Colonization, as a means of reforming Ireland, had been advocated by certain Anglo-Irish politicians and English administrators since the early sixteenth century. This policy had been activated in 1548. Sir Thomas Smith (1513–77), a leading political and intellectual figure, contributed to the policy's development in the early 1570s with his colonial venture in eastern Ulster. Under Elizabeth, he served as ambassador to France on two occasions and held the principal secretaryship between 1572 and 1576. Smith is regarded as an important English humanist. His main works, A discourse of the commonweal of this realm of England (1549) and De republica Anglorum (1565) analyse respectively the economic problems and the legal and political system of the period.

When we believed that Locke had written Two treatises of government to justify the Glorious Revolution, we could say a great deal about his purposes in relation to the events of 1688–89. The book served to interpret those events, to disclose their underlying meaning; philosophy and action were joined in such a manner that both gained lustre from the link. But, now we have generally accepted the view that Locke actually wrote Two treatises in the partisan heat of the Exclusion debate, and we have stopped saying very much of anything about the book's relation to William III and the events of the year in which Locke anonymously published it.

Conventional wisdom has long maintained that eighteenth-century religious dissent was a significant source of opposition to the Hanoverian status quo. For Trevelyan, for instance, dissenters were ‘vigilant champions of liberty and critics of government’. The high political visibility of rational dissenters in oppositional movements in the 1770s and 1780s – in opposition to the American war, the Test and Corporation Acts, slavery and the slave trade, the existing electoral system – has been particularly noted. However in recent years the political significance of religious dissent has been questioned. Roy Porter warns that the zeal for reform among dissenters should not be overestimated: ‘Not till the 1780s, and then only amongst a hothead minority, did Nonconformity show a potential for political radicalism.’ John Brewer has argued that the dissenting group associated with Hollis, Price, Priestley and ‘the small, snug, dissenting coterie of Newington Green’ marks one tradition of political opposition in the eighteenth century. But, largely confined to intellectual critique, remarkably uninvolved in the day-to-day cut-and-thrust of political action even evincing a patrician alarm at popular direct action, its contribution to political change was far less significant than the Wilkite movement.

There were many passing phases in the eighty-eight years of Gladstone's life. ‘What did last, all through his life, was his overwhelming interest in religion and his incessant preoccupation with religious doctrine.’ ‘It is commonly supposed that there are things in life without religious significance, but this is not so. There is no human activity without its religious motives and its religious use.’ Such was the profession of the young M.P. for Newark in 1835. This article then is addressed, not to Gladstone's personal religion, which would have meant telling the story of his life, but to his attitude to religion – to his anglicanism.

Over the last two decades, noticeable progress has been made towards a more complete understanding of the political dynamics of Wilhelmine Germany. The older emphasis on the ‘high politics’ of Bismarck and his successors has given way to a much more differentiated picture of a political system in constant flux as it attempted to cope with the complexities of a rapidly industrializing society. Old orthodoxies concerning the weakness of German liberalism have been subjected to new examination and scholars have become increasingly aware of the potential of powerful interest groups to challenge as well as to buttress the Establishment. The overall effect of this general advance in the historiography of the Second Empire has been to direct attention away from the motives of individual decision-makers, at least at the ‘high-political’ level, and to investigate the structural constraints on the formulation of policy. Despite certain recent attempts to reinstate a more personalistic approach, it seems clear that no future history of late nineteenth-century German politics can afford to neglect these developments.

Historians of United States policy towards Latin America in the first half of the twentieth century have paid remarkably little attention to Washington's dealings with the republic of Panama. The failure to explore this terra incognita is all the more surprising in the light of the fact that those dealings hinged round one of America's vital interests, the Panama Canal, which runs through the heart of the country and has given Panama an importance unique in U.S. diplomacy. Yet much of the detailed history of the relationship remains unknown.