make the people's will act directly on all nominations, which led to the early repudiation of the electoral college. That college was the device of those who doubted the wisdom and knowledge of the majority. But the majority was determined that in no matter within its jurisdiction should its wisdom and knowledge be questioned. It refused to admit that if it was competent to choose electors and members of Congress, it was not competent to choose the President. It accordingly set the electoral college ruthlessly aside at a very early period in the history of the republic. Tocqueville's idea that, in recognition of its own weakness and incompetence, it would spread the system of committing the appointing power to small select bodies of its own people, shows how far he was from comprehending the new force which had come into the world, and which he was endeavoring to analyze through observation of its working in American institutions.

It may seem at first sight as if this explanation does not apply to the failures of the legislatures to act upon their own judgment in the election of Senators. But the election of Senators has run exactly the same course as the nomination of Presidents; the choice has been taken out of the hands of the legislatures by the political party, and in each political party the people are represented by its managers, or "the machine," as it is called. They insist on nominating, or, if in a majority, on electing the Senators, just as they insist on nominating, or, if in a majority, on electing the President. Nearly every legislator is elected now with a view to the subsequent election of the Senators whenever there is a vacancy. His choice is settled for him beforehand. The casting of his vote is a mere formality, like the vote of the presidential electors. The man he selects for the place is the man already selected by the party. With this man's goodness or badness, fitness or unfitness, he does

not consider that he has anything to do. Nothing can less resemble the legislature which filled the imagination of the framers of the Constitution than a legislature of our time assembled in joint convention to elect a Senator. It has hardly one of the characteristics which the writers of The Federalist ascribed to their ideal; it is little affected by any of the considerations which these gentlemen supposed would be predominant with it. This has already led to the beginnings of an agitation for the direct election of Senators by the people; but such election, as I have tried to show, would really, as long as our present system of nomination continues, have very little or no effect on the situation. The result of their election by the people would be in no respect different from the result of their present election by the legislature, except in the omission of the legislative formality. They would still be designated by the party managers, and the choice of the party managers would be set aside by the public only on rare occasions.

Any change, to be effective, must be a change in the mode of nomination. All attempts to limit or control the direct choice of the people, such as the use of the lot or of election by several degrees, as in Venice, must fail, and all machinery created for the purpose will probably pass away by evasion, if not by legislation. The difficulties of constitutional amendment are so great that it will be long before any legal change is made in the mode of electing Senators. It is not unsafe to assume that if any change be made in the mode of nomination, one of its first uses will be the practical imposition on all legislatures of the duty of electing to the Senate persons already designated by the voters at the polls. It must not be forgotten that democracy has everywhere only recently begun to rule, and that it is reveling in the enjoyment of the power which has now first come into its hands, and which it most envied kings and emperors through long

`ages, the power, that is, of appointing to high offices. It is this novelty more than aught else which fills all democratic lands with a rage for place, and makes the masses resent any attempt to interfere with their freedom of choice. The pleasure of seeing every place accessible to any sort of man is one which will decline but slowly, and will not be exhausted completely without some long experience of its disastrous effects; so that we can hardly expect any very sudden change.

As regards the state legislators them selves, it is well to remember that all political prophets require nearly as much time as the Lyell school of geologists. It is difficult enough to foresee what change will come about, but it is still more difficult to foretell how soon it will come about. No writer on politics should forget that it took five hundred years for Rome to fall, and fully a thousand years to educe modern Europe from the mediæval chaos. That the present legislative system of democracy will not last long there are abundant signs, but in what way it will be got rid of, or what will take its place, or how soon democratic communities will utterly tire of it, he would be a very rash speculator who would venture to say confidently. The most any one can do is to point out the tendencies which are likely to have most force, and to which the public seems to turn most hopefully.

At present, as far as one can see, the democratic world is filled with distrust and dislike of its parliaments, and submits to them only under the pressure of stern necessity. The alternative appears to be a dictatorship, but probably the world will not see another dictator chosen for centuries, if ever. Democracies do not admit that this is an alternative, nor do they admit that legislatures, such as we see them, are the last thing they have to try. They seem to be getting tired of the representative system. In no country is it receiving the praises it re

ceived forty years ago. There are signs of a strong disposition, which the Swiss have done much to stimulate, to try the "referendum more frequently, on a larger scale, as a mode of enacting laws. One of the faults most commonly found in the legislatures, as I have already said, is the fault of doing too much. I do not think I exaggerate in saying that all the busier States in America, in which most capital is concentrated and most industry carried on, witness every meeting of the state legislature with anxiety and alarm. I have never heard such a meeting wished for or called for by a serious man outside the political class. It creates undisguised fear of some sort of interference with industry, some sort of legislation for the benefit of one class, or the trial of some hazardous experiment in judicial or administrative procedure, or in public education or taxation. There is no legislature to-day which is controlled by scientific methods, or by the opinion of experts in jurisprudence or political economy. Measures devised by such men are apt to be passed with exceeding difficulty, while the law is rendered more and more uncertain by the enormous number of acts passed on all sorts of subjects.

Nearly every State has taken a step towards meeting this danger by confining the meeting of its legislature to every second year. It has said, in other words, that it must have less legislation. In no case that I have heard of has the opposition to this change come from any class except the one that is engaged in the working of political machinery; that is, in the nomination or election of candidates and the filling of places. rest of the community, as a rule, hails it with delight. People are beginning to ask themselves why legislatures should meet even every second year; why once in five years would not be enough. An examination of any state statute - book discloses the fact that necessary legislation is a rare thing; that the communi

The

ties in our day seldom need a new law; and that most laws are passed without due consideration, and before the need of them has been made known either by popular agitation or by the demand of experts. It would not be an exaggeration to say that nine tenths of our modern state legislation will do no good, and that at least one tenth of it will do positive harm. If half the stories told about state legislatures be true, a very large proportion of the members meet, not with plans for the public good, but with plans either for the promotion of their personal interests or for procuring money for party uses or places for party agents.

The collection of such a body of men, not engaged in serious business, in the state capital is not to be judged simply by the bills they introduce or get passed. We have also to consider the immense opportunities for planning and scheming which the meetings offer to political jobbers and adventurers; and the effect, on such among them as still retain their political virtue, of daily contact with men who are there simply for illicit purposes, and with the swarm who live by lobbying and get together every winter to trade in legislative votes. If I said, for instance, that the legislature at Albany is a school of vice, a fountain of political debauchery, and that few of the younger men come back from it without having learned to mock at political purity and public spirit, I should seem to be using unduly strong language, and yet I could fill nearly a volume with illustrations in support of it. The temptation to use their great power for the extortion of money from rich men and rich corporations, to which the legislatures in the richer and more prosperous Northern States are exposed, is immense; and the legislatures are mainly composed of very poor men, with no reputation to maintain or political future to look after. The result is that the country is filled with stories of scandals after every adjournment, and the press teems with

abuse, which legislators have learned to treat with silent contempt or ridicule, so that there is no longer any restraint upon them. Their reëlection is not in the hands of the public, but in those of the party managers, who, as is shown in the Payn case in New York, find that they can completely disregard popular judgments on the character or history of candidates.

Side by side with the annual or biennial legislature we have another kind of legislature, the "Constitutional Convention," which retains everybody's respect, and whose work, generally marked by care and forethought, compares creditably with the legislation of any similar body in the world. Through the hundred years of national existence it has received little but favorable criticism from any quarter. It is still an honor to have a seat in it. The best men in the community are still eager or willing to serve in it, no matter at what cost to health or private affairs. I cannot recall one convention which has incurred either odium or contempt. Time and social changes have often frustrated its expectations, or have shown its provisions for the public welfare to be inadequate or mistaken, but it is very rare indeed to hear its wisdom and integrity questioned. In looking over the list of those who have figured in the conventions of the State of New York since the Revolution, one finds the name of nearly every man of weight and prominence; and few lay it down without thinking how happy we should be if we could secure such service for our ordinary legislative bodies.

Now what makes the difference? Three things, mainly. First, the Constitutional Convention, as a rule, meets only once in about twenty years. Men, therefore, who would not think of serving in an annual legislature, are ready on these rare occasions to sacrifice their personal convenience to the public interest. Secondly, every one knows that

the labors of the body, if adopted, will continue in operation without change for the best part of one's lifetime. Thirdly, its conclusions will be subjected to the strictest scrutiny by the public, and will not be put in force without adoption by a popular vote. All this makes an American state constitution, as a rule, a work of the highest statesmanship, which reflects credit on the country, tends powerfully to promote the general happiness and prosperity, and is quoted or copied in foreign countries in the construction of organic laws. The Constitutional Convention is as conspicuous an example of successful government as the state legislatures are of failure. If we can learn anything from the history of these bodies, therefore, it is that if the meetings of the legislature were much rarer, say once in five or ten years, we should secure a higher order of talent and character for its membership and more careful deliberation for its measures, and should greatly reduce the number of the latter. But we can go further, and say that inasmuch as all important matter devised by the convention is submitted to the people with eminent success, there is no reason why all grave measures of ordinary legislation should not be submitted also. In other words, the referendum is not confined to Switzerland.1 We have it among us already. All, or nearly all our state constitutions are the pro1 Oberholtzer's Referendum in America, p. 15.

duct of a referendum. The number of important measures with which the legislature feels chary about dealing, which are brought before the people by its direction, increases every year. Upon the question of the location of the state capital and of some state institutions, of the expenditure of public money, of the establishment of banks, of the maintenance or sale of canals, of leasing public lands, of taxation beyond a certain amount, of the prohibition of the liquor traffic, of the extension of the suffrage, and upon several other subjects, a popular vote is often taken in various States.

In short, there is no discussion of the question of legislatures in which either great restriction in the number or length of their sessions, or the remission of a greatly increased number of subjects to treatment by the popular vote, does not appear as a favorite remedy for their abuses and shortcomings. If we may judge by these signs, the representative system, after a century of existence, under a very extended suffrage, has failed to satisfy the expectations of its earlier promoters, and is likely to make way in its turn for the more direct action of the people on the most important questions of government, and a much-diminished demand for all legislation what

I.

MR. REGINALD DORSEY not only recognized the unique distinction of being the father of such a girl as Edith, but he felt as well the responsibilities of the position. Mr. Dorsey had never taken any responsibility lightly. He carried a habit of high discretion into the least detail of his mental operations. It must be dazzling high noon before he would fully admit that the day was likely to be fine. He made no investment or purchase until he had permitted the sun to go down many times upon his indecision. His ultimate opinion was watched, waited for, and acted upon. Nine different corporations boasted that he was one of their directors, and that single circumstance made each enterprise known as both paying and safe, like that tower instanced by Dante which, firmly fixed, shakes not its head for any blast that blows.

Edith had been motherless since she was a child of three, and Mr. Dorsey had been left unaided to grapple with the crucial questions which rose at each stage of the girl's development. He had not only to arrive at some solution of purely ethical and intellectual problems, but to meet the climbing wave of feminine evolution and to experiment with modern ideas. Should Edith go in for the higher education? Should Edith attend dancing-classes? Should Edith be permitted to learn to ride the bicycle? Each of these questions had in turn to be met, looked at in all lights, and finally decided by a conscientious and consistent theory. Mr. Dorsey wished to preserve in his daughter what he recognized as her distinctive attributes: old-time modesty, seriousness, and simplicity which raised her so far above vanity and caprice as to efface both. Still, although it was his duty, his function,

an

She

the reason of his existence, to foster in her the tendencies he loved and believed in, what he tried to keep in mind was her ultimate good. She was not only his child, but the child of her age. Since she had been born in the last quarter of the century, he must meet its requirements for her. Thus Edith took the preparatory college course; she rode the bicycle, but round dances she did not learn. was brought up in almost conventual seclusion, and up to the age of nineteen, except her father and her professors, she had not one single acquaintance among the opposite sex. Nevertheless, Mr. Dorsey, who thought of every possible emergency for Edith, had thought of her marriage, a marriage which was to crown a brilliant social career after her education was complete, - always with compressed lips and a knitting of the brows, which meant that no man would ever become Edith's husband until he had been weighed in the balance and not found wanting, had gone through the needle's eye, - in short, submitted to a series of rigid tests.

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Thus when, soon after Edith's nineteenth birthday, Mr. Dorsey received a proposal of marriage for his daughter, the effect upon his mind was abrupt and extraordinary. He had just returned from a journey, and, washed, shaven, and freshly dressed in his habitual suit of gray tweed, had sat down in his library to look over the letters which had arrived in his absence, when a card was brought to him, on which he read “Mr. Gordon Rose." Who Mr. Gordon Rose might be Mr. Dorsey was comfortably far from having any idea. A strange young man was ushered in, who met the glance of the tall, slim, clear-eyed gentleman almost like a culprit as he stammered out a few faltering words to the effect that Edith had accepted him, and