As was indicated in a preceding article, the chief feature of the judicial year 1909–1910, from the point of view of Constitutional Law, was that the decisions, though numerous, were comparatively unimportant. On the contrary the chief feature of the constitutional decisions of the judicial year 1910–1911 was that an unusual number of them appeared to the public to be of great interest and consequence. Hence it is advisable to deal with the judicial year 1910–1911 in a manner wholly different from that which was adopted with its predecessor. The article covering the judicial year 1909–1910 collected all the constitutional cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, and, with the briefest possible indication of the point decided, distributed them among the several clauses of the Constitution which they served to annotate. For the judicial year 1910–1911, on the other hand, the plan adopted is to confine attention almost wholly to the few decisions making the year memorable. Thus it becomes possible to give a rather full statement of those few decisions and now and then to add comments.

Bibliographical Note.—Obviously it is impossible to give a definite authority for many of the statements made in an article of this sort. I have, for the most part, therefore, omitted any footnotes whatever. Naturally I have used such standard works as Lecky, whose chapters on Irish questions I have found to be based on a more thorough research than those dealing with purely British affairs, and Morley's Gladstone. I have consulted, as well, the various parliamentary papers and reports relating to the Home Rule bills of 1886, 1893, and 1912. One of the most useful expositions of Mr. Asquith's bill is the series of papers edited for the Eighty Club by Prof. J. H. Morgan, and recently published under the title, “The New Irish Constitution.” I need scarcely mention that I have referred to Dicey's “England's Case Against Home Rule” and “A Leap in the Dark”; the Earl of Dunraven's “The Legacy of Past Years”; G. Locker Lampson's “A Consideration on the State of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century”; Justin H. McCarthy's “The Case for Home Rule”; Sidney Brooks' “Aspectsof the Irish Question”; Harold Begbie's “The Lady Next Door”; R. Barry O'Brien's “Life of Charles Stewart Parnell,” “Dublin Castle and the Irish People,” “Two Centuries of Irish History,” “Home Rule Speeches of John Redmond,” and other similar works.

The chief purpose of this paper is to consider briefly the reception accorded President Monroe's message to congress of December 2, 1823, in England, France, Spain, and Austria.

This state paper was given a hearty welcome by many English journalists. Reports of the president's message first appeared in the newspapers of London on December 26 and 27, 1823. The Times happily contrasted it with “King's Speeches, addressed in like manner, but in substance far unlike, to Lords and Commons, to Peers and Deputies, in kingdoms nearer home. … As sources of intelligence—as indications of policy—as keys to national history, they have of late years dwindled to nothing, realizing with curious accuracy Talleyrand's definition of the use of language—‘an instrument for concealing men's thoughts.’ The genius of a popular Government rejects these mysterious devices. … The President's message of the United States is a paper breathing business in every line. It is at once a picture of the period elapsed since the labours of Congress were last interrupted, a prospectus for the forthcoming year, the detailed report of a commissioner, and the formal account of a trustee … we have read this State Paper with an interest more profound than any of its precursors had excited.