Perhaps the two most important constitutional events during recent years are the establishment of the South African Union and the struggle in Great Britain over the budget and with reference to the powers of the House of Lords. Both of these events are excluded from treatment here—the South African Union is discussed somewhat fully in another part of this Review; the British constitutional struggle is still in progress, and cannot be satisfactorily treated at the present time.

However, with reference to the South African Union it may be well to call attention to the movement away from loosely-constructed federal states. In the United States the state governments have steadily tended to become of less importance as compared with the national government, but this change has necessarily been produced not so much by textual changes in the constitution as by judicial interpretation. By the German imperial constitution of 1871 a fairly centralized federal organization was established, and since 1873 when the federal legislative power was extended over the whole field of civil law there have been no important extensions of federal power by textual changes in the constitution; but here as in the United States the federal power has increased at the expense of the states in a manner not shown by changes in the written instrument of government. “The most important and most weighty interests of the nation are common to all and must be cared for in a uniform manner, and all branches of public law and political life stand in a close and indissoluble relation the one to the other, so that by the logic of facts particularism must give place to unity, the common will must to an ever increasing extent displace the separate wills of the individual states.”

The war between Russia and Sweden culminating in the treaty of Fredrikshamn in 1809 decided the fate of Finland; according to the terms of the treaty Sweden ceded to Russia her Finnish provinces. Article VI of the treaty states, however, that Russia guaranteed Finland her laws and privileges. It is this latter clause, which at the present day is the bone of contention in the Finnish question.

The campaign of the Russian army corps in Finland was very far from being a decisive one; the progress was slow, the resistance of the enemy strong; finally, the Finns started a guerilla war against the Russians, causing the latter very great annoyance.

At the same time the Russian government had many other troubles on hand. The figure of Napoleon loomed high on the horizon of Europe and his shadow began to fall on Russia too, causing the Tsar Alexander I much anxiety.

All this was a strong inducement for Alexander to settle the Finnish question as soon and as peacefully as he could.

All through the year 1808 the Russians pursued a wavering policy; first they would threaten the Finns, then make them certain promises or concessions and so on; thus for example, two important manifestos were issued on March 28 and 31, 1808.

When the report of Chinese opposition against foreign loans reaches the western world, a certain class of people at once call such opposition the outcome of the historical anti-foreign feeling, oriental exclusiveness, self-conceit, and Boxerism. They assume that the Chinese have no grievance at all, and that these orientals “kick” simply because they are self-conceited heathens who do not know what is good for them. The more representative class, however, do not unreservedly subscribe to this opinion. They interpret the opposition as a manifestation of “Chinese nationalization.” Thus the New York Tribune in an editorial calls the recent opposition to the Hankow-Szechuan loan as “a strikingly characteristic manifestation of the rampant spirit of ‘China for the Chinese’ which prevails in large parts of the country.”

There is much truth in this interpretation. But it points to only one of the many phases of the case. It is, therefore, inadequate to explain the whole situation and is misleading when taken as the premise for the solution of the problem. In order to understand fully and estimate aright these oppositions which are likely to exist in the future, we should examine closely the underlying causes from all points of view.

Our laws affecting immigration represent the accretions of ninety years, but the great mass of this legislation falls within the last third of this period. Since 1882 Congress has passed a score of immigration acts and amendments, besides the numerous immigration features embodied in laws relating primarily to other subjects.

From the standpoint of purpose and aim, the provisions of this legislation may be grouped under four main heads: 1. Restrictive; 2. Protective; 3. Distributive, and 4. Administrative.

For the first group a more accurately descriptive phrase would be “Restrictive and Selective,” for it is impossible to dissociate, in most provisions, the purpose of restricting the volume of immigration, lest the number of comers prove too great for our receiving population, and the purpose of controlling the quality of our immigrants, lest our citizenship suffer through undesirable additions.

What are the restrictive and selective provisions of our laws? In the first place, certain classes of aliens are excluded from admission to the United States. Since our first federal measure of restriction in 1862, this list of the unwelcome has gradually lengthened, until to-day twenty-three classes may not lawfully enter.