practice those conceptions of democracy and popular sovereignty which had been only vaguely apprehended when enunciated at the Revolution, the faith of the average man in himself became stronger, his love of equality greater, his desire, not only to rule, but to rule directly in his own proper person, more constant. These sentiments would have told still further upon State governments had they not found large scope in local government. However, even in State affairs they made it an article of faith that no constitution could be enacted save by the direct vote of the citizens; and they inclined the citizens to seize such chances as occurred of making laws for themselves in their own way. Concurrently with the growth of these tendencies there had been a decline in the quality of the State legislatures, and of the legislation which they turned out. They were regarded with less respect; they inspired less confidence. Hence the people had the further excuse for superseding the legislature, that they might reasonably fear it would neglect or spoil the work they desired to see done. And instead of being stimulated by this distrust to mend their ways and recover their former powers, the State legislatures fell in with the tendency, and promoted their own supersession. The chief interest of their members, as will be explained later, is in the passing of special or local acts, not of general public legislation. They are extremely timid, easily swayed by any active section of opinion, and afraid to stir when placed between the opposite fires of two such sections. Hence they welcomed the direct intervention of the people as relieving them of embarrassing problems.

The methods by which legislative power is directly vested in the American voters are two. One is the enactment or amendment by them of a constitution.

The other method is the submission to popular vote, pursuant to the provisions of the Constitution, of a proposal or proposals therein specified. If such a proposal has been first passed by the legislature, we have here also an instance of a referendum in the Swiss sense.

The same principle of popular vote has been widely applied to local as well as to State government. Many recent constitutions provide that the approval of the people at the polls shall be needed in order to validate a decision of the city, or

county, or school district, or township authority regarding borrowing, or taxing, or lending public funds to some enterprise it may be desired to assist. Licensing questions are usually left to popular determination alone, with no interference by the local representative authority.

What are the practical advantages of this plan of direct legislation by the people? Its demerits are obvious. Besides those I have already stated, it tends to lower the authority and sense of responsibility in the legislature; and it refers matters needing much elucidation by debate to the determination of those who cannot, on account of their numbers, meet together for discussion, and many of whom may have never thought about the matter.

But the improvement of the legislatures is just what the Americans despair of, or, as they prefer to say, have not time to attend to. Hence they fall back on the direct popular vote as the best course available under the circumstances of the case, and in such a world as the present. They do not claim that it has any great educative effect on the people. But they remark with truth that the mass of the people are equal in intelligence and character to the average State legislator, and are exposed to fewer temptations. Nor should it be forgotten that in a country where law depends for its force on the consent of the governed, it is eminently desirable that law should not outrun popular sentiment, but have the whole weight of the people's deliverance behind it.1

If the practice of recasting or amending State constitutions were to grow common, one of the advantages of direct legislation by the people would disappear, for the sense of permanence would be gone, and the same mutability which is now possible in ordinary statutes would become possible in the provisions of the fundamental law. But this fault of small democracies, especially when ruled by primary assemblies, is unlikely to recur in large democracies, such as most States have now become, nor does it seem to be on the increase among

1 In the case of local option there is the further argument that to commit the question of licences to a local representative is virtually to make the election of that authority turn upon this single question, and that there is an advantage in making a restriction on the freedom of the individual issue directly from the vote of the people, who may feel themselves doubly bound to enforce what they have directly enacted.

them. Reference to the people, therefore, acts as a conservative force; that is to say, it is a conservative method as compared with action by the legislature.

This method of legislation by means of a constitution or amendments thereto, arising from sentiments and under conditions in many respects similar to those which have produced the referendum in Switzerland, is an interesting illustration of the tendency of institutions, like streams, to wear their channels deeper. A historical accident, so to speak, suggested to the Americans the subjection of their legislatures to a fundamental law, and the invention has been used for other purposes far more extensively than its creators foresaw. It is now, moreover, serviceable in a way which those who first used it did not contemplate, though they are well pleased with the result. It acts as a restraint not only on the vices and follies of legislators, but on the people themselves. Having solemnly bound themselves by their constitution to certain rules and principles, the people come to respect those principles. They have parted with powers which they might be tempted in a moment of excitement, or under the pressure of suffering, to abuse through their too pliant representatives; and although they can resume these powers by enacting a new constitution or amending the old one, the process of resumption requires time, and involves steps which secure care and deliberation, while allowing passion to cool, and the prospect of a natural relief from economic evils to appear.

State constitutions, considered as laws drafted by a convention and enacted by the people at large, are better both in form and substance than laws made by the legislature, because they are the work of abler, or at any rate of honester, men, acting under a special commission which imposes special responsibilities on them. The appointment of a constitutional convention excites general interest in a State. Its functions are weighty, far transcending those of the regular legislature. Hence some of the best men in the State desire a seat in it, and, in particular, eminent lawyers become candidates, knowing how much it will affect the law they practise. It is therefore a body superior in composition to either the Senate or the House of a State. Its proceedings are followed with closer attention; and it is exempt from the temptations with which

the power of disposing of public funds bestrews the path of ordinary legislators; its debates are more instructive, its conclusions are more carefully weighed, because they cannot be readily reversed. Or if the work of altering the constitution is carried out by a series of amendments, these are likely to be more fully considered by the legislature than ordinary statutes would be, and to be framed with more regard to clearness and precision.

In the interval between the settlement by the convention of its draft constitution, or by the legislature of its draft amendments, and the putting of the matter to the vote of the people, there is copious discussion in the press and at public meetings, so that the citizens often go well prepared to the polls. An all-pervading press does the work which speeches did in the ancient republics, and the fact that constitutions and amendments so submitted are frequently rejected, shows that the people, whether they act wisely or not, do not at any rate surrender themselves blindly to the judgment of a convention, or obediently adopt the proposals of a legislature.

THE similarity of the frame of government in the forty-five Republics which make up the United States, a similarity which appears the more remarkable when we remember that each of these republics is independent and self-determined as respects its frame of government, is due to the common source whence the governments flow. They are all copies, some immediate, some mediate, of ancient English institutions, viz. chartered selfgoverning corporations, which, under the influence of English habits, and with the precedent of the English parliamentary system before their eyes, developed into governments resembling that of England in the eighteenth century. Each of the thirteen colonies had up to 1776 been regulated by a charter from the British Crown, which, according to the best and oldest of all English traditions, allowed it the practical management of its own affairs. The charter contained a sort of skeleton constitution, which usage had clothed with nerves, muscles, and sinews, till it became a complete working system of free government. There was in each a governor, in two colonies chosen by the people, in the rest nominated by the Crown or the "proprietor;" there was a legislature; there were executive officers acting under the governor's commission and judges nominated by him; there were local self-governing communities.

When the thirteen colonies became sovereign States at the Revolution, they preserved this frame of government, substituting a governor chosen by the State for one appointed by the Crown. As the new States admitted to the Union after 1789 successively formed their constitutions prior to their admission to the Union, each adopted the same scheme, its people imitating, as was natural, the older commonwealths whence they came, and whose working they understood and admired. They were the more inclined to do so because they found in the older