in the United States to a point where there is none so poor
as to do it reverence. The whole system is preposterous and absurd,
breeding not only bad laws, but a widespread contempt of law, while the
personal freedom for which democracy once fought, is fast becoming a
memory.

The trouble began as a result of one of the elements in the American
Constitution which was the product not of the sound common sense and the
lofty judgment of the framers, but of a weak yielding to one of the
doctrinaire fads of the time that had no relationship to life but was
the invention of political theorists, and that was the unnatural
separation of the executive, legislative and judicial functions of
government. The error has worked far and the superstition still holds.
What is needed is an initiative in legislation, centred in one
responsible head or group, that, while functioning in all normal and
necessary legislative directions, still allows individual initiative on
the part of the legislators, as a supplementary, or corrective, or
protective agency. No government functions well in fiscal matters
without a budget: what we need in legislative matters is a legislative
budget, and by this phrase, I mean that the primary agency for the
proposing of laws should be the chief executive of a city, or state or
the nation, with the advice and consent of his heads of departments who
would form his cabinet or council.

Under this plan the Governor and Council, for example, would at the
opening of each legislative session present a programme or agenda of
such laws as they believed the conditions to demand, and in the shape of
bills accurately drawn by the proper law officer of the government. No
such "government" bill could be referred to committee but must be
discussed in open session, and until the bills so offered had been
passed or refused, no private bill could be introduced. A procedure such
as this would certainly reduce the flood of private bills to reasonable
dimensions while it would insure a degree of responsibility now utterly
lacking. There is now no way in which the author of a foolish or
dangerous bill which has been enacted into law by a majority of the
legislature, can be held to account and due responsibility imposed upon
him, but the case would be very different if a mayor, a governor or the
President of the United States made himself responsible for a law or a
series of laws, by offering them for action in his own name. Certai