Parliamentary Supervision of Delegated Legislation: The United Kingdom, Australia, NewZealand and Canada by John E. KersellReview by: Eugene ForseyThe Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienne d'Economique etde Science politique, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Aug., 1961), pp. 422-423Published by: Wiley on behalf of Canadian Economics AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/139621 .

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422 Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science

Perhaps it is well to be warned again about the dangers of "majoritarian" democracy, but after Tocqueville and Mill there is really very little left to say.

RAMSAY COOK University of Toronto

Parliamentary Supervision of Delegated Legislation: The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. By JOHN E. KERSELL. London: Stevens & Sons Limited (Toronto: Carswell Company Limited). 1960. Pp. xvi, 178. $4.75.

THIS book deals with a subject of great and growing importance. It should be particularly useful to any government back-benchers in our own House of Commons, and to frustrated members of our Senate. For it shows how large a part back-benchers in the British House of Commons, and the Upper Houses in both Britain and Australia, have taken in securing adequate control of delegated legislation in those countries.

Professor Kersell has done an immense amount of work, and, as far as I can judge, for the most part with exemplary care and thoroughness. He has presented the results clearly, concisely and logically; no mean feat, for the detail he has to summarize is enormous and bewildering in its variety. There is, inevitably, a certain amount of repetition (but not much), and it is possible to quarrel (but not seriously) with the assignment of certain material to one chapter rather than another. On the whole, this seems to me a big and urgent job well done.

Professor Kersell struck me, at first, as better satisfied with the Canadian situation than the facts he gives appear to warrant, or, at any rate, as unduly cautious in his conclusions and suggestions. Re-reading, I am not so sure of this; but he still seems to me to be rather less forthright about Canada than about the other countries.

My admiration for the book's thoroughness and accuracy got a shock when I read (p. 118) that in the Canadian House "Standing Orders provide that a motion to adjourn 'shall always be in order' and, by implication, debatable." The "implication" is the direct opposite of the fact: with the single exception of the motion to adjourn to discuss a definite matter of urgent public im- portance, no motion to adjourn is ever debatable. I can only hope that there are no other such inexplicable errors on points I know nothing about.

The book could have done with some careful editing. There is a quite astonishing amount of crabbed (or worse) English. For one thing, there is the repeated use of "lay" for "lie" (documents are "laid" on the table, yes; but they do not then "lay" there); and Professor Kersell has a curious fondness for such phrases as "a double check is usually had," "an opportunity would be had," "Parliamentary influence can be had." Then there is "at very least," "on merit," procedures which "operate conjunctively," "unimpaired powers" (for "unlimited powers"), "passed a few comments." I thought I was becoming inured to "presently" for "at present"; but what is really too much is to find it used correctly, in its dictionary meaning of "soon," on page 83, and in- correctly on pages 79, 133 and 155. Surely some alert publisher's reader could at least have prevented Professor Kersell from mixing his drinks this way! And

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Reviews of Boolks 423

what is the point of putting people's dates in the index? And still more, of putting in some people's and not others'? Things like these are small, but, at least in the text, they are a recurrent distraction and irritation, the more unfortunate when the subject matter requires, as in this case, unremitting attention. However, perhaps I am becoming what Sir Harold Nicolson calls a "doriphore." It would be better to close by saying that I look forward to Professor Kersell doing for Canadian provincial legislatures what he has done in this book for the superior legislatures.

EUGENE FORSEY

Ottawa

Planning for Freedom: The Public Law of American Capitalism. By EUGENE V. RosTow. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1959. Pp. viii, 437. $6.00.

IN these days of continuing specialization (despite much pious talk to the contrary), it is refreshing to find in the present volume extended discussion of no less than three fields-Economics, Political Science, and Law. While it is doubtful that everyone would agree with Dean Rostow on all points (who- ever did with any author?) I doubt that many people would question the professional competence of this book in any of its sections. As such it repre- sents a refreshing and much needed reply to the tyranny of the "field" and the degree.

Rostow begins with basic political philosophy, passes through economic analysis, brings into the picture the role of competition and the anti-trust laws, and winds up with a final summary. His point of departure (though the quotation comes from the end of the book) is: "If we [the United States] are not anarchists in our political philosophy we are, however, surely com- mitted pluralists" (p. 367), and he gives, at the beginning, one of the clearest statements I have encountered of the relation of pluralism and limited govern- ments to political and personal freedom. Paralleling the line of argument presented in the reviewer's Capitalism, Rostow writes: "Unless the members of an opposition can make a living without the permission of the government; unless they can function as a political party, obtain newsprint and presses, hire meeting halls, publish freely; unless they can have access to television without complete dependence on the good will and sporting instincts of the government in power, their opposition is bound to be a feeble, meaningless force, existing only by sufferance." (p. 32)

He goes on to describe (p. 35) the position of the political leader

if a program of genuine socialism is put into effect, and the state becomes the sole employer, save for a fragmentary private sector. . . . Consider the position of Mr. Molotov who was recently removed as Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, after forty years of considerable experience, for the offense of having caucussed with some friends before a meeting of the Politburo. He could not retum to private law practice or run for the Senate. He was not made head of a Moscow bank, or head of a great can or typewriter company, or rector of a University, or chief of the Russian Red Cross. His future was at the mercy of the Government.... No manager ultimately dependent on the smiles and frowns of the government, however de- centralized the system of Socialism might become, would dare give a man in Molotov's position a reasonable job. For a small man . . . the problem would be even more hopeless. Men of stature sometimes defy a tyrant and survive, because

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