Local and Regional

SOCIAL STUDIES 443 mind as "Family Law"-a large number of statutes and decisions that have hitherto lurked unseen under widely separated and unrelated headings. Another is that it is not just a law book; Professor Schmeiser has drawn on, and addresses himself to, political scientists, historians, and philosophers as well as courts and lawyers. Still another is that, although it began as a doctoral thesis at the University of Michigan, it is entirely free from the "learned drivel" that one usually associates with theses and from the "know it all" and ''I'm for the underdog at all costs" tone that usually goes with American-inspired writing on this difficult subject. Having soaked himself in "the law" and "the ought" of civil liberties in Canada, Professor Schmeiser is now equipped to team up with the sociologists and do what no Canadian law professor ever does, that is, inquire into and seek to discover the "scientific laws" governing "what actually happens" in the field he has so happily illuminated for us. (JOHN WILLIS) LOCAL AND REGIONAL G. M. Craig Beginning with books that have a connection with the Atlantic provinces, we come first to a substantial work of research and scholarship in J. K. Chapman's The Career of Arthur Hamilton Gordon, First Lord Stanmore , 1829-1912 (University of Toronto Press, pp. x, 388, $8.50), the biography of a man who was lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick from 1861 to 1866, the crucial years preceding Confederation. The author Vigorously defends Gordon from some of the criticisms often made against him by Canadian historians but he leaves no doubt that this fourth son of the fourth Earl of Aberdeen was unfitted to serve in a selfgoverning colony. Most of the book is devoted to his later career in various dependent possessions where, once he had a chance to exercise real power, he looked back distastefully On his days in New Brunswick when he felt that he had been ". .. not only a mere puppet, but a puppet in the hands of men ... generally ignorant and almost always dishonest." As we follow Mr. Chapman's sympathetic but even-handed exposition, we see Gordon mature and develop into "one of the most distinguished administrators in the British Empire during the latter half of the nineteenth century." By contrast Lorne C. Callbeck's The Cradle of Confederation (Fredericton: Brunswick Press, pp. 256, $5.00) is a piece of local historical research providing us with an unpretentious account of Prince Edward Island's history from earliest times down through its 444 LEITERS IN CANADA: 1964 rather reluctant entry into Confederation in 1873 and closing with a chapter on highlights since that time. Lastly, on the Maritimes, we have J. Murray Beck's Joseph Howe, Voice of Nova Scotia (McClelland and Stewart, pp. 214, $2.35 paper), a useful collection of letters and speeches, which is skilfully edited and introduced. Of books relating to Quebec and French Canada, by far the most important title is W. J. Eccles, Carnula Under Louis XIV, 1663-1701 (McClelland and Stewart, pp. xii, 276, $8.50), a work of incisive and iconoclastic originality. Cutting through many of the romantic notions about New France, the author gives us a clear and penetrating analysis of Colbert's plans for a compact development along the St. Lawrence and shows how "state paternalism" helped rather than hindered economic growth. He then shows how the pull of the fur trade and, finally, at the end of the century, Louis' Spanish interests, led to a policy of expansion that weakened New France in the face of its growing antagonists to the south. This is not history as Parkman wrote it, but Mr. Eccles' analysis of the social and political structure of New France proVides us with a firm basis for understanding the later history of French Canada. Good examples of an earlier school of Canadian historical writing, which emphasized narrative rather than analysis, are provided by the reprint of W. D. Le Sueur, Count Frontenac ( University of Toronto Press, pp. x, 382, $2.50) and H. R. Casgrain, Wolfe and Montcalm (University of Toronto Press, pp. viii, 292, $1.95), both Canadian University Paperbacks . It is...