and supposed to
be peculiarly fitted by reason of character, education, and training
for the performance of that duty. These men come together and give
their entire time through a period of some weeks or months to the
consideration of proposed legislation, and the laws they enact go into
immediate effect, and remain in force until set aside by the courts as
unconstitutional or until repealed by the same authority that enacted
them.

The new system--taking the Oregon law, for example, and it is commonly
cited as a model--provides that 8 per cent of the voters of a state
may submit a measure directly to the people, and if a majority of
those voting upon it give it their support it shall become a law
without reference to the legislature or to the governor. That is the
initiative. And it provides that if 5 per cent of the voters are
opposed to a law which the legislature has passed, upon signing the
proper petition the law shall be suspended until the next general
election, when the people shall be given an opportunity to pass upon
it. That is the referendum.

Now, there are several things about this plan which I believe the
people of this country, when they come really to consider it, will
scrutinize with a good deal of care and possibly with some suspicion.

It is to be noted, in the first place, that a very few of the people
can put all the people to the trouble and expense of a vote upon any
measure, and the inquiry may well arise whether the cause of settled
and orderly government will be promoted by vesting power in the
minority thus to harass and annoy the majority. In my own state, for
example, who can doubt that the prohibitory amendment, or some one of
the statutes enacted for its enforcement, would have been resubmitted
again and again if the initiative had been in force there these past
twenty-five years.

Again, it will be observed that still fewer of the people have it in
their power to suspend a law which a legislature may have passed in
plain obedience to the mandate of a majority of the people, or which
may be essential to the prompt and orderly conduct of public affairs,
and when they come to think about it the people may wonder if the
referendum might not make it possible for a small, malevolent, and
mischievous minority to obstruct the machinery of government and for a
time at least to nullify the will of the majority.

In the third place, it is to be remarked that a measure submitted
either by th