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of the roads were mainly matters for parish level, though bridges were usually a subject for quarter sessions. If the work of the quarter sessions was not as all-embracing as has sometimes been thought, it nevertheless involved the attendance of several hundred persons for two or three days on each occasion. This added an economic motive to the prestige of being the county capital, similar to that behind the recent competition of towns for new universities. In Merioneth, the claims of Harlech had failed by the early eighteenth century, and Bala and Dolgellau had arrived at the compromise that the Hilary and Trinity sessions should be at Bala, the Easter and Michaelmas sessions at Dolgellau. The introduction by Mr. Williams-Jones deserves a wide audience. He has drawn on an extensive range of primary and secondary sources to illuminate life in eighteenth-century Merioneth. Although attention is meticulously drawn to differences of practice elsewhere, many of the generalizations can be applied to the whole of contemporary Wales- such as, perhaps, this nicety of class distinction. A Merioneth landowner with an estate of £ 200 a year was styled a 'gentleman'; when his holding expanded to £ 400 a year he became an 'esquire'. PETER D. G. THOMAS. Aberystwyth. THE FIRST INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. By Phyllis Deane. Cambridge University Press, 1965. Pp. viii, 295. 40s. Paperback, 17s. 6d. The British industrial revolution has been a well-established theme now for over eighty years. Miss Deane investigates it not so much by way of narrative but more by considering it within the framework of 'the concepts and techniques of development economics'. One advantage claimed for this approach is that it emphasises the relevance of British experience during the years 1750-1850 to the countries which are currently trying to industrialise. Her book, which originates from a course of lectures given to first-year Cambridge students, blends with skill the results of recent work and what endures of the old story, presents conflicting views fairly, and is free from a dogmatic finality. The statistics which the author has helped to make available for historians in previous publications are used freely, and generally, although not always, there is some indication of their limitations. The book opens by portraying the characteristics of the English economy of the mid-eighteenth century and then deals with the main developments in population, agriculture, foreign trade, and transport during the following century. After two industries only-cotton and iron-have been