for its negative answer by those who know anything of the workings of our law-making bodies.

But there is no apathy among the people on a really vital question. As long as the referendums come from above down and are sporadic and occasional, just so long will legislatures make frequent mistakes as to what is a vital question. But when they come from below up and are a regular function of government, then will the vital questions come up in which the people are interested. This is shown by the fact that in Massachusetts, where they have yearly municipal referendums on the question of license or no license, the vote is very frequently larger than that for candidates. An ex-President of Switzerland said recently that where the people were interested in a question, they voted in large numbers, Lut on unimportant matters or ones which were going all one way, the vote was light. Thus at the referendum on Sunday, Feb. 20, 1898, on nationalization of the Swiss railroads, about 80 per cent. of the males over 21 voted. This is an almost unheard of percentage. In our Presidential elections, where measures are far more than in local elections a controlling element than men, a far larger vote is polled.

Thus the three answers to the fear of the people because they are apathetic are that, supposing it is so, it means a vote of the interested and best posted, that it will always be less on vital questions than the apathy of legislatures, and, third, that on vital questions, the people are not apathetic.

B. The second reason for fear of the people is that they are foolish, ignorant, cannot wisely decide intricate questions of administration or policy. They say that when a man is sick he hires a doctor who has studied diseases and had experience in their treatment, that when he has litigation he hires a lawyer and takes counsel with and from him. This is just what we will do under direct legislation. We will elect our advisers and counselors. The remains of that old idea is shown in the frequent name for municipal legislatures of common council. The people take advice from their own specially elected advisers whom they chose for that purpose. And if a group of unelected persons want to give the public

advice through the initiative they can do so and the people can take take it or not, as they see fit. But the getting of advice implies its adoption or rejection by the parties to whom it is given, and that is just where direct legislation comes in. The illustration of the doctor in sickness or the lawyer in litigation illustrates not our present system, but direct legislation. Our present system is like a broker managing a blind pool; his clients confide their interests to him not knowing what he is going to do. This is an entirely different thing from the role of a counselor. Then it is true that experts and students may know how best to accomplish a given end, but it is not true that they know best what ends to accomplish. A man does not go to a doctor till he feels that he needs or is going to need his advice, and he takes the prescription or not, as he sees fit. At present our legislative doctors have a force pump and whether the patient is sick or well, they pump their remedies into him heedless of his wishes. A man would be a fool who would turn over all his affairs to a lawyer with complete power to do as the lawyer liked for two years. But that is just what we do with our legislative bodies. The best class of lawyers will advise a course, but they always leave the decision to the client.

Direct legislation would not do away but lift to a higher plane expert advice as to how, but it would retain in the hands of the people the what. And on the what the people are wiser far than any expert or body of experts, however wisely selected. As the means are always subordinate to the end, so the advice of experts should always be subject to the decision of the people. It has been the custom for ages for all sorts of tyrannies to masquerade under high and noble aims, but to turn the method to their own purposes. When the people control the means, then will they secure the proper aim and also the highest forms of expert advice as to methods.

In this country it is rare for a legislator to serve over two terms, and then when he has acquired some experience and is becoming more and more valuable to the public, he is dropped. In Switzerland he is elected again and again if he is a good councillor to the people. So the answer to the objec

tion that the people are ignorant and foolish is that on the ends and aims of government, the real needs of the people, they will average wiser than any king, czar, parliament or congress, and on the means of securing these ends direct legislation will provide better expert counsel to the people than any other system, and so long as the means are in the control of some power outside of the people for just so long will the people's end of government not be secured.

One correspondent illustrates this "by the fact that the people elected McKinley in opposition to their own interests and Cleveland in spite of the fact that he told them plainly he was opposed to silver." Of course, in any statement of that kind, the individual is putting his opinion and the opinion of his minority against the opinion of the majority, and the presumption is that he is wrong. But suppose that the majority was wrong, and I think it was, who is to prevail? The friends of Mr. Reed in the Republican party, or of the various Democratic minority candidates, or of Col. Norton, the minority candidate of the People's party, or the Prohibitionist candidate, or that of the National Liberty party, or of the Socialist Labor party? Mere negative criticism of majority rule will not prevail; there must be some principle to replace it. Heredity has been tried and failed. Priestcraft has been tried and failed. A great many other experiments have been tried and failed, and the result has always been that nothing is so wise on the average as the majority. It will make fewer mistakes, and when it does these mistakes will be educative. Because the people have not taken the wise advice of my friend from Montana, myself and others like us, hence they will have to learn in the school of experience.

There is still another answer to this under our present system of choosing representatives who have sole power of making laws. It is that the people have to choose the men at present; under direct legislation they would choose the measures. Which is easier, to delve into the record and heart of a man and determine not only that he is good intentioned but also that he is wise on these questions, or to read and understand the terms of a law for some purpose and decide whether that purpose is

wise and right and whether the law is a proper carrying out of that purpose? The latter is hard enough, but a mere statement of the question shows that it is far easier to decide on a law than it is to decide on a man. Mind, according to the opening paragraph we are not looking for a panacea but for a definite system which will be better than our present one.

C. The third reason given for fear of the people is that they are impulsive and will be rash and hasty. This is the opposite of the first, that they are apathetic. One correspondent illustrates it by the fact that William Lloyd Garrison had to fly for his life from a mob. This is not an illustration at all, as direct legislation is the orderly taking of the decision of the people on a measure. It is not mob rule. The people will be impulsive at times, but far less so than legislative bodies who every now and then are swept by gusts of passion and folly. The reason for this lies on the surface. The larger a body, the harder is it to arouse and move. When the whole people consult and vote on a measure, there is first the agitation of getting petitions signed and filed, then the discussion in the legislature and before the people and the time which must elapse before a vote is taken. These all repress impulsive, hasty action. In fact, so strong is this tendency that many people urge the reverse as a fault of direct legislation, that it will be a drag on progress. The fact is that it will be a drag on progress when the tendency to advance is too strong, but it will be a spur to progress when the social movement is too sluggish. Under it, as in Switzerland, the power of the government vibrates slowly between the progressives and the conservatives, between. those who want to go ahead rapidly and those who wish to hold back. Both the radical conservatives and the radical progressives are often dissatisfied with it, but the great mass of the people are thoroughly satisfied with it.

Others say the people will be called on so often to vote that it will take all their time. Such overlook the great decrease in number of laws passed as shown in the last part of this article. Also that under the optional referendum, which alone is advocated in this country, every law is not sub

mitted to the people, but only those petitioned for, so that only important laws would be submitted, and these are few. Lastly, the expense, supposing all that is said about it is true, will not be one-tenth of what the indirect expense to the people now is through the errors and sales of franchises of one session of the legislature? Really the expense of disseminating the law to be voted on, printing the title on the regular ballots and counting the votes on it will be very small and greatly educative.

Others say the people will follow the regular party leaders. Such is not the case either in Switzerland or here, where the results show great independence of party in voting on measures. For instance, a Republican legislature in California recently submitted six constitutional amendments and three were accepted, three rejected and the Republicans returned to office. In Nebraska the Republicans submitted twelve amendments, all of which had a majority, and the Republicans were beaten. In Massachusetts the Republicans submitted two amendments, which were both lost, yet the Republicans were returned. Many more illustrations might be given of the voters' independence when measures were voted on. Often there are no party divisions on them.

D. The people are corrupt and can be bought. I do not believe it. At heart the people are sound. If I thought a majority of the people are corrupt I would eschew all reform work, enjoy sensuous pleasures to the full, and when satiated would "my quietus take," as I could not then believe in a God or anything else.

But suppose they are corrupt. They have got to be not only knaves but fools also; they are to be bought to do something contrary to their own interests, and it will not pay the power which buys them to pay the voters more than it is worth, else that power would be a fool, and it will not pay the voter to sell out for less than it is worth, else he also would be a fool. It is easy to give to each of a majority of one hundred representatives far less than a small percentage of the value of some franchise to far more than counterbalance the direct personal injury which the giving away of that franchise will occasion him personally. But if you start to corrupt the voters, each will have

to receive more than the direct personal loss to him, and that will be more than it is worth to the buyer. Then it is much easier to reach and keep quiet about it, a corruption of a small body of men than that of the mass of the voters. That there might be occasional and limited corruption of voters no one will deny, but that this corruption could become systematized and general, as in our present representative system, is an impossibility under direct legislation, and direct legislation will cure not all at once, but gradually and surely the corruption of our present system.

E. The people will be tyrannical. As one man puts it: "Populous portions of the country will legislate in their own interests to the detriment of sparsely populated sections, particularly in the matter of public improvements." I am afraid that this would occasionally happen at first, but it would be much less than under the present system. This is a serious evil now. Under direct legislation it would gradually be cured for two reasons:

I. The mass of the people are more swayed by great general principles of equity and justice; a small body, by questions of expediency and a dominant personality. The larger the body which decides, the larger, more simple and general will be the principles on which they decide.

2.

Direct legislation will gradually bring about, as it has in Switzerland, a decentralization of power. Many things which are now done by the nation will then be done by the state, many more things which are now done by the state or nation will then be done by the municipality or county and many things which are done by the municipality or county will then be relegated to the ward, parish or township. When a thing comes up which concerns only the cities in a state, such as the passing of a charter to govern a city, the people will see that as long as city charters conform to certain fundamental principles in the state constitution, the people of one city or of the country have no right to say what the charter or laws of another city should be. That alone concerns the city itself. It is absurd and unjust that the charter governing New York City should be made at Albany by a body the majority of whom

have no interest in New York City or special knowledge of its needs. Thus, when by the slow but steady and sure action of direct legislation, there comes a more proper limitation of the spheres of government, the danger of tyranny becomes less and less till it becomes nil.

JOHN G. WOOLLEY.

Theodore F. Seward, Esq., President of the Brotherhood of Christian Unity, editor of the Christian Union:

Having given largely of my time during the past six years to the promotion of a spirit of unity among different bodies of Christians, I am glad to express my interest in direct legislation from this standpoint. A nation cannot become one great parliament in any true sense of the term while those who profess to follow our Divine Leader are quarreling over different theories regarding His instructions. Per contra, giving up such dissension will have a direct tendency to promote the fraternal feeling and sympathy of thought and purpose which will lead to such a common or mutual consideration of the public welfare as is expressed in the practice of the initiative and referendum.

The truth begins to be realized that voting

to the glory of God on Tuesday is just as essential as singing to the glory of God on Sunday. Recognizing the eternal unity of law and life and truth leads to that understanding that there are no two standards of morality, one for earth and the other for heaven, but the principle is uniform and continuous. Let us have doctrinal charity in our worship on Sunday and fraternity of citizenship the rest of the week.

John G. Woolley, Esq., thinker, writer and temperance orator:

I am by instinct and training, I suppose, an adherent to the Hamiltonian idea of government. But my reason, my intelligence, impels me to assent to direct legislation as necessary to the continuance of our free institutions. No reform in existing evils can be inaugurated and maintained without its adoption.

Dr. J. W. C. Lorimer, pastor of Tremont Temple Baptist Church, Boston, Mass.:

Had I time I would like to enter into the merits of the question. Within limits and under wholesome conditions, I am favorable to the initiative and referendum. I hope by and by to express myself fully on this great and interesting theme.

Rev. Alexander Kent, pastor People's Church, Washington, D. C.:

All citizens of this republic are supposed to favor self-government or at least so much. of self-government as can co-exist with the rule of the majority. No one, therefore, who favors majority rule can consistently oppose direct legislation; for the former can never have more than a nominal existence apart from the latter.

Under so-called representative government the will of the majority is continually defeated and often measures are enacted into law and forced upon a people to which the great majority of the voters are bitterly opposed. Under direct legislation this cannot occur; for the whole body of the voters to be affected must pass upon each measure separately before it can become law. Representatives, therefore, do not have it in their power to misrepresent their constituents and burden them with obnoxious legislation.

Further, the people need not wait on the movements of the representatives for needed

legislation. They can take the initiative themselves and propose such measures as in their judgment the public good requires. A certain number or percentage of the voters may demand that these measures be submitted to the people for their action. In

is not to be found in immediate but remote results; in the tendency of responsibility to develop thoughtfulness, fidelity, capability. Under direct legislation the powers of the machine will be broken and the business of the boss will be ended. Direct legislation is not foreign to this country. The town meeting of New England has always been conducted on this principle. Every citizen is at liberty to propose measures which the majority may accept or reject. It was a mistake to substitute the representative method for this more direct mode. With this have come a host of evils which leave imperiled the very existence of the republic. We must restore to the whole people that which was wrongfully taken from them. Rather, they must retake for themselves that which they foolishly surrendered. Armed with this, they will then be in position to secure all other things to which they have rightful claim.

DR J. W. C. LORIMER, Pastor Tremont Temple Baptist Church, Boston. this way self-government or majority rule, which is the nearest practicable approach to it, becomes the exercise of the initiative, but no restrictions should be placed on the right of the people to ratify or reject.

With this method of expressing, the people's will once adopted, we will be in a position to give Democracy a fair trial. A really democratic government will then be possible. If the people are sufficiently intelligent and moral for self-government it cannot fail to work well. And even if they blunder seriously and gravely they can hardly do so badly for themselves as their present bosses do for them. Besides, the training and experience will have educative value. The argument for self-government

REV. ALEXANDER KENT.