Money and Economic Development: The Horowitz Lectures of 1972. By Friedman Milton. (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973. Pp. 80. $8.50.)

aim is to explain the growth of commitment in the Liberal party to policies of advanced social reform, the extent to which that commitment was translated into legislation and positive governmental action, and the ideological basis that distinguished this so-called New Liberalism from the contemporaneous Socialist and Conservative approaches to the social problems of Great Britain. The main thrust of the book is to identify a body of thought which Dr. Emy, Lecturer in Politics at Monash University, Australia, calls "Social Radicalism" and to attribute to it the major responsibility for the shift in the emphases of Liberal policy. Unfortunately, the timing of the publication of this book deprives it of a certain amount of its value. It originated as a Cambridge doctoral thesis in 1966, and, the author tells us, "both the reading and my practical interest in this period finished in late 1969." At that time very little had been published on the relationship between Liberal politics and social policy in the period 1892-1914, and the author had to investigate many different facets of the history of the Liberal party without assistance from specialized monographs on them. No sooner had he completed his thesis, however, than these monographs began to pour off the presses, and within a few years the landscape of the subject had been transformed. Indeed, he acknowledges in a preface which endeavors to take account of the implications of a few works published down to early 1972 that the concept of the "new Liberalism" is well on its way to acquiring the status of the new conventional wisdom. From the perspective afforded by these more recent writings it is clear that Dr. Emy tackled, and indeed at the time probably had to tackle, too much. Works such as Jose Harris's Unemployment and Politics: A Study in English Social Policy 1886-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), and P. F. Clarke's Lancashire and the New Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) explore aspects of the subject in far greater depth than was possible in his own wider-ranging survey. And yet it is also clear, again from the same perspective, that he left out too much. The omissions are all the more striking because of the obviousness of his attempt to say something about many different aspects of Liberal politics. One of them is the theme of the relevance of "national efficiency" and Liberal Imperialism to the relationship between the Liberal party and social politics. Dr. Emy attempts to justify his almost complete omission of this, but only in the preface and as an afterthought. The reader must also use two other recently published works—G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency. A Study in British Politics and Political Thought, 1899-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), and H. C. G. Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists. The ideas and politics of a post-Gladstonian elite (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Press, 1973)—if he wishes to have a balanced picture of the forces contributing to the growth of Liberal concern for social reform.