ing and controlling influence to the representatives of the people elected to the legislature, you have, irrespective of what label you put on it, a democratic or a representative actual government."

But legislative budget-making, for the most part, and as now practiced, is in much need of reform. It is ill-informed, ill-advised, sketchy, irresponsible, and often scandalous. The author favors continuing appropriations as an antidote to what he calls "our cataclysmic theory and practice of administration." Also he advocates, as a general rule, lump-sum appropriations, rather than bills with detailed and segregated items. And all should be gathered into a single appropriation bill, rather than dispersed among several. "Our present system of making appropriations may very properly be described as 'crazy-quilt' legislation. There is no more system about it than there is in a crazy quilt. Appropriations for the same department are made in various bills. Appropriations for widely different purposes are made in the same bill. We have absolutely no plan. Appropriation bills are presented to the legislature in driblets. Appropriations affecting any one department are not present in any one bill." As an aid to the intelligent performance of the legislature's work on the budget, he believes that the chief administrative officers of the government should have the privilege of the floor and of participating in debate in both houses of Congress, and not only the members of the Cabinet, but the heads of such important bureaus as the

Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Reserve Board. But this, by the way, seems to us to open the door rather wide. Why exclude the Commissioners of Pensions, Patents, Fisheries, Immigration, Education, the Public Printer, the Chief of Staff, and the head of the division of Agricultural Chemistry?

The author is justly severe in condemning the "pork barrel" and all that it implies—a system which has grown to be a public disgrace and whose reform must begin in what it is now beginning to receive, pitiless publicity. The remedies which he proposes are the executive veto, an enforced system of local contributions to national publicwork projects (no money to be appropriated out of the federal treasury for such works unless covered by a corresponding appropriation of local funds), a system of election that will make Congressmen more representative of definite public opinion than of locality, the substitution of party for individual responsibility, and administrative commissions. But in relation to the control which the executive may constitutionally exercise over a wasteful or improvident legislature, the author does not approve the grant to the President or state governor of the authority to veto separate items in appropriation bills. His argument is that detailed appropriation bills, with the items all segregated, are not desirable, and that to bills not expressed in details, but in lump sums, the selective veto would be inapplicable.

This interesting little volume reviews the principles which govern the fundamental right of the free citizens of a democracy to an easy, expeditious, and inexpensive judicial review against the illegal exaction of taxes by the administrative officers of the government. On the one hand, it is necessary that the government should be able to collect its taxes promptly. It cannot await the result of a long litigation. Also it is necessary that disputed questions of rate, value, liability, and classification should be determined in the first instance by the assessing and collecting officers. Public necessity demands that the taxpayer should first pay the amount demanded and then recover the overcharge, if any. But on the other But on the other hand, due process of law in revenue cases requires that, at some stage of the proceedings, he should have the

right to have his controversy determined by a court or tribunal which shall be constitutionally independent of the whole executive hierarchy. The object of Mr. Brown's book is to give an account of the liberal method in which that right has been protected in matters of customs taxation in this country, through an authorized proceeding for judicial review (so inexpensive as to be open to the smallest claimant) before the Board of United States General Appraisers, with an appeal in classification matters to the Court of Customs Appeals, and with a right of ultimate review in certain cases by the United States Supreme Court. It will be enlightening, because even the existence of the Board, to say nothing of its functions and manner of proceeding, is practically unknown except to importers of merchandise and their counsel. Incidentally Mr. Brown draws some interesting comparisons between the European systems of administrative law, particularly in France, and the English and American doctrine of the citizen's right of recourse against executive officers of govern

ment.

Of few men can it be said that they were the founders of states; for these mighty organisms rarely evolve from the predominant work of one man. There have, however, been a few such founders Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. The work of these master builders perished, for it ceased to harmonize with the increasing purpose of the ages. Washington's great work, the American commonwealth, remains, and will remain as long as his people are faithful to his ideals and principles of government.

What was Washington's greatest achievement? His battles that made him the lion of Trenton were but valorous means to a mighty end. Even his wise statesmanship which, in the tragic seven years of the Revolutionary War, kept his country united was but a preliminary step to a far greater end. To achieve independence was not enough; for that independence might have proved a doubtful blessing if, as at first seemed likely, the severance from accustomed authority only resulted in an ill regulated liberty which came perilously near culminating in anarchy. The days that followed Yorktown were as truly "the times that tried men's souls" as the period of bitter struggle when the fortunes of Washington's little army found their lowest ebb at Valley Forge. Credit was gone, business parNot alyzed, lawlessness rampant. only between class and class, but be

tween state and state there was a most acute controversy and the most alarming disunity of spirit. The currency of the little nation was almost valueless; its armies were unpaid and in revolt; and there were not a few who lamented with bitter sorrow that even the rule of a tyrannical king and parliament was better than the destruction of law and authority. Such was our weakness that England declined to carry out some of the provisions of the treaty of peace and few nations recognized the existence of the republic by sending diplomatic representatives. "Chaos had come again."

It seemed to many-and to Washington himself-that the heroic struggle for independence would end in a tragical fiasco, which would confound the lovers of liberty in every land and again enthrone autocracy. To weld thirteen jealous and discordant states into a nation, states inhabited by men of different races, creeds and classes-and to reconcile the liberty of the individual with the authority of the state in a manner that would not offend the great ideals of liberty, for which the colonists had fought and which had found their final and noblest expression in the Declaration of Independence, was a seemingly impossible task. Its final accomplishment blinds us to the difficulty of the problem. In those trying times, it was to Washington and to Washington alone that a distracted people turned. Without him, all was lost. He repaid that con