mmed up what
they intended to do about the problems they saw. That is all the sentence
means. But in the course of a century new problems arise--problems the
Fathers could no more have foreseen than we can foresee the problems of
the year two thousand. Yet that sentence which contained their wisdom
about particular events has acquired an emotional force which persists
long after the events have passed away. Legends gather about the men who
wrote it: those legends are absorbed by us almost with our mothers' milk.
We never again read that sentence straight. It has a gravity out of all
proportion to its use, and we call it a fundamental principle of
government. Whatever we want to do is hallowed and justified, if it can
be made to appear as a deduction from that sentence. To put new wine in
old bottles is one of the aims of legal casuistry.

Reformers practice it. You hear it said that the initiative and
referendum are a return to the New England town meeting. That is supposed
to be an argument for direct legislation. But surely the analogy is
superficial; the difference profound. The infinitely greater complexity
of legislation to-day, the vast confusion in the aims of the voting
population, produce a difference of so great a degree that it amounts to
a difference in kind. The naturalist may classify the dog and the fox,
the house-cat and the tiger together for certain purposes. The historian
of political forms may see in the town meeting a forerunner of direct
legislation. But no housewife dare classify the cat and the tiger, the
dog and the fox, as the same kind of animal. And no statesman can argue
the virtues of the referendum from the successes of the town meeting.

But the propagandists do it nevertheless, and their propaganda thrives
upon it. The reason is simple. The town meeting is an obviously
respectable institution, glorified by all the reverence men give to the
dead. It has acquired the seal of an admired past, and any proposal that
can borrow that seal can borrow that reverence too. A name trails behind
it an army of associations. That army will fight in any cause that bears
the name. So the reformers of California, the Lorimerites of Chicago, and
the Barnes Republicans of Albany all use the name of Lincoln for their
political associations. In the struggle that preceded the Republican
Convention of 1912 it was rumored that the Taft reactionaries would put
forward Lincoln's son as chairman of the convention i