But is the new system wiser than the old—­in the matter of making laws, for example?  The old system vests the law-making power in a legislative body composed of men elected by the people 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they enact go into immediate effect, and remain in force until set aside by the courts as unconstitutional or until repealed by the same authority that enacted them.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 the initiative or the referendum cannot be amended, but must be accepted or rejected as a whole, and we may well inquire whether this might not afford “the interests” quite as good an opportunity as they would have in a legislature to “initiate” some measure which on its face was wholesome and beneficent but within which