Villainage in England

DROFESSOR VINOGRADOFF'S volume, entitled ' Villainage in 1 England, is the work of a Russian scholar whose mastery of English authorities and familiarity with English medieval records, both published and in manuscript, is perhaps unsurpassed. His experience in the history of the land systems of other countries, hig Russian surroundings and eastern point of view, place him in the position of an impartial as well as interested student of English economic history, and give to his work something of a judicial character. Mr. Vinogradoff approaches the subject of villainage in England after a very careful and masterly survey of the work already done by various and successive schools and workers in the field of English economic history, generously acknowledging what has been said on both sides of the question, prepared to examine the ground afresh exhaustively, step by step, hardly conscious to what result the end of his impartial study may lead him, and boldly publishing in this volume the first part only of an inquiry which other volumes are to continue, let us hope without too great an interval. And yet, though the final judgment is not given, because only the medieval part of the evidence has been examined and the Saxon evidence is reserved for future volumes, the bias of his opinion is already sufficiently apparent. The strain of his scrutiny, if I may so speak, is obviously to find and to put into its proper place in the argument every possible fact or suggestion of a fact which points in the direction of a final verdict in favour of the possibility at least of the free origin of the English village community. Nothing but good can come from the attempt, judicially as he has made it, to bring all the facts and suggestions of facts fully into view. Every real student must be painfully conscious how easy it is to see only one side of a question, and in stating that side to put the result too sharply, omitting to give full force to the qualifications which are needful to guard it from exaggeration. It is the fate, too, of a theory, however carefully stated, to become as well in the hands