the Senate or the House of a state. Its proceedings are followed with closer attention; and it is exempt from the temptations with which the power of disposing of public funds or public utilities bestrews the path of ordinary legislators; its debates are more instructive; its conclusions are more carefully weighed, because they cannot be readily reversed.15 Or if the work of altering the constitution is carried out by a series of amendments, these are likely to be more fully considered by the legislature than ordinary statutes would be, and to be framed with more regard to clearness and precision.
In the interval between the settlement by the convention of its draft constitution, or by the legislature of its draft amendments, and the putting of the matter to the vote of the people, there is copious discussion in the press and at public meetings, so that the citizens often go well prepared to the polls. An all-pervading press does the work which speeches did in the ancient republics, and the fact that constitutions and amendments so submitted are frequently rejected, shows that the people, whether they act wisely or not, do not at any rate surrender themselves blindly to the judgment of a convention, or obediently adopt the proposals of a legislature.
These merits are indeed not always claimable for conventions, or, in particular, for the more recent constitutions they have framed, much less for individual amendments. The Constitution of California of 1879 (whereof more in a later chapter) is an instance to the contrary; nor have the subsequent conventions even of such old states as Louisiana and Kentucky shown all the judgment that the problems before them required. But a general survey of this branch of our inquiry leads to the conclusion that the peoples of the several states, in the exercise of this their highest function, have not, on the whole, shown much of that haste, that recklessness, that love of change for the sake of change, with which European theorists, both ancient and modern, have been wont to credit democracy; and that the method of direct legislation by the citizens, liable as it doubtless is to abuse, causes, in the present condition of the states, fewer evils than it prevents.
It would doubtless be better, if good legislatures were attainable, to leave the enactment of what are really mere statutes to the legislature, instead of putting them in a constitution; and the initiative is a supersession of the legislature which tends even more to reduce its authority. But if good legislatures are unattainable, if it is impossible to raise the Senate and the House of each state above that low level at which (as we shall presently see) they now stand, then the system of direct popular action may be justified at least in some communities as a salutary effort of the forces which make for good government, opening for themselves a new channel.
In making the referendum and initiative parts of the regular machinery of government instead of applying the popular vote only to the amendment of constitutions, Oregon, Oklahoma, and the other Western states above referred to, have taken what may prove to be a momentous new departure, for the will of the sovereign people can through these methods express itself far more promptly and easily than heretofore. Some American publicists argue that to empower the people of a state to set aside their legislature when they are so disposed is virtually to abandon that “republican form of government” which was in 1787 supposed to be identical with a representative form. This contention ceases to be plausible when it is remembered that the oldest republics in the world, and many of the most famous, were ruled by primary, not by representative, assemblies. A more serious question has been raised by those who doubt the wisdom of arrangements that leave so much to the vote of a multitude which may act hastily, excited by the prospect of some benefit to be obtained, some grievance to be removed, through a sweeping and perhaps insufficiently debated change in the law.
The risk of careless and even reckless measures is undeniable. But they may, in some states, be just as likely to proceed from a legislature as from the people voting at the polls, for the average of knowledge and judgment is not substantially lower among the voters than among those who compose the legislatures; and the safeguards provided by the rules restraining legislative action cannot always be relied upon.
We must wait and watch for some time before venturing to pronounce a judgment upon the working of these new expedients; nor does the experience of Switzerland furnish much guidance, so dissimilar are the social conditions and the political habits of the two nations.16
State Governments: The Legislature
The similarity of the frame of government in the forty-eight republics which make up the United States, a similarity which appears the more remarkable when we remember that each of the republics is independent and self-determined as respects its frame of government, is due to the common source whence the governments flow. They are all copies, some immediate, some mediate, of ancient English institutions, viz., chartered self-governing corporations, which, under the influence of English habits, and with the precedent of the English parliamentary system before their eyes, developed into governments resembling that of England in the eighteenth century. Thirteen colonies had up to 1776 been regulated by a charter from the British Crown, which, according to the best and oldest of all English traditions, allowed each the practical management of its own affairs. The charter contained a sort of skeleton constitution, which usage had clothed with nerves, muscles, and sinews, till it became a complete and symmetrical working system of free government. There was in each a governor, in two colonies chosen by the people,1 in the rest nominated by the Crown; there was a legislature; there were executive officers acting under the governor’s commission and judges nominated by him; there were local self-governing communities. In none, however, did there exist what we call cabinet government, i.e., the rule of the legislature through a committee of its own members, coupled with the irresponsibility of the permanent nominal head of the executive. This separation of the executive from the legislature, which naturally arose from the fact that the governor was an officer directly responsible to another power than the colonial legislature, viz., the British Crown, his own master to whom he stood or fell,2 distinguishes the old colonial governments of North America from those of the British colonies of the present day, in all of which cabinet government prevails.3 The latter are copies of the present Constitution of England; the fomer resembled it as it existed in the first half of the eighteenth century before cabinet government had been fully developed.
When the thirteen colonies became sovereign states at the Revolution, they preserved this frame of government, substituting a governor chosen by the state for one appointed by the Crown. As the new states admitted to the Union after 1789 successively formed their constitutions prior to their admission to the Union, each adopted the same scheme, its people imitating, as was natural, the older commonwealths whence they came, and whose working they understood and admired.4 They were the more inclined to do so because they found in the older constitutions that sharp separation of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers which the political philosophy of those days taught them to regard as essential to a free government, and they all take this separation as their point of departure.
I have observed in an earlier chapter that the influence on the framers of the federal Constitution of the examples of free government which they found in their several states, had been profound. We may sketch out a sort of genealogy of governments as follows:
First. The English incorporated company, a self-governing body, with its governor, deputy-governor, and assistants chosen by the freemen of the company, and meeting in what is called the general court or assembly.
Next. The colonial government, which out of this company evolves a governor or executive head and a legislature, consisting of representatives chosen by the citizens and meeting in one or two chambers.
Thirdly. The state government, which is nothing but the colonial government developed and somewhat democratized, with a governor chosen originally by the legislature, now always by the people at large,
