejudicial to the public service. Men inadequate to the accomplishment of the contracts, would at all times bid lower than men of ability and reputation, and they would do much more injury by serving the public badly, than the difference of expense. 'Although neither Lord North nor John Robinson, the Treasury Secretary mainly responsible for contract business, were fully satisfied with existing contract methods, they sought economies within those methods and even the Shelburne ministry, when it radically altered the contracting system for supplying the army in America in 1782, decided against the open contracts championed by friends of Shelburne when in opposition.

On 26 January 1870 die Marquis de La Valette, French ambassador to London, read to the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Clarendon, ‘a long and able letter’ from Count Daru, the French Foreign Secretary. In this letter Daru suggested that Clarendon recommend to the Prussian Government some measure of reciprocal French and Prussian disarmament. Daru's proposal was immediately taken up. Clarendon wrote to the queen the same day informing her of his intention to do so and to his friend Lord Lyons, the British ambassador at Paris, saying that Count Daru could be sure he would do everything possible ‘to meet his views’. As one might expect from so easy a reception the idea of disarma- ment, especially of Franco-Prussian disarmament, was not a new one to Lord Clarendon. In his letter to Lord Lyons he described it as a subject he had ‘long had at heart’; and he informed Lyons that during the previous summer, whilst he and the Russian Foreign Secretary Gortchakoff had been at a German watering place, he had unsuccessfully proposed that Gortchakoff take up die matter with Prussia. But one must note straightaway that, however warmly Clarendon accepted the idea that he suggest disarmament to Prussia, he did not expect to be successful, i.e. he did not expect Prussia to make any move to disarm in any measure. In his letter to the queen Clarendon says that he feels failure is certain with the king of Prussia. He has some faint hopes with the Crown Prince, Queen Victoria's son-in-law, but he does not dwell on them. In his letters both to Lyons and to the queen, Clarendon says, in almost identical phrases, that while the king of Prussia does not desire war,’… far from it, his army is his idol and he will not be an iconoclast’. It is most unlikely, he continues, that the king will countenance any proposal to reduce the size of his army or to alter the Prussian system of recruitment.

THIS is an attempt to provide a broad and critical analysis of British policy towards the Siamese Malay States which lay to the north of the British possessions and protectorates in the Malay Peninsula. Four of them, Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan and Trengganu, were transferred to British suzerainty in 1909 and now form part of Malaysia. The period under examination was one of unusually keen rivalry between Britain and France in the whole of mainland Southeast Asia and one of its unique features was the preservation of the independence of the Kingdom of Siam. Apart from the other needs of imperialism, the policies of die two Powers in Siam were to a considerable extent influenced by the presence of their vast colonial possessions in the periphery of Siam. These basic facts of the history of the region have, not unnaturally, led to a variety of approaches to the problem of the extension of British political control in the Malay Peninsula.

There are grounds for arguing that the dynamic thrust of English Liberalism in the early twentieth century was in the direction of social democracy; and that this was a necessary condition of the survival of the Liberal party as a party of government. By 1910, according to this view, the party represented workingclass interests rather than those of any other class. But what about business Liberalism? We are likely to discover an upper limit of its strength among businessmen involved in the cotton trade (cotton bosses). As the party of Free Trade, the Liberals were well placed here. There was no sectional reason why the Conservative programme of Tariff Reform should attract these industrialists. Having no need of protection in home or Empire markets, the cotton industry had almost nothing to gain from an artificial restriction of competition, whereas it had much to lose if a system of tariffs increased production costs.

The question of the direction of the speech which Lloyd George made at the height of the Agadir crisis of 1911 has recently been raised again by Dr Cosgrove. His article, however, is in some respects not entirely satisfactory. Most of the material that he uses to revive the traditional version of the Mansion House speech – namely that it was directed against the Germans – is derived from letters which deal with reactions to it, most of them Foreign Office reactions, and some of them at a considerable remove from the event itself. Admittedly one can build a prima facie case on ‘the entirely different impressions’ which the speech was observed to produce in Paris and in Berlin. There was the placing of it by Paul Cambon, the French Ambassador to London, at the end of a line of mounting irritation in England against the attitude of Germany, as the sort of thing the Spectator might have quoted in support of its thesis of the necessity of the union ‘intime évidente, affirmée’ of England and France; and his suggestion that French papers be encouraged ‘à publier quelques appréciations flatteuses de ce discours et de son auteur’.

The National Democratic Party (NDP) provides the most spectacular example of a ‘ mushroom ’ party in twentieth century British politics. It first fielded candidates in the 1918 general election, and ten of them were returned to parliament. Those of its M.P.s who defended their seats in 1922 all stood under different auspices; they were all defeated, and none of them was ever again elected. Yet in its short career the NDP and its predecessors underwent some very considerable changes in structure and purpose. Their origin must be sought in the widely different, and often confused, attitudes to the First World War which existed in the Labour party and the various Socialist groups.