Book Reviews and Notices plained by Professor Ferguson in this interesting and informative book. In the main, the story is accurately told. A critical reader might pick out a few errors of fact. The new emission bills issued upon the funds of individual States pursuant to an act of Congress of March 18, 1780, were not a new form of Continental currency; they were a species of State paper and, as such, were never considered as forming any part of the debt of the United States. John Taylor Gilman (not John Taylor) was a member of the Board of General Commissioners. The faction in the First Congress opposed to an immediate assumption of State debts did not permanently lose a vote to the other side by the "defection" of Colonel Bland; Bland died during the course of the debate; he had voted for assumption from the beginning. These are trivial mistakes. Another is more serious, for upon it Professor Ferguson has bottomed an argument to support his revisionary interpretation of confederal finance. The liquidation of accounts for supplies found and services rendered was not begun in 1782. It was begun in 1775 with the establishment of the Committee of Claims and continued in succeeding years by the Treasury Office of Accounts, by district commissioners, and by army auditors. The act of 1782 was intended to provide a more efficient machinery for doing a job already started. Professor Ferguson takes a dim view of the results of the Revolution. The Colonists, he opines, won independence but lost liberty. They took up arms to keep the integral power of taxation in their separate assemblies; they denied a general revenue to the Continental Congress; but they surrendered such a revenue to the new Congress of 1789. Why? Partly because they forgot that a general revenue is subversive of liberty; partly because of the machinations of Robert Morris and the Nationalists, who created such a load of public debt that it could not be assumed by the individual States and extinguished by the well-tried methods of agrarian finance. The reader may form his own opinion of the connection between national taxation and individual liberty. A reviewer may suggest that the people of America, first by general consent, then by a formal constitution, did in fact invest Congress with the power of the purse. The Act of Confederation gave Congress a right to fix the quantum of money necessary for the common purposes and a right to tax the States for that sum on a valuation of their respective lands. The States, it is true, did not produce the documents required for forming that valuation and refused to adopt a new rule proposed by Congress, which could therefore levy no tax. But in contemplation of law, the authority of Congress over the purse remained entire; the right of the States was limited to the mode of supply. As for the machinations of Robert Morris and the Nationalists, it is difficult to perceive them. We are told that "they created a public debt which inhered solely in Congress" and then "added to it all claims against 416