Evening star., 1927-11-19
THE LIBRARY TABLE
By the BooklOrer

Roger Williams, the founder oi
Rhode Island, was primarily poiltf
cal philosopher rather than theolo-
gian. one of the most notaple
democratic thinkers that the Engiisn
race has produced" according 10 trol'
Vernon l.. Parrington, in Inc Co,o'
NAL Mind, 1620-1S00," in when ne
links Roger Williams with RenJamih
Franklin and Thomas Jefferson as tne
three great names in the line OF lip-
eralism in colonial America. Roger
Williams was sent to earth before MS
time. since in his intellectual inter-
ests he was cotemporary with sue
cessive generations of prophets from
his own DAYS to ours" lie was a
forerunner of Emerson and the Con-
cord school as transcendental mystic;
a forerunner of Charming and the
Unitarians in the practice of the open
mind, and a forerunner of Thomas
Paine as political philosopher. Mr..
Parrington describes him as the one
original thinker amongst number
of capable social architects" and says
that Cotton Mather, his antagonist,
was right in reporting Williams as
the first rebel against the divine
church order established in the wilder
ness" but more than that ''he was
rebel against all the stupidities that
interposed a barrier betwiXt men and
the fellowship of their dreams" since
''out of his long speculations emerged
theory of the commonwealth that
must be reckoned the richest contri-
button of Puritanism to American pO-
litical thought" He accepted the
compact theory of the state-"that
government is a manmade institution,
that it rests on consent and that it
is founded on the assumed equality of
the subjects His idea of the state
is that sit is the political machinery
devised by the sovereign people to
serve the common veal, re-
spOnsible to the sovereign people and
strictly limited by the terms of the
social agreement" He argued that
the legal status of the church was
that of a corporation not differing in
its rights from secular institutions.
This doctrine was, of course, abhor-
rent to the Massachusetts, theocrats.
But he carried his principle of tolera-
ton to the point of religious liberty
as a fundamental right, in no way
answerable to the civil power.
Founded on such ideas, Rhode Island
became with him great experiment
in democracy. to which he devoted his
life. I'm his own day he was ac-
counted an enemy of society, 3
yet, like so many unshackled thinkers,
he was seeker after better order,
friend to nobler and more humane
society,""
X X X
The analysis of the political theories
or Roger Williams on which the fore
going paragraph is based forms a
RI, in xx-Ia -,
most interesting kind of history of
American literature. 1.-The Colonial
Mind, 1620-1S00" is the first volume of
Main Currents in American Thought:
An Interpretation of American Litera-
ture From the Beginnings to 1920"
The second volume is entitled THE
Romantic Revolution in America,
1SOO-1860." The third volume, still to
be published, will be called THE Be
ginnings of Critical Realism in Amer
lea, 1860-1920." The author, who is
professor of English in the University
or Washington, at Seattle, essays to
treat of field of American letters
which has been pretty largely neglect
ed. The special purpose of the work
can best be given by quoting from the
authors introduction: II have under
taken to give some account of the
genesis and development in American
letters of certain germinal ideas that
have come to be reckoned traditionally
they came into being
here, how they were opposed, and
what influence they have exerted in
determining the form and scope of our
characteristic ideas and institutions.
In pursuing such task, I have
chosen to follow the broad path of our
political, economic and social develop
ment. rather than the narrower BELLE
tristic; and the main divisions of the
study have been fixed by forces that
are anterior to literary schools and
creating the body of ideas
from which literary culture eventually
springs" In the two volumes, recently
published, the author has given a most
interesting and reliable history of
American thought of the earlier period
X X * *
Doubtless the sentimental novel
sells better and thus pays better than
the epic novel of manners. but Ger
tain People of Importance" has done
more for the literary reputation of
Kathleen Norris than her last novel,
'Barberry Bush" or any of her others
of the same type will ever do. Bar
ment, rather preachy, and has not
merely one obvious moral but two or
three of them. Yet it has a modern
note withal. The strings controlling
the plot are pulled delicately or vigor-
ouSly, once at least with a surpris-
ing jerk, to regulate the fortunes
of Barbara and Amy Atherton, Mari
anne Scott, the lady with a past;
Barry du Spain and Link Mackenzie.
X X X
Much as Boswell haunted the pres
ence of DIR. Johnson, with note book
and pencil in hand, so l.. White Bus
bey played the part of recorder of
words and deeds for Joseph G. Cam
non. The result is Uncle Joe Can
non. The Story of Pioneer Amer
lean as Told to L. White Busbey, for
Twenty Years His Private Secretary"
which recently ran as a series of
articles in The Evening Star, and is
now published as a book. During the
years of his secretaryship, Mr.. Bus.
bey kept diary in which he en-
tered what Cannon said of his long
life in politics, and now that both
subject and bicgra pher are dead Mrs.
Busbey has correlated the diary en-
tries into an autobiography. Cannon
appears first as the least important
member OF the congressional ring, of
which Reed and Mckinley were the
other two. AS chairman of the ap-
preparations committee, he welded
much power and, when Mckinley had
become President, at his request in
troduced into Congress the bill pro-
viding for an appropriation for war
with Spain. From 1903, when he be-
came Speaker of the House, until
the insurgent movement divested the
speakership of most of it's powers,
he was species of dictator. Before
the end of his long service in Con-
gress he had become almost a ma
tional institution. a representative of
a political type that was nearly ex-
tinct.
X X
The craftsmanship of Queen Eliza
beth, especially as applied to the in
trigues centerlng about Mary. Queen