Volume 21, Number 4 · March 21, 1974
England Hath Need of Thee!
By J.M. Cameron
R.H. Tawney and His Times: Socialism as Fellowship
by Ross Terrill
Harvard University Press, 373 pp., $15.00
Doctor Johnson once said that 'if a man were to go by chance at the same time with Burke under a shed, to shun a shower, he would say—'this is an extraordinary man.' ' With Tawney, too, a chance encounter was enough to make it plain that he was a man of remarkable intelligence and intense moral passion. His writing confirms this. There are the three historical works, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912), Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), and Business and Politics under James I (1958); two fine works on political ethics, The Acquisitive Society (1920) and Equality (1931); Land and Labour in China (1932); and a multitude of shorter writings on politics, education, economic history, including a number of characteristically generous prefaces to the work of other men. His 1941 article in the Economic History Review, 'The Rise of the Gentry, 1558-1640,' started a controversy that continues to reverberate.
Review, 2107 words
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