This would sheath the sword and once sheathed it would never again be drawn by this generation."

Later in the talk, he phrased it that "the people shall decide the question," and "but the majority must rule finally, either with bullets or ballots," and to this Mr. Davis replied: "Neither current events nor history shows that the majority rules or ever did rule. The contrary, I think, is true." Mr. Davis refused to entertain these proposals, and the question was settled by bullets and not by ballots, as it might have been, without war and bloodshed, if this proposal, coming from a Republican government, had been entertained.

After reading this, let no one say that the Republican party was not founded on the principles at the base of Direct Legislation. I repeat, in closing, what I said in opening: Every great political party has gained its

first headway from a direct contact with the common people, and has been unconquerable, vigorous, irresistible as long as their spirit freely rose and guided its councils, directed its leaders, inspired its laws and policies. The people have been the motherearth from which the Antaeus of party strength has derived that strength and vigor. vigor. No matter how firmly knit and powerful the party organization may have been, how glorious the records of past deeds, how splendid and dominant the party presence may loom, all these can but delay the downfall of the political party which has severed its connection with the great, common people, and no longer serves them, but some private or special interests.

Direct Legislation is not only Populist and Republican and Democratic and Whig and Federal, too, it is more—it is American.

Civil government is the will of all executed by one man in virtue of laws for which all have voted."-Voltaire.

"Sovereignty is never delegated. The sophism is the identity of the people and its delegates, the confounding of the prin

boulaye.

"Universal Democracy, whatever we may think of it, has declared itself as an inevitable fact of the days in which we live; and he who has any chance to instruct or to lead in his days, must begin by admitting that.”—Thomas Carlyle.

By J. St. Loe Strachey, editor the London Spectator:

It is good for all legislatures, as well as for all men, to be subject to control, and not to possess unlimited powers. The only effective form of control in the case of legislative bodies in a democratically governed country is to be found in the poll of the people. When a poll of the people exists the representatives are under control, and the people are able to insure that their rights have not been misunderstood or ignored. A poll of the people is also most useful in deciding contests between the two houses of a legislature. When servants quarrel as to which is in the right the master must de

cide. A poll of the people is the best corrective of the evils of unlimited representative institutions. But though the power to take a poll of the people is essential, reference to the popular will ought not, in my opinion, to be taken too often, or on trivial subjects. The master has the final voice, but he does not expect his servants to worry him with unimportant details. These must be settled by his delegates without an appeal to him.

By B. O. Flower, founder of the Arena and ex-editor of The New Time:

The referendum, initiative and recall will be to our people at the present time far more than was the Magna Charta to the

people of England under feudalism. It will give us what we never had before-a republican government. The alleged arguments which have been made against direct legislation are similar to the objections urged by the enemies of freedom and justice against the government established by our fathers. Indeed, persons cherishing the faith in the people and the love of liberty which Thomas Jefferson entertained cannot oppose these ideal republican measures. Those who distrust public government, whose interests are with despotism, who look with no disfavor upon tyranny if it be cloaked in some pleasing name, as well as those unfortunate persons who go through life echoing the shallow catch phrases of those who are forging chains of bondage for the people, may be expected to oppose this great reform, for tyranny and ignorance are ever leagued against progress and the dawn.

Direct legislation meets the imperative

SUSANNA M. D. FRY.

demand of our time and age, as the declaration of independence sounded a forward step and voiced in a measure the aspiration of our fathers at that stage in civilization. Only by meeting changed conditions with enlightened and progressive measures cal

culated to preserve justice and foster freedom can a republic save itself from the tyranny which blighted the hopes and promises of ancient Rome after the Patricians crushed the Gracchi. A government may long retain the name of a republic when all the essential features of democracy have vanished.

The crisis which confronts us, and which is recognized by all thoughtful and independent thinkers, imperatively demands the immediate introduction of direct legislation, which has already proved so beneficent in Switzerland. But even if it had never been introduced, if the experiment were as bold and untried as the splendid program inaugurated by the Fathers of our Republic, it would none the less be demanded by existing conditions in order to maintain the integrity of free government.

By Mrs. Susanna M. D. Fry, editor the Union Signal (Chicago):

Direct legislation would be the means of educating the inert mass of our people, who at present can scarcely be urged to an intelligent knowledge of how our government is constituted, much less to a knowledge of its workings under present conditions. The responsibility of more direct and personal participation in affairs would be such a schoolmaster as our youth have not yet had. It would furnish a means of carrying out the injunction, 'We must educate,' and serve as a preventive to the awful catastrophe, or we perish.'

The initiative and referendum would destroy many of the present evils and make a way possible for other needed reforms in city, State and nation. I am in favor of both because delegated responsibility has proved to a large degree a failure and because our representative government has ceased to represent under changed conditions and the power of boodle, and because direct legislation offers a way by which we may apply a bedrock principle of our government. viz., the rule of the majority. Let us have the initiative, the referendum, the imperative mandate and everything else necessary to putting the government into the hands of the largest number; it is necessary to the destruction of bossism, undue party power, lobby power, money power, corporation

power, and any and all power that subverts human character and the rights of the individual man and woman.

EDWIN D. MEAD.

By Edwin D. Mead, editor the New England Magazine (Boston):

I believe in direct legislation because it seems to me the next step toward making our Government what I believe democratic government will be ultimately, viz., something much nearer the town meeting than any form of representative government which we now have. The political philosophers of a century and a half ago believed that large republics were impossible, because they believed that an efficient and united public spirit could not pervade a great state sufficiently to make republican government in it successful; but small and great are relative terms, and the newspaper and the telegraph are making the United States for political purposes smaller than New England was when Washington was elected President. In time all citizens of the republic will stand in as close touch for political purposes as the citizens of a town to-day. Then government will be less and less representative and more and more di

rect.

By Gilbert McClurg, editor the Monthly Bimetallist (Denver):

When I recall the success which has followed the introduction of direct legislation in a small country like Switzerland, and when I consider the bungling tariff enactments forced recently upon us, I am prone to wish the American people might establish this legislative reform. Not even did our President comprehend, when he signed the bill in 1873, that that act had sealed the criminal demonetization of silver. In our Senate and in our House regularly occurs a most heedless and scandalous method of voting. Members have frequently testified, and it is common knowledge, that they vote daily for or against laws concerning which they know absolutely nothing. Party directs them more than does principle. Members, countless times, have bought and sold votes, inquiring meanwhile, 'What are you going to do about it?' To disrupt this continual corruption which enriches trusts and robs men I have yet to learn a remedy likely to prove so effective as securing direct legislalation,' which alone may yet effect genuine democracy.

By Edward H. Clement, editor the Boston Transcript:

It seems to me that one of the most interesting of all the projects for political and social advance, now so much discussed, is the old Swiss Republic's expedient of direct legislation. It will not cure all the evils that we suffer from nor provide all the new things that we want; but it certainly makes way for liberty.' It is a pretty good test of its usefulness that it would have a direct remedial effect upon the most enormous of the political abuses of the day-the use of political bodies for private money-making ends. When, through the re-submission of any project of legislation to the people, it becomes useless to purchase a State Legislature or a board of aldermen, or a committee of either house of Congress, there must .certainly result a drying up of the most prolific source of corruption and demoralization in American politics. But this would be only an immediate effect. The ultimate consequences of requiring the whole community to educate themselves upon questions of politics and legislation, in order to vote intelligently, are too large in beneficent influence to be more than indicated at this

With frequent referendums, under direct legislation as a part of our institutions, the whole people of both sexes would come to realize that government is everybody's business, and must not be left to a

"While the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate, he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant."-Speech of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

"It is already clear that on whatever lines the societies of the future are organized. they will have to count with a new power, with the last surviving sovereign force of modern times, the power of crowds. On the ruins of many ideas formerly considered beyond discussion, and today decayed or decaying, of so many sources of

authority that successive revolutions have de-. stroyed, this power, which alone has risen in their stead, seems soon destined to absorb the others. While all our ancient beliefs are tottering and disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving away one by one, the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing menaces. and of which the prestige is continually on the increase. The age we are about to enter will in truth be the Era of Crowds.

"Scarcely a century ago, the traditional policy of European states and the rivalries of sovereigns were the principal factors that shaped events. The opinion of the masses scarcely counted and most frequently, indeed, did not count at all. To-day it is the traditions which