the Landsthing. In order to become effective, however, these amendments must be approved also by the next Diet.-In November a loan of $4,000,000, made necessary by the extraordinary military expenses, was authorized by the government of Norway, and was promptly taken up by a banking syndicate. In January, by an authorization for the expenditure of $12,000,000, the government embarked upon the policy of developing, under state ownership and operation, the principal water powers of the country, for the purpose chiefly of generating electricity for the state railroads. Simultaneously, the electrification of the Drammen-Christiana road was begun.-On November 24 the Parliament of Portugal voted to enter the war on the side of the Allies whenever the government should so decide. On December 5 the cabinet resigned in a body. A Democratic cabinet, formed by Victor Couthino, failed to receive the confidence of either house, being attacked as too partisan to serve in the war crisis, and in January a cabinet under General Pimento Castro was formed. Though the new government was, apparently, sufficiently strong to maintain its authority in the capital, there was much disaffection among the radical elements in the provinces. Finally, in March, at a congress of Democrats held at Lamego, a revolutionary government, to be known as the "Republic of Northern Portugal," was proclaimed, with General Antonio Barreto as president. Apparently no measures were taken by the Lisbon government against this insurrection. Charging that the government at Lisbon had become virtually a military dictatorship in the hands of Premier Castro, the minister to France, Joas Chagas resigned his post.

VI. ASIA AND AFRICA

CHINA.—A general amnesty to the leaders of the revolutionary propaganda, and an invitation to them to coöperate with the government, was made public on February 11.-In January the foreign portfolio, until then filled by President Yuan, was accepted by Lu Cheng Siang, a statesman and diplomat of long experience. The landing of Japanese troops at Shanghai occasioned serious anti-Japanese riots there.

JAPAN.-The Diet convened on December 15, only to be dissolved when it rejected, by a large majority, the quarter-billion-dollar budget proposed by the government, calling for great enlargement of the military and naval establishments. At the elections held in March the factions supporting the government were returned with greatly increased strength, the Doshi-Kai or Constitutionalist party returning 150 members. The total government strength was estimated at 281 as against 145 for the opposition. -The electoral campaign was noteworthy not merely for the popular interest manifested, but also for the participation of women in the campaign for the first time in Japanese history.-In January Viscount Kanetake Oura relieved Premier Okuma of the Interior portfolio.

EGYPT.-Martial law was declared by Great Britain on November 3, and shortly afterward the British military forces were greatly strengthened

by the arrival of Canadian and Australian contingents. On December 17 the British government announced that it considered Turkish suzerainty over Egypt terminated and declared Egypt thenceforth a British protectorate, Sir Arthur McMahon, the British agent, being declared High Commissioner. Simultaneously, Abbas Hilmi, the Khédive, who was in Constantinople, ostensibly for personal reasons, but in reality, the British government alleged with apparent truth, for the purpose of assisting the Turks in the invasion of Egypt, was declared deposed and Prince Hussein Kemal, son of the exiled Khédive Esmai, an administrator of long experience, was proclaimed Sultan of Egypt, the new title indicating Egypt's complete independence of Turkey.

[For colonies and dependencies in Africa and Asia, see the United States, the British Empire and Continental European states, supra.]

E. M. SAIT,

LEWIS MAYERS.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

QUARTERLY

IN

A GREAT SECRETARY OF STATE'

WILLIAM L. MARCY

N his day and generation, William L. Marcy stood among the foremost men of the country. He barely lost the nomination for the presidency of the United States, and if nominated would have been elected. A few years after his death, his fame suffered the eclipse which befell that of so many able statesmen whose public career ended just prior to the Civil War. The great conflict naturally cast into oblivion the men and the measures that immediately preceded it, unless they were distinctly identified with the controversies that brought it about. Such was the fate of more than one of the most capable and most eminent leaders of the old National Democratic party, among whom the subject of the present paper occupied so conspicuous a place.

William Learned Marcy was born December 12, 1786, in Massachusetts, in that part of the town of Sturbridge which is now called Southbridge. His father was Jedediah Marcy, a farmer; his mother, whose maiden name was Ruth Learned, was the daughter of a husbandman. After studying for a time at Leicester Academy, the son, William L., entered Brown University, where he was graduated with high honors in 1808.

Being obliged to rely upon his own resources, young Marcy soon after his graduation at Brown set out to seek his fortune in the world, and to this end footed it across the state of Mas

'The substance of this article was delivered as the commencement address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Brown University, Tuesday, June 15, 1915.

sachusetts to what must then have been regarded, in Sturbridge, as the distant city of Troy, in the state of New York. Here, supporting himself by employment in a store, and perhaps also to some extent by teaching, he entered upon the study of the law, and was in due time admitted to the practice of that profession. From the very first he also took an active interest in politics, and became a contributor to the columns of the Troy Budget, an anti-Federalist organ. It was an age of warm political controversy, in which foreign questions loomed comparatively at least as large as they do today. Marcy early espoused the principles of the Republican or, as it was afterwards called, the Democratic party. It was a favorite story of an old Democratic friend of mine that the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts once formally decided that Jeffersonian Republicans were ferae naturae and might be shot on sight. I have never sought to verify this statement, but its humorous exaggeration perhaps does not unduly overemphasize the antagonism and the horror excited in certain quarters by what appeared to be the subversive and impious creed of the Jeffersonian sect. Marcy, in a brief autobiographical memorandum, narrates that he was excluded from a literary society formed by the principal of Leicester Academy because of his Republican proclivities. Upon this incident he remarks that it served only to increase his devotion to his principles.

In June, 1812, the war with Great Britain broke out. A military company in which Marcy was a lieutenant, offering its services to Governor Tompkins, was sent to the front. It was subsequently dispatched to French Mills, later known as Fort Covington. On the night of October 22, 1812, a detachment under Colonel Young was sent out to capture a company of Canadian militia at St. Regis. Marcy was of the party. At the head of a file of men, he approached the house in which the militia lodged, and himself broke open the door. The inmates were captured and disarmed. These were, with the exception of some troops captured by General Cass in Michigan but afterwards recaptured, the first British troops taken on land during the war. Their flag also was captured and was the first standard taken on land. Marcy with his company subsequently

379 joined the main army under General Dearborn. When his first enlistment expired, he returned to Troy; but later, when the city of New York was threatened, he volunteered a second time and was for a while again in service.

In 1816 Marcy was appointed recorder of Troy. He had already formed an intimacy, personal and political, with Martin Van Buren, and like Van Buren reluctantly voted for De Witt Clinton as the Republican candidate for governor in 1817. His well-known dissatisfaction with some of the measures of Clinton's administration led to threats of his removal from the office of recorder. The desire to discipline him was increased by his criticism of Clinton's administration in the columns of the Albany Argus, to which he became a frequent contributor. As a result, he was removed from the recordership in June, 1818, and a Clintonian was appointed in his stead. This act Marcy never ceased to resent. It greatly intensified the strong repugnance which he always felt to proscription for political opinions. For the next three years Marcy actively pursued the practice of his profession; but he also continued to engage in politics. He supported Van Buren in his efforts to reorganize the Republican party in 1819 and 1820 by the exclusion of Clintonians, and powerfully contributed by his pen to the success of the anti-Clintonian cause.

In January, 1821, a new council of appointment composed entirely of Republicans having been chosen, Marcy was appointed adjutant general of the state. In this position there was little opportunity for distinction; but in February, 1823, he was chosen to fill the office of state comptroller, which had been left vacant by the appointment of its incumbent, John Savage, as chief justice of the new supreme court under the constitution of 1821. On his election to the comptrollership, Marcy removed to Albany, where he ever afterwards continued to reside. The office of comptroller was then a highly important one, owing to the large expenditures required for the Erie and Champlain canals and the consequent increase of the state debt. It was universally conceded that Marcy performed the duties of the office with marked fidelity and skill. He introduced an improved system of collecting tolls and making