te and then sent word back to his constituents that he was not
coming home at the time of the primary. He said that he was not on
trial, for a man who had worked as hard as he had for the people could
not be on trial. Instead, he said, it was the people of Oregon who were
on trial, to say whether they appreciated a service like his. They did
not stand the test, and he was defeated at the primary. Then he
concluded that after all he would have to forgive them and take pity on
their blindness. So he went out to Oregon and ran on another ticket to
give them the benefit of his service. But still they resisted the acid
test. He himself went to the polls to vote at this election where there
were thirty-one statutes to be approved or rejected. How many of the
thirty-one submitted to him do you suppose he voted for? The newspapers
reported him as admitting that he voted on just three, and the other
twenty-eight he left to fate. Now, gentlemen, is not that a
demonstration? Is not that a _reductio ad absurdum_ for this system of
pure and direct democracy?

CHAPTER V

MORE SIGNS OF THE TIMES

The present movement for a purer and more direct democracy--the
initiative, referendum and recall--is clearly an ineffective method of
securing wise legislation, good official agents, or even a real
expression of the people's will. The representative system is the most
valuable system that has thus far been invented to make popular
government possible and the introduction of more democracy, so-called,
is a retrograde step. It is going back to the machinery of the New
England town meeting and of the Republics of Greece and Rome, which we
have given up because conditions have so changed as to make it
impracticable and ineffective.

In the small number of people who constituted the town meeting in New
England, or in a Greek city, it was possible to discharge the
comparatively simple functions fulfilled by government because of the
high average intelligence of the freemen who took part. But even the
Greeks ran into difficulties, and if you will read Lord Acton, possibly
the greatest historical authority on the subject, you will find that
pure democracy, as it is called, resulted in disaster. We now have a
much more complicated government and more democracy will not supply its
needs.

The representative system, much abused as it is, is the system that has
rescued us from plutocracy. Its laws are the laws that have done the
work. Con