The degree to which England had already adopted or grown into feudalism by the generation before the Norman Conquest is one of the oldest of historical controversies, and one in which the opposing views, having reached something like a stalemate, seem now disposed to concede a measure of recognition to each other's premisses. Recent treatments of the tenth and eleventh centuries are cautious and compromising. They are apt to speak of “nascent feudalism”, or of the Normans’ mission to develop and give precision to a Saxon feudalism which is never clearly delineated, but which is assumed to be far advanced. I would suggest on the contrary that, given the known components of early English law and the admitted difficulty of bringing this hypothetical Saxon feudalism to definition, the proper approach to the subject should be one not of compromise but of scepticism, and that, as no major passage of Saxon politics can be made to bear that surface appearance of baronial motive and interest which the play of Norman feudalism everywhere presents, any phrase or text of Saxon law which can be made to carry a feudal implication should be tested rigorously to see if it is susceptible of no other interpretation before a strictly feudal meaning is imposed upon it. I must confess that no single term or maxim of the English codes or charters having any claim to genuineness has ever seemed to me to bear a feudal connotation.

The election to the Convention Parliament of 1689 was one of the most important ever held, but singularly little attention has been paid to it. A detailed examination has revealed a number of factors which cast fresh light on the state of the country during the Interregnum and on the composition of the Convention Parliament. In this article I intend to restrict my attention to three aspects of the election: firstly, the effect of James II's preparations upon the composition of the House of Commons; secondly, the effect of the preparations of William III and his supporters; thirdly, the manner in which this election was fought in the various constituencies.

The letters of Lord North have made us familiar with the portrait and the general posture of a Minister who was in the habit of behaving like a prisoner seeking release—a man “tied to the stake”as he once said—a Minister who repeatedly urged that his continuance in office would bring certain disaster upon the nation; who cursed the futility of what he privately called that damned American war; who complained of illness, depression of mind, loss of memory and general unfitness for his post.

General Diebitsch's victory at Kulevcha on 11 June precipitated a series of events which brought the Russian army to the gates of Constantinople and Turkey to the verge of dissolution early in September. The maintenance or the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in Europe suddenly became the issue in St Petersburg. Was the maintenance of that empire more advantageous to Russia than its dissolution?

In April 1884 Prince Bismarck, chancellor of Germany, suddenly broke away from his long maintained anti-colonial policy, and inaugurated the German colonial empire by placing Angra Pequena under German protection. Angra Pequena was a small harbour in the middle of the unoccupied territory that later became the first German colony, South-West Africa, a long coastal stretch which England did not particularly desire and had several times refused to annex. It had only one really good harbour, Walfisch Bay, which England already possessed. Furthermore, the senior members of the second Gladstone ministry, which was in power in 1884, were generally opposed to new colonial adventures. In such circumstances, it was to be expected that Bismarck's new departure would meet with little or no opposition from the British Government, and that the formation of the comparatively modest German colonial empire would not cause a ripple in the cordial diplomatic relations existing between the two countries at that time.