¹ The Outlook, October 20, 1906, p. 409 Google ScholarPubMed.

² Godkin, , Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy, p. 144 Google Scholar. Substantially the same opinion is expressed by an editorial in the Outlook of December 8, 1906, p. 860.

³ “The views of a constituency” says Burgess, “should always be taken into account as contributing to the make up of the consciousness of the State, but the will of a constituency has no place in the modern system of legislative representation.” Political Science and Constitutional Law, vol. 2, p. 116 Google Scholar.

⁴ An illustration of this fact was afforded by the election of November 6, 1906, in Chicago. Owing to the great number of offices to be filled at the election, a ballot nearly 2 feet square (26 by 19 in.) was required. There were seven party columns containing the names of 334 candidates; The Chicago Record Herald justly complained that there were no electors in Chicago who could vote such a ballot intelligently and urged that it should be simplified by a reduction in the number of elective offices. Horace E. Deming, Esq., in a recent address before the National Municipal League entered a protest against the useless multiplication of elective offices. He described the ballot used in a recent election in New Jersey as being 2 feet and 8 inches long and containing the names of 164 candidates. He showed how the ballot used could have been simplified by the elimination of at least three-fourths of the names, leaving a small ballot with a dozen or more names. Making so many offices elective, he declared, “confuses the voter as to the real political results, gives abundant opportunity for and, indeed, necessitates slates and combinations, cumbers the electoral machinery adds to the expense, and increases the complexity of campaigns,” and at this particular primary, required the printing of 74 names to be passed upon by every voter. The result was that the voter was “hopelessly entangled in the intentional absurdities of the ballot and hence unable to exercise an intelligent and discriminating choice and to make his choice effectual.” Proceedings of the National Municipal League for 1906, p. 312.

⁵ It is a subject of growing complaint that elections are coming to be too complex for the average voter to exercise his privilege intelligently. The New York Nation complaining of this tendency, recently declared that for weeks before the election of November, 1905, the newspapers were turned into primers of instruction for the voters. The spectacle of “educated New Yorkers annually learning how to vote” has come to be one of the regular features of political life in the metropolis. In the election referred to above 13,000 votes were cast for Jerome's republican opponent, although the latter had withdrawn from the race. These votes would doubtless have been cast for Jerome but for the fact that the ballot was very complicated and there was fear that the attempt to vote a split ticket would result in the spoiling of the ballot. Accordingly the electors, voted the straight ticket in order to be sure that their ballot would be counted.

⁶ “Of all the forms of government, democracy is the most difficult. Little as the governing multitude is conscious of this difficulty, prone as the masses are to aggravate it by their avidity for taking more and more power into their direct management, it is a fact which experience has placed beyond all dispute—The difficulties are so manifold and enormous that in large and complex modern societies it could neither last nor work if it were not aided by certain forces which are exclusively associated with it, but of which it greatly stimulates the energy.” Popular Government, pp. 87, 98.

⁷ Comparative Administrative Law, vol. 2. p. 10 Google Scholar.

⁸ Allgemeines Staatsrecht, bk. 6, ch. xxi, Compare Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution.

⁹ This idea is emphasized by J. S. Mill in his Representative Government, ch. iii; “There is no difficulty in showing,” says Mill, “that the ideally best form of government is that in which the sovereignty or supreme controlling power is vested in the entire aggregate of the community,” p. 21. Direct participation in public affairs, he says, tends to create an “active” rather than a passive type of citizen, human beings rather than machines.” Compare Laveleye, le Gouvernement dans la Démocratie, p. 273; “No man can be considered free in the political acceptation of the word who is not allowed to take some part in the government of his country.” Speaking of the effect of the referendum upon party spirit, A. V. Dicey says: “It is difficult to exaggerate the immense benefit which in the long run accrues to a people from the habit of treating legislation as a matter to be determined not by the instincts of political partisanship, but by the weight of argument.” The Contemporary Review, vol. 57, p. 508 Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Compare on this point Common's Proportioned Representation, p. 334.

¹¹ “To set to work every group and every interest” says Bradford, “which has a scheme to forward and with the proverbial ease with which signatures are obtained thrust this scheme upon the legislature, to rebound upon the mass of the people for settlement, seems like the evident work of a disordered imagination.” Lessons of Popular Government, vol. 2, p. 201 Google Scholar. Recently, some 50,000 votes were cast in Chicago against a proposition to convert the floating debt of the city into a bonded debt at a lower rate of interest, thus saving thousands of dollars annually to the city. In some instances, propositions of this sort have been defeated outright. An illustration of the queer workings of the referendum was afforded by Maryland in 1891. Two amendments to the constitution were submitted to the voters; one allowing the taxation of mortgage debts, the other altering a clause in the declaration of rights so as to permit a more equitable system of taxation. Apparently, the first proposition should have been rejected and the second adopted. But the result was the contrary, the first proposition being carried and the second rejected, the vote on the question of amendment in each case being about one-third the total vote cast for governor. Strangely enough, some counties were almost unanimous for one amendment and others almost unanimous against it. In some counties, four-fifths of the total vote was cast on one or the other proposal, while in others it was as low as one-sixteenth. The explanation given for the singular result was that the masses not understanding clearly the purport of the proposed amendments voted as the political bosses advised. In the democratic counties, the instructions were to vote a certain way, wh,ile in the republican counties, the leaders directed their followers to vote the other way. In some counties where the leaders had no pronounced opinions, one way or other but few votes were cast. Bradford, Lessons of Popular Government, p. 561.

¹² Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, p. 245.

¹³ Sydney and Beatrice Webb, Industrial Democracy, chs. i and ii.

¹⁴ Out of about 900,000 votes oast at the election, 596,000 votes were cast for and against the amendment, leaving 304,000 voters who abstained from recording their judgment on the merits of the proposition. As a result of long continued agitation in Illinois, an advisory vote on the question of amending the constitution so as to permit the employment of the initiative in legislation “thereby restoring to the people the power which they once had, but which they delegated to the general assembly by the constitution,” was taken in 1902. About 50 per cent of the vote of the State was cast in favor of the proposition, but according to one observer, many of those who voted in favor of the proposition did not know what it meant and among them were many business and professional men; some thought they were voting for the referendum instead of the initiative; while thousands of laboring men voted in the affirmative not because of any opinion which they entertained regarding the merits of the initiative, but because the word had been passed around from the “union” to vote for the proposition. Brown, The Initiative in the American Journal of Sociology, May, 1905.

¹⁵ Hardy, Arthur S., The Independent, June 13, 1907, p. 1408 Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Raynolds, E. V., Yale Review, vol. 4, p. 290 Google Scholar.

¹⁷ The total vote cast at the election was 1,090,869; the vote on the question of amendment for and against was 239,576.

¹⁸ The total vote cast was 600,000; on the question of amendment 51,000.

¹⁹ Recently in Buffalo only 9641 votes were cast on a proposition looking toward the establishment of a municipal lighting plant. In Boston in 1894, the popular vote on the rapid transit question was less than one-third of the total vote cast and the question was finally settled by less than one-sixth of the electorate. Within the last few weeks, the question of introducing the commission plan of government in Wichita, Kansas, was settled by a referendum in which only 4500 voters out of a registered electorate of about 13,000 persons took part.

²⁰ At a recent election in Portland, Oregon, twenty-one propositions were submitted to the voters. The results illustrate the dangers of popular legislation. A gas franchise for twenty-five years was approved in spite of the opposition of the best informed students while propositions for moderate increases of compensation for certain city officials were voted down.

²¹ The supreme court of Delaware speaking of the referendum said: “The frequent and unnecessary recurrence of popular elections, always demoralizing in their effects, are among the evils that can befall a republican government; and the legislation dependent upon them must be as variable as the passions of the multitude, Rice v. Foster, 4 Harr, 479.

²² The Referendum and Initiative, International Journal of Ethics, vol. 6, p. 55 Google Scholar.

²³ Congressional Government.

²⁴ Quoted by Signorel, , Étude de législation compareé sur le Referendum, Législatif, p. 22 Google Scholar. Signorel concludes after an elaborate study of the working of the referendum in Switzerland that it is not practicable, that it has proved an obstacle in the way of good legislation and has been responsible for much unwise legislation. He declares that the people are unfitted to legislate themselves and if permitted on a large scale, it will lead to tyranny and the ruin of liberty, p. 458.