become too state-socialistic, whether we could now go much further, these are questions regarding which parties and classes are at variance. I believe that the movement towards state management, still more towards municipalization, is still growing, but it will not, in the immediate future, extend itself to very important and large fields." (Page 323.) But whatever the final judgment of the world may be on Professor Schmoller's contributions to economic science, we can already see that he has rendered most important services. There was undoubtedly a tendency among economists of thirty years ago to rest on their oars; among many there was perhaps an optimistic over-confidence in the results already obtained by the authors of the classical school. The most important step to be taken was to study carefully by means of monographs, not only the history of economic phenomena, but also the institutions and movements of the present day. In realizing a generation ago the importance of this work and in contributing so much towards its execution, Professor Schmoller showed no less wisdom and foresight than courage. The danger which confronts his school now is that it may over-estimate the importance of the monograph, that it may exhaust its energies in the accumulation of raw material, and neglect the logical building up of the structure of the science. There is also a danger that the younger generation, thinking only of the successes of our own time, may fail to do justice to the men who preceded and to their methods. Most reactions are drastic and liable to be overdone. It was perhaps necessary in the early days of Professor Schmoller's scientific work that he should use vigorous language with regard to the more conservative economists whom he opposed; many of them used equally vigorous language with regard to him and his friends. But that does not justify the continuance of personal polemics at the present day. Stil less does it excuse a chauvinistic attempt to belittle the work of other nations, other times, and other schools, such as we sometimes find among the lesser luminaries of the German universities. The tone of moderation which prevails in Professor Schmoller's work ought to go far towards encouraging a better spirit in this respect and giving economic controversy in Germany more of a scientific and less of a personal character. HENRY W. Farnam.

Yale University.

TH

ITALIAN EXPANSION AND COLONIES.

HE history of the colonial ventures of modern Italy is brief and inglorious; at the present time, after much bloodshed and expense, it can hardly be said that Italy possesses any real colonies from whose administration and development an economic or political lesson or warning can be gained. And yet the struggles of Italy during the last twenty years to found a colonial empire, after the manner of other European states, possess a peculiar interest for the student of colonization-that interest which attaches to deviation from normal inception and development.

Italy is a nation which, by taking thought, hoped to add unto her stature. Granted that England's greatness is emphasized and augmented by her colonial possessions, it is at best a logical non sequitur to conclude that Italy, by acquiring colonies and possessions, will thereby take her place among the Powers. And yet the Italians seem to have believed it possible to substitute for the long and toilsome road from cause to effect a convenient shortcut from effect to cause. Colonies were not only to increase Italy's political importance; they were also to build up her trade, develop her merchant marine and make her rich. Thus the normal order of evolution was reversed in this suddenly evoked colonial policy, and the consequences, in this case little ameliorated by circumstances, ran out into the usual misery of confusion and humiliation.

This is the fundamental criticism to be passed upon the Italian so-called colonization. Italy was not prepared to take her place among colonizing states; she lacked the internal cohesion and organization necessary to the political unit that turns its arms against the outside world. On the eve of her colonial efforts, the nation was united in no such way as were England, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal just before their colonial expansion. Italy lacked capital and, in a certain sense, superfluous population for external colonization; what forces she had could better have been used for internal development, which, in turn, would have aided national organization and prosperity.

She lacked the objective knowledge of lands, peoples and processes which the great colonizing nations attained from the actual experience of their traders and navigators before their colonial empires were even begun. She was unfit for colonization because she lacked those things which she hoped the possession of colonies would bring her.)

One more disqualification must be noticed in order to get a perspective of the short and disastrous history of Italian expansion: the Italians, together with the other Latin nations, suffer from a race-temperament unfortunate in colonizers. They are dominated too much by feeling and too little by judgment; they are attracted too much by abstract theory, military glory and all that which caters to national vanity; they cannot accept defeat with dignity, renounce a high-sounding ideal and bide their time in patience. They have shown themselves incapable of such steadiness and foresight as, for instance, was exhibited in the withdrawal, quiet preparation and final overwhelming advance of England in Egypt.1 Italy's colonial development, retarded by so many wars, has not as yet reached that stage of civil administration where the characteristic defects of Latin policy are wont to appear; judging from the organization of the Red Sea possessions during a short period of peace and security, the Italians might have been expected to adopt a somewhat saner policy than did Spain, Portugal or France.

It is significant that poverty, rather than overflowing wealth, first caused United Italy to desire a colony. The individual emigrated because of poverty and misery; the state sought a penal colony because of poverty and social disorder. On March 13, 1865, the Chamber of Deputies abolished the capital penalty, and a substitute was at once considered. The example of England was cited in support of adopting deportation, and the position of those who favored this substitute was strengthened by the grave condition of public security in the sixties and seventies. Prison population grew by more than 1,500 annually, and increased from 52,000 in 1862 to 67,000 in 1870, averaging one hundred and four per 100,000 population. Prisons were 1Cf. De Saussure, La Colonisation française dans ses rapports avec les Sociétés Indigènes, ch. xi, p. 208, etc.

insufficient in number and all in wretched state; it was estimated that 100,000,000 lire and twenty years time would be necessary to construct new edifices. Deportation seemed an anchor of safety.

A hot controversy was waged over the employment of this penalty, and for a long time desire for such a place of exile formed the chief motive for acquisition of external possessions. G. E. Cerruti, for the government, tried to get possession of locations in the Far East suitable for penal establishments; and other private or semi-official travelers reported on the same project. But in 1874 the enemies of deportation had increased in number, and conditions in Italy were ameliorated; discussions lasted on till 1888, when they were dropped. The question of deportation was therefore a temporary one, not connected with later developments, except as it directed the attention of the Italians to conditions without; deportation was never popular.

Prospecting for a commercial or naval station, which to a certain extent accompanied the search for a penal colony, was even more feeble, vague and unproductive. Up to 1880 expansionists talked to the empty air. Even the opening of the Suez Canal (Nov. 1869) effected little, though through the urgency of Professor Sapeto, who insisted upon the necessity of a station on the new Indies route, the government half-heartedly acquiesced in the purchase of Assab, a sterile tract on the Red Sea coast.2

"The search for colonies, therefore," Brunialti says, "had conducted to no serious conclusion"; further efforts were made to arouse interest, but nos canimus surdis. After 1873 there was no more talk of colonies and even Assab fell into oblivion; in 1882 Italy refused an advantageous opportunity to coöperate

'Attilio Brunialti, Le Colonie degli Italiani, Torino, 1897; pp. 271 ff; 527 ff. This volume affords, besides a sketch, chiefly historical and political, of the colonies of modern Italy, also a history of the medieval Venetian and Genoese trading colonies and an account of the great Italian navigators of the period of discoveries. Brunialti treats the modern possessions from an authoritative position, inasmuch as he was personally involved in the discussions and projects which preceded and accompanied the late colonial policy.

'Through the agency of the Rubattino Steamship Company for 15,000 Maria-Theresa dollars (about $16,000), with some extra fees and payments to recalcitrant sheiks. Brunialti, 1. c., 324; 532.

with England in reducing Egypt, explained her action to Europe with virtuous self-complacency and wished to have nothing to do with Africa.1

Suddenly, in 1885, in consequence of the massacre of an Italian scientific party (that of Bianchi), the government at Rome roused itself and occupied the port of Massowah (Feb. 5). The effect upon the national mind was unexpected and astonishing, affording a marked illustration of the changefulness of a Latin people. Before the occupation, "the less enthusiastic were precisely those who had a more exact idea of colonial policy and its exigencies, who feared that public opinion would cast itself upon this acquisition, increase its importance and make an unique objective of what ought to be a small episode and nothing else." This fear was realized, for the country faced about from indifference to military ambition, parliamentary calculation and political delirium; there resulted "a whole artificial elaboration of public opinion, such as would scarcely be believed possible in a free and civilized modern state."2

These are the symptoms of "colonial fever," which was not slow to discover itself in pronounced form. Nor was the country, smitten with the passion for expansion, tardy in presenting reasons to justify the satisfaction of that passion. Were not the Romans the first of colonizers? Could the Italians acknowledge themselves degenerate sons of those hardy Venetians, Genoese and Pisans who were the medieval lords of trade and of commercial factories? This pride of ancestry was united with what Laveleye and others call "megalomania," as the main motive forces in a disastrous expansion.3

Attention turned at once toward colonies in their relation to emigration, the merchant marine and national production. With the eye ever upon England and Holland, the endeavor was made to construct a Greater Italy. To these high ambitions, however, were joined the most absurd fears, an unsettled policy

1 Brunialti, 1. c., 323-6, 422 ff.

Ibid., 15 ff; 433. 3 Laveleye, The Foreign Policy of Italy, Contemporary Rev. 61, 153, (1892); F. P. Nash, Italy as a "Great Power," Nation, Aug. 19, 1897 (65; 146); (Gen.) C. Mezzacapo, L'Eritrea e i suoi Confini, Nuova Antologia, Dec. 1, 1897; G. Pittaluga, L'Eritrea Giudicata in Francia, Nuova Antologia, July 16, 1897.