with none of the restrictions which now operate to make our elections conservative and peaceful. With vast interests and am bitions hinging, perhaps, upon a single vote, the temptation to fraud and corruption would be increased, while the incentive to resistance would be developed, and at the first close contest, with parties strongly arrayed upon conflicting issues, we should find ourselves, like some of our South Ameri can neighbors, involved in revolution. The constitutional system, recognizing the rights of the sovereign states, permits the people of each state to select the trustees, and these, meeting in convention, select the national executive, and it is the only system which is likely to preserve the real rights of the people, or to perpetuate the republic. The choice must of necessity lie between a few individ uals, and no right of the citizen is sacrificed by voting under the present system, while the high prerogative of the state is sur rendered the moment the individual casts a vote for the president. More than this, there
is no such thing as the right of a citizen of the United States, simply in his national citizenship, to vote. This is a power con ferred by the state and the state has no power to extend the franchise beyond the limits of its own boundaries. In the matter of the prohibition amend ment, that, too, is wholly a concern of the state. It is not a proper subject for national interference; it would be an encroachment upon the prerogative of the state, and an in terference with the rights of individuals which is not justified by any proper conception of the true scope of government, and as the whole theory of the initiative and referen dum is hostile to the spirit of the declara tion of independence, dangerous to the peace and stability of the government, destructive of the sovereignty of the states, 'and a menace to the unalienable rights of the individual, it ought to be discounten anced by every man who has the welfare of mankind, the hope of popular government at heart.
PROVERBS ABOUT LAW AND LAWYERS. By John De Morgan. PROVERBS have been said to be- the concentrated wisdom of a nation, and Lord Bacon remarked that "the genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs." In all nations laws and lawyers have been made the subject of proverbial philosophy, and it is almost unaccountable that in nearly every instance the point of the proverb has been directed against the lawyer. It may be that, at heart, men are anar chists, disliking law because it curtails their liberty, and having no love for lawyers be cause they are law interpreters. The English have a proverb, " Laws were
made for rogues," and the Germans say that "For the upright there are no laws." (Filr Gercchte giebt cs kcine Gesetzc.) In Scotland they declare that it is fear of the law that makes men honest and assert that man "wad do little for God if the deil were dead." The harshness of law is shown in the Eng lish proverb, " In a thousand pounds of law there is not an ounce of love," and this is varied in the south of England by the proverb, "A pennyweight of love is worth a pound of law. Law has ever been looked upon as costly and many a bitter jest has turned on the
