United States Governor Charles Polk, of Delaware, Trusten Polk, Governor of Missouri, and United States Senator, and President James K. Polk. From Maryland the family removed to Pennsylvania, and from this province, Thomas Polk, the grandfather of the Bishop, removed to Mecklenburg County, N. C., in 1753.

It was through the influence of Thomas Polk that the Assembly of North Carolina chartered in 1771 Queen's Museum, located in Charlotte, and destined to serve as a sort of high school and college for the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian element by whom the section was principally settled. But the charter was annulled by the king. The Schism Act was enforced in North Carolina from 1730 to 1773. The charter was withheld from the Newbern Academy in 1766 because the headmaster was not required to be of the Church of England, the Edenton Academy had the same fortune in 1768 and Queen's Museum, to escape a similar fortune, provided that the president should be an Episcopalian. But the Board of Trade saw through the arrangement, the fellows and tutors would still be Presbyterians, a charter would lend "encouragement to dissent," and was therefore not given. But Thomas Polk had the pleasure of seeing the institution flourish in spite of royal prohibitions, and it was instrumental in preparing the minds of the people of Mecklenburg for the stirring scenes enacted there in May, 1775. In their efforts for independence, no people were in advance of those of Mecklenburg, and perhaps their defeat in the matter of Queen's Museum acted as a spur to bolder deeds.

Thomas Polk was one of the leading actors in the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence of the twentieth of May, so called, and also in that of the thirty-first of May. On the disputed matter of dates, Dr. Polk does not undertake to enter in detail. Such would have been impossible, for no phase of the history of North Carolina has been so widely discussed, or has such an extensive literature. He follows largely the strong address on the affirmative side by the Hon. William A. Graham, but does not seem to be well acquainted with the arguments on the negative side of the question.

Bishop Polk was intended by his father for the army. His own feelings led him into the church. Perhaps there are no more interesting sections in the book than those relating to his work as Missionary Bishop of the Southwest. This post he occupied from 1838 to 1841. His work embraced Arkansas, Indian Territory, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. In many places he found that religion was hardly thought of; in others the church was unorganized, and much time was spent in organization. He was transferred to the Diocese of Louisiana in 1841. Here was the scene of his life work. There were then but two church buildings and five clergymen in the State. In 1860 he

had seen the clergy increase seven-fold, the members ten-fold and parishes and missions twenty-fold. When entering upon his Episcopate he became a planter and took the negroes coming to his wife by inheritance, rather than money, under the deliberate conviction that, as a planter, he could exercise a greater influence among a society of planters. But he never failed to recognize that his mission was as much to the slave as to his master, as his action in building St. John's Church for his own negroes while living in Tennessee will sufficiently indicate. Perhaps no more typical description of the patriarchal character of the ante-bellum Southern planter can be found than those chapters describing his home life and his tender relations to his family and slaves, and, in the absence of an extensive literature dealing with the private life of the old-time Southerner of the better class, the present volumes are particularly welcome.

Bishop Polk's greatest influence on posterity will be through the University of the South. In the organization of this institution his influence was paramount. The plans and outlines of the institution had been revolved in his mind for more than twenty years. It was to be, as its name indicates, an institution which should embrace all creeds and all States in the South, one whose curriculum and advantages should equal those of Yale and Harvard and its "University Press " was to serve as a source of encouragement and vehicle of expression for Southern literature. To show the broad basis, the large mould into which his ideas were cast compared with other institutions in the South, his purpose was that work should not be begun before it had an endowment of $500,000, and this sum had been actually raised when the war swept it away. These plans, laid deep and well, met with hearty approval from churchmen and others. Governor Swain, President of the University of North Carolina, then perhaps the leading institution in the Southern States, and with which the new one would come into sharp competition, stated frankly that if any denomination could bring the various sects of Christians together on a common educational basis that church was the Protestant Episcopal.

The turning point in the life of Bishop Polk was in 1861. The year 1860 was spent in developing the plans of his University, and not in plotting against the Union as his enemies have said. But reared in the school of States' rights, it was natural for him to hold to Southern views. He had perfect faith in the validity of an ordinance of secession; in his opinion on the withdrawal of a State from the Union the church went with it, and he took action accordingly. He consented to serve in the Confederate army only in answer to what he believed to be the call of necessity. He did not, resign his bishopric. His episcopal functions were only suspended and it was his constant desire

to lay aside the sword. But that time never came. He was commissioned Major-General twenty-fifth of June, 1861, was promoted Lieutenant-General in 1862, was in most of the battles in the West and was killed by a cannon shot on Pine Mountain, Georgia, on the fourteenth of June, 1864, while covering the retreat of Johnston before Sherman. The second volume, with two chapters of the first, is devoted to secession and Bishop Polk's career as a general. It was, perhaps, undesirable that so much space was given to the military career of General Polk at the expense of the ecclesiastical career of Bishop Polk. His military work has gone; his episcopal and educational work remain.

Some errors have crept into the volumes. George Burrington's complaint of the North Carolinains (I, 8,) was made in 1731, not 1751; George E. Badger (I, 47,) was never a member of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. He was a judge of the Superior Court and was once nominated as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, but failed of confirmation. There was a newspaper in Hillsborough, N. C., in 1786 (I, 9), another in Salisbury in 1798, and one in Lincolnton about 1800. Prior to 1820 several others were probably published west of Raleigh. Cooper for Hooper (I, 44) has been corrected in the index, and as John Adams always spelt the name of Joseph Hewes correctly in other places he probably did so here. Raynor is for Rayner (I, 157, 175, 220). Governor Martin's letter (I, 10) is dated June 30, 1775, and not July 30, and Dr. Charles Caldwell's "Memoirs of General Greene" (I, 42), was published in 1819, not 1812. The carefully prepared and exhaustive index of sixty-six pages is to be thoroughly commended. No better example to Southern bookmakers can be offered than this, for to most of them this is a lost art. There is a portrait of Colonel William Polk, one of Leonidas Polk as Bishop and another as General, with numerous plans of battles. If the bibliography of American historical literature were closely examined it would appear that little, comparatively speaking, had been printed relating to Southern men; the South has been too indifferent, too serenely unconscious to care for the preservation of the record which it has made. Under such circumstances the life of Bishop Polk is of more than usual interest and value.

STEPHEN B. WEEKS.

RECENT BOOKS ON MONETARY PROBLEMS.

I. A Treatise on Money and Essays on Monetary Problems. Professor J. SHIELD NICHOLSON. Second edition, revised and enlarged. Pp. xvi and 415. Price $2.50. London: Adam and Charles Black, New York: Macmillan & Co. 1893.

2. Die Stichworte der Silberleute. Von LUDWIG BAMBERGER. Vierte verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage. Pp. 151. Berlin: Rosenbaum und Hart, 1893.

3. Le métal-argent à la fin du xixe siècle, Par LOUIS BAMBErger. Traduit par RAPHAEL GEORGES LEVY. Pp. xiii, 352. Price 8 fr. Paris: Guillaumin et Cie, 1894.

4. Mélanges financiers. Par RAPHAEL GEORGES LEVY. Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1894. Price 3 fr. 50.

Pp. 313.

5. Die Währungsfrage und die Zukunft der Österreichisch-Ungarischen Valutereform. Von F. WIESER. Pp. 28. Prag, 1894.

Pp. 68. Price 2

6. Ist eine Abnahme der Goldproduktion zu befürchten? Eine Vorfrage zur Währungsfrage. Von GEORG HEIM. mark. Berlin L. Simion, 1893. Monetary literature is so fruitful a branch of general economic literature, and especially in recent years has so much attention been concentrated on the study of money that for others than specialists a judicious spirit of selection is necessary in order to keep abreast of the current and to know those works that are really worth the knowing. All the books above cited are from able and representative men who are competent to speak with authority from the point of view they respectively present.

Professor Nicholson reproduces, in a new and altered edition, a volume that he originally published in 1888. It is a clear and wellwritten statement of the opinions that go to make up the scientific international bimetallic faith which has certainly been gaining many adherents of late. The form of the book is open to objection. The first part is an elementary treatise of 106 pages on money in general and seems to me too elementary for those readers who can intelligently read the second part, which makes up the bulk of the volume and is a series of essays, more or less abstruse, on various problems of monetary science, and much too difficult for the general reader of the industrial classes for whom the first part was originally written. The book may prove useful for class work to some teachers who do not care to use larger works, such as Walker's, but who might very profitably place Professor Nicholson's book in the hands of those following an elementary course on money, supplementing in lectures the clear statement of principles and using the essays later on as a basis for class discussions. These essays, Professor Nicholson tells us, are intended to be an application of the principles discussed in the first part to "some actual problems, especially those embraced in what is called the silver question." It is here, too, that most change has taken place in the new edition, and that chiefly by way of addition of

six new essays. A note of these may be of interest to those who possess the first edition and do not care to purchase the second. They are: (1) "Mr. Giffen's Attack on Bimetallists," reprinted from the Nineteenth Century, December, 1889. (2) "Mr. A. de Rothschild's Proposal to the Monetary Conference," from the Scotsman, December 3, 1892. (3) “The Missing Link Between Gold and Silver,” also from the Scotsman, April 15, 1893. (4) "Living Capital of the United Kingdom," Economic Journal, March, 1891. (5) “Capital and Labour, Their Relative Strength," Economic Journal, September, 1892. (6) "The Indian Currency Experiment," Contemporary Review, September, 1893.

Space will not permit us here to discuss critically the opinions of Professor Nicholson especially, as these have undergone no radical change since the publication of his first edition. Both his power as an economic reasoner and the strength of his position are better illustrated in his essays than in the treatise. He well remarks that it is no longer possible to divide money theorists into mono-metallists and bimetallists, since of each of these classes there exist many varieties. There is, however, one clear and final test which serves as a dividing line, no matter how many subdivisions it may later be necessary to make. That test is the affirmation or negation of the possibility of maintaining a fixed ratio between two metals irrespective of the economic conditions of their production and consumption. This says nothing about what ratio could be maintained or what amount of government power or concerted action would be necessary to maintain a fixed ratio. Yet whoever says that under no conditions is a fixed ratio possible, except when by accident it agrees with the market ratio, is some kind of a mono-metallist and he who says that it is possible is some kind of a bimetallist. It then follows that each party must give his reasons for the faith that is within him. No amount of discussion of the monetary evils of which both sides are cognizant, whether professedly or not, nor general talk on the morality of bimetallism will suffice to clear the already too hazy atmosphere so long as this vital question is neglected. Professor Nicholson devotes one of his shortest essays to this question and seems to prefer to make the quantitative theory of money the test of bimetallic orthodoxy. Undoubtedly the quantitative theory in its relation to prices is another vantage-ground from which to give and take battle, but it may be held with so many different restrictions as to be accepted by both mono-metallists and bimetallists. We should like to see bimetallists of Professor Nicholson's calibre devote more discussion to the vital point of the possibility of a fixed ratio. Among minor points we may mention the fact that the two essays on "Living Capital" and