s radical has written me as follows: "The development given to
education during the last quarter of a century will have without doubt
as a consequence an improved judgment on the part of a large number of
electors. The press also has a role more preponderant than formerly.
Everybody reads. Certainly the ruling classes profit largely by the
power of the printing press, but with the electors who have received
some instruction the capitalist newspapers are taken with due allowance
for their sincerity. Their opinion is not accepted without inquiry. We
see a rapid development of ideas, if not completely new, at least
renewed and more widespread. More or less radical reviews and
periodicals, in large number, are not without influence, and their
appearance proves that great changes are imminent."

Professor Dicey has contrasted the Referendum with the _plebiscite_:
"The Referendum looks at first sight like a French _plebiscite_, but no
two institutions can be marked by more essential differences. The
_plebiscite_ is a revolutionary or at least abnormal proceeding. It is
not preceded by debate. The form and nature of the questions to be
submitted to the nation are chosen and settled by the men in power, and
Frenchmen are asked whether they will or will not accept a given policy.
Rarely, indeed, when it has been taken, has the voting itself been full
or fair. Deliberation and discussion are the requisite conditions for
rational decision. Where effective opposition is an impossibility,
nominal assent is an unmeaning compliment. These essential
characteristics, the lack of which deprives a French _plebiscite_, of
all moral significance, are the undoubted properties of the Swiss
Referendum."

In the "Revue des Deux Mondes," Paris, August, 1891, Louis Wuarin, an
interested observer of Swiss politics for many years, writes: "A people
may indicate its will, not from a distance, but near at hand, always
superintending the work of its agents, watching them, stopping them if
there is reason for so doing, constraining them, in a word, to carry out
the people's will in both legislative and administrative affairs. In
this form of government the representative system is reduced to a
minimum. The deliberative bodies resemble simple committees charged with
preparing work for an elected assembly, and here the elected assembly is
replaced by the people. This sovereign action in person in the
transaction of public business may extend more or les