provisions for very short and easy changes of state constitutions, and,
so long as they are confined to the particular states which have chosen to
adopt them, they may be regarded as experiments which we may watch with
interest, whatever may be our opinions as to the outcome, and with the
expectation that if they do not work well they also will be abandoned. This
is especially true because, since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment
to the Constitution, the states are prohibited from violating in their own
affairs the most important principles of the National Constitution. It
is not to be expected, however, that new methods and rules of action in
government shall become universal in the states and not ultimately bring
about a change in the national system. It will be useful, therefore, to
consider whether these new methods if carried into the national system
would sacrifice any of the essentials of that system which ought to be
preserved.

The Constitution of the United States deals in the main with essentials.
There are some non-essential directions such as those relating to the
methods of election and of legislation, but in the main it sets forth the
foundations of government in clear, simple, concise terms. It is for this
reason that it has stood the test of more than a century with but slight
amendment, while the modern state constitutions, into which a multitude of
ordinary statutory provisions are crowded, have to be changed from year to
year. The peculiar and essential qualities of the government established by
the Constitution are:

First, it is representative.

Second, it recognizes the liberty of the individual citizen as
distinguished from the total mass of citizens, and it protects that liberty
by specific limitations upon the power of government.

Third, it distributes the legislative, executive and judicial powers, which
make up the sum total of all government, into three separate departments,
and specifically limits the powers of the officers in each department.

Fourth, it superimposes upon a federation of state governments, a national
government with sovereignty acting directly not merely upon the states, but
upon the citizens of each state, within a line of limitation drawn
between the powers of the national government and the powers of the state
governments.

Fifth, it makes observance of its limitations requisite to the validity of
laws, whether passed by the nation or by the states, to be j