As to the practical working of the referendum, I have seen it stated in the public prints that four years ago nearly every appropriation bill passed by the Oregon legislature was referred to the people for their approval or rejection before it could go into effect.  As a result, the appropriations being unavailable until the election could be held, the state was compelled to stamp its warrants “not paid for want of funds,” and to pay interest thereon, although the money was in the treasury.  The university and other state institutions were hampered and embarrassed, and the whole machinery of government was in large measure paralyzed.  In other words, under the Oregon law a pitiful minority of the people was able to obstruct and embarrass the usual and orderly processes of government, and for a time at least to absolutely thwart the will of an overwhelming majority of the people.

A system of government under which such a thing as that is not only possible, but has actually occurred, may be “the best system ever devised by the wit of man,” as we have been vociferously assured, but some of us may take the liberty of doubting it.

But the initiative and referendum, subversive as they are of the representative principle, do not compare in importance or in possible power for evil with the recall.  The statutes of every state in this Union provide a way by which a recreant official may be ousted from his office or otherwise punished.  That way is by process of law, where charges must be specific, the testimony clear, and the judgment impartial.  But what are we to think of a procedure under which an official is to be tried, not in a court by a jury of his peers and upon the testimony of witnesses sworn to tell the truth, but in the newspapers, on the street corners, and at political meetings?  Can you conceive of a wider departure from the fundamental principles of justice that are written not only into the constitution of every civilized nation on the face of the earth, but upon the heart of every normal human being, the principle that every man accused of a crime has a right to confront his accusers, to examine them under oath, to rebut their evidence, and to have the judgment finally of men sworn to render a just and lawful verdict.

Small wonder that the argument oftenest heard in support of a proposition so abhorrent to the most primitive instincts of justice is that it will be seldom invoked and therefore cannot do very much harm.  I leave you to characterize as it deserves a law whose chief merit must lie in the rarity of its enforcement.

But will it do no harm, even if seldom enforced?  It is urged that its presence on the statute books and the knowledge that it can be invoked will frighten public officials into good behavior.  Passing by the very obvious suggestion that an official who needs to be scared into proper conduct ought never to have been elected in the first place, we may well inquire whether the real effect would not be to frighten men into demagogy—­and thus to work immeasurably greater harm to the common weal than would ever be inflicted through the transgressions of deliberately bad men.