mine what cannot be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be in vited, remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institu tions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes, upon mere hypothesis and opinion, exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember, especially, that for the efficient management of your common interests, in a country so extensive as ours, a government of as much vigor as is con sistent with the perfect security of liberty, is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little less than a name, where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to confine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure enjoyment of the rights of person and property." Probably no advocate of the initiative and referendum would admit (for they are patri otic and high-minded in purpose,) that it is intended to overthrow, or to emasculate the constitution. It may be asserted that not one in a thousand of those who have es poused this theory have any idea that it has for its logical and inevitable result the abandonment of our constitutional system, with its safeguards for the individual, and it is because of this lack of knowledge of its ultimate results, that it finds many advocates among those who would naturally be looked to, to oppose its insidious encroachment upon the true theories of popular government. The advocates of the system, forgetting that some of the gravest crimes and the most cruel excesses, have been perpetrated by majorities; forgetting that majorities, hav ing the power, are answerable to no one for their conduct, and that they have at all times
the numbers to guarantee their own rights, plant themselves upon the proposition that the people are the sovereign power, and that whatever the people want, they should have, and seem to imagine that with this the argument is closed. If they go beyond this point, it is to assert that they are so strong in their position that no politician dares openly to bring the theory into ques tion, and to impute to this much abused element of the body politic a cowardice and a mendacity, which, if justified by the ex perience of this country, would have landed the ship of state upon the rocks of destruc tion long before the present advocates of the initiative and referendum had arrived upon the scene to save it. The writer will assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that he is a politician, and he is opposed to the initiative and referendum : — First. Because he denies the right of the majority to rule, except within the limits consented to by those who are governed. Second. Because it seeks " to effect, in the forms of the constitution, alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what cannot be di rectly overthrown." Third. Because it would obliterate the states, and produce a consolidated govern ment, in which the rights of the individual would, sooner or later, be sacrificed to cum bersome machinery or a monarchical form of government. Let us now briefly consider these propo sitions. If the majority has the right to rule; if might makes right, then there can be no constitutional limitation upon the ma jority in its conduct of government. The majority, in the view of the supporters of the initiative and referendum, constitute "the people," whose right to govern de pends not upon any moral grounds, not upon any considerations of individual rights, but upon the mere fact of numbers. If this premise is sound, then a majority of one individual, in a nation of 65,000,000 of
