The principal records of Scotland are kept in the General Register House at Edinburgh. They include the registers of the privy council and the rolls of the Exchequer and the Chancery. Other records of the Chancery remain in the custody of the court, and the Court of Teinds (tithes) also keeps its own records. There are also local records of great interest (see Murray, Scottish Local Rec ords, 1927). The Reorganization of Offices (Scotland) Act (1928) abolished the office of Deputy Clerk Register, whose duties, with those of the Keepers of the Registers, of Sasines and of Deeds, were transferred to a Keeper of the Registers and Records of Scotland. For Ireland a Public Record Office was established in 1867 and to it were transferred the records of the various courts of law, wills proved in Ireland and certain financial records; the State Paper Office remaining a separate institution though under the control of the deputy-keeper. The most valuable Irish State Papers, however, numbering 500 volumes and ranging in date from the reign of Henry VIII. to 1771, are in London. On the other hand five important volumes containing correspondence and other papers of the early 17th century, discovered in Philadel phia in 1866 by Hepworth Dixon, the historian and traveller, and on his suggestion offered to the British Government, were, on the suggestion of Lord Romilly, at that time Master of the Rolls, presented to the Irish Record Office.
If the historian of Scotland or Ireland must seek for many of his sources of information in England, still more is this the case of the colonial historian. Nevertheless, the dominions have their own records also, and within recent years a good deal of attention has been paid to their administration. Both in South Africa and in Canada the policy of provincial repositories is favoured, the four members of the Union and the provinces of Canada having their own archives. Mr. C. Graham Botha, chief archivist for the Union of South Africa, after the War made a tour of inspec tion of the principal record offices of Europe and America and his report, published in Pretoria in 1921, is a very valuable survey of the conditions of archive administration throughout the civi lized world. Canada has taken steps to augment its own records by the foundation of history societies in England and France for the discovery, preservation and publication of documents relat ing to its history in those countries.
In the care and disposal of rec ords 'France was a pioneer. A carefully considered policy was laid down in 1789 and has ever since been adhered to. The national archives, divided into three sections, historique, adminis trative et dontaniale and legislative et judiciare are kept in the Hotel de Soubise in Paris. Each of the departments keeps its own records, consisting both of those of the old provincial govern ments and those of the post-revolutionary administrations; and these are under central control and arranged on a uniform system of classification. Beyond these are the municipal and communal archives and the archives hospitalieres. The greater part of these records have been carefully inventoried; and besides a severely logical and consistent method of administration, France possesses in the Ecole de Chartes an institution for the scientific study of records which has been imitated but never rivalled.
Most European countries, as already noted, have followed, with varying degrees of precision, the example of France. In Switzer land and Holland, for instance, there are separate repositories for each of the cantons and States, with central offices at Berne and The Hague respectively. The Reichsarchiv of Germany, which was taken over by the new Government in 1919, are kept at Potsdam and the States comprising the Reich each have their own archives, there being in Prussia, besides the chief collection at Berlin, no less than 16 provincial repositories. The municipal records of such towns as Frankfurt and Cologne are of great value. In Italy there are 17 repositories, under the control of the ministry of the interior, representing the ancient divisions of the country. The archives of the Vatican stand, of course, in a separate category. With regard to the publication of records the method adopted in Holland is particularly worthy of note. Early in the 20th century a Commissie van Advies voors Rijks Geschied kundige Publicatien was set up, consisting of ten leading historical scholars who meet three or four times a year. Under the direction of this body a series of volumes has been published, the value of which is, far from being confined to the Netherlands.