Francis W. Coker

Are There Distinctive Political Traditions for the South

There is a southern aristocratic tradition. Proof of it is to be found in the actual social, economic, political, and intellectual history of the South. There was aristocratic living in the old South. There is a factual basis for the familiar southern stories of cavaliers, chatelaines, chandeliers, mint juleps, magnolias, leisure, travel, enjoyment of the classics, hospitality, good manners, and good and gay living. There was political aristocracy in the South. A land-owning minority generally controlled the southern state governments from the beginnings until near the end of the nineteenth century. Leading southerners in the Convention of 1787 joined some northerners in efforts to fix that sort of rule in the new central government: Pierce Butler and John Rutledge of South Carolina maintained that property, in its stabler forms, was the only just and reasonable standard for representation in Congress: Charles Pinckney of South Carolina and George Mason of Virginia fought for high property qualifications for president, senators, and judges, in order to make property rights secure in the policy of the new nation.! The original state constitutions, both northern and southern, confined voting and office-holding to small groups of property-owners;

Sabine, GeorgeH. A History of Political Theory. Pp. xvi, 797. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1937.

SABINE, GEORGE H. A History of Political Theory . Pp. xvi, 797. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1937.

4.00

4.00. This book reviews political ideas for a period of some 2,500 years; it begins with the Greeks before Plato and ends with present-day Communists and Fascists. It is based on an independent and expert examination of original sources, and it is thoroughgoing in its treatment, and as objective as any interested exposition of ideas can be. The author is a professor of philosophy, and he effectively shows the affiliations of political ideas to general trends of philosophical thought. He is also a historical scholar, and indicates clearly, without going into too much detail, the relation of political ideas to contemporary political events. He concentrates his attention on leading political writers and on sample specimens of important groups or movements ; he has thus saved his book from becoming a mere annotated bibliography. Obviously no historian of ideas can, in his selection of specimens and distribution of space, please every reader in every detail; thus, the reviewer regrets that the book omits altogether the French conservative authoritarians (Maistre and Bonald) of the early nineteenth century, and the preMarxian socialists; and that it gives relatively slight attention to Spinoza and to Kant. But there is very little to complain of, even on this score; and the volume appears to be remarkably comprehensive and well-proportioned. Professor Sabine manifests his scientific

Property Rights as Obstacles to Progress

FOR our forefathers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, property rights meant generally rights of an individual over the land, the tools, and the materials with which he worked in earning a livelihood. Most of the original settlers of America owned small properties of that sort in the old country, and they came to this country with the hope of obtaining greater security of ownership. Individual ownership of productive property continued to be a dominant feature of our economic system until well into the nineteenth century. When we adopted our present Constitution, some 90 per cent of the free inhabitants of America owned the properties upon which they worked. A hundred years ago, about 80 per cent of the citizens engaged in economic enterprise were small farmers, traders, mechanics, and craftsmen, each working with his own land, tools, and materials. Even as late as the eighteen-sixties and seventies, by which time there had been a considerable extension in the use of machines, the typical shoemaking shop, flour mill, slaughtering or packing house, or textile, furniture, or wagon factory was a local enterprise, owned and managed by an individual or a group of individuals residing in the community. At times in our history we have sought to safeguard and promote, by our governmental policies, this independent individual enterprise. Our