was concealed some little “joker” that would either nullify the good features of the law or make it actively vicious, and which, through lack of discussion, would not be discovered.  Every day we have new and incontestable proof that “in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom.”  But that wisdom can never be had under a system of legislation which lays before the people the work of one man’s mind to be accepted in whole or rejected altogether.

Once more let us observe that under this system, no matter how few votes are cast upon a given measure, if there are more for it than against it, it becomes a law, so that the possibility is always present that laws may be enacted which represent the judgment or the interest of the minority rather than the majority of the people.  Indeed, experience would seem to show that this is a probability rather than a possibility, for in the last Oregon election not one of the nine propositions enacted into law received as much as 50 per cent of the total vote cast, while some of them received but little more than 30 per cent of the total vote.

And finally and chiefly, without in the least impeaching the intelligence of the people, remembering the slight and casual attention the average citizen gives to the details of public questions, we may well inquire whether the average vote cast upon these proposed measures of legislation will really represent an informed and well-considered judgment.  In his thoughtful work on democracy, discussing this very question, Dr. Hyslop, of Columbia University, says: 

People occupied with their private affairs, domestic and social, demanding all their resources and attention, as a rule have little time to solve the complex problems of national life.  The referendum is a call to perform all the duties of the profoundest statesmanship, in addition to private obligations, which are even much more than the average man can fulfil with any success or intelligence at all, and hence it can hardly produce anything better than the Athenian assembly, which terminated in anarchy.  It will not secure dispatch except at the expense of civilization, nor deliberation except at the expense of intelligence.  Very few questions can be safely left to its councils, and these only of the most general kind.  A tribunal that can be so easily deceived as the electorate can be in common elections cannot be trusted to decide intelligently the graver and more complicated questions of public finance or private property, of administration, and of justice.  It may be honest and mean well, as I believe it would be; but such an institution can not govern.

That is the conclusion reached a priori by a profound student of men and of institutions; and there is not a man who hears me or who may read what I am now saying but knows the conclusion is sound.

But, fortunately for the states which have not yet adopted the innovation, we are not obliged to rely upon academic, a priori reasoning, in order to reach a conclusion as to the wisdom of the initiative and referendum, for the step has already been taken in other states and we have their experience to guide us.