By the Initiative, a reasonable minority of the voters can, by filing a petition, force the legislative body to consider a law, and if it is not passed it goes to a referendum or poll of the people at the next election. The two constitute direct legislation, which is the constant control of the people over the laws which are to govern them. It is the method used whenever a body of people get together to transact any busi ness. One man rises and says, " I move so and so," and another seconds him — that is the Initiative. After discussion it is voted on — that is the Referendum. Often a matter is referred to a committee for inves-: tigation and report. When the report is in, the body votes to accept or reject, as it sees fit — that is the Referendum. Mr. Dean closes with an eloquent para graph conjuring up all sorts of evils, and end ing with " it ought to be discountenanced by every man who has the welfare of mankind, the hope of popular government at heart." Now, if anything is " popular government," direct legislation is. It is the enacting of laws by the people. It is popular government. It is self-government. Too often, alas! our government is not popular. The laws are enacted by some special clique of men for their own interests and against the interests of the people. Direct legislation will restore and strengthen popular government. It will make selfgovernment. Notice one thing about it. It will not do away with legislatures. By taking away the corrupting power to enact laws, it will lift them to their old and high place of councils for the people. Then our legislative halls will become true council chambers for the people, instead of, as now, the lobby's registering hall. Mr. Dean quotes Washington, and mis applies him; conjures up an awful bogy about the Roman Catholic church, and then says, " there is no disposition to reopen the religious controversies of the past "; that it
would be " impossible for the courts to enforce their decrees against the majority," and overlooks the vast mass of unenforced and obsolete laws on our statute books; complains of the uncertainty as to what the laws will be under direct legislation, forget ful that we labor under that uncertainty now, and that when the people do speak their voice is final; treats the proposition to elect the President, Vice-President and United States senators by direct vote as a feature of direct legislation; and finally states that it will array " the people in two great hostile camps at each presidential election," just as if that was not the case now! And so one might go on cataloguing his inaccuracies, misapplications and mis understandings. Seven or eight people have asked me to answer this article, and when I first read it with that end in view, it seemed to me only worthy of ridicule, so palpable and gross were these bulls of logic and statement; but as I looked at it more closely, I saw two things needing serious treatment because they are characteristic of all the opposition to direct legislation : First, a cloudiness and indefinitencss of grasp as to what is the real source of authority in this country; and second, a fear or dread of the people. He quotes from the Declaration of Inde pendence about the " consent of the gov erned" as being "the keystone of our consti tutional system," and then refers to direct legislation as the " surrender of their great principle," and laments that we are asked "to accept in its place the cruel and arbitrary will of an irresponsible majority." He objects to the fact that under the Initiative and Referendum " the majority shall rule "; and " he denies the right of the majority to rule." The placing of adjectives such as "cruel," " arbitrary," and "irrespon sible " before the thing one objects to, is a common trick of those that have no argu ment. Now, if the majority is not going to rule,
