As a matter of fact they are no sufficient reason.  When a large number of individuals to whom authority is delegated exercise that authority improperly, one may safely infer that the system is at fault as much as the individual.  Local American legislative organization has courted failure.  Both the system of representation and functions of the representative body have been admirably calculated to debase the quality of the representatives and to nullify the value of their work.  American state legislatures have really never had a fair opportunity.  They have almost from the beginning been deprived of any effective responsibility.  The state constitutions have gradually hedged them in with so many restrictions, have gone so much into detail in respect to state organization and policy that the legislatures really had comparatively little to do, except to deal with matters of current business.  They offered no opportunity for a man of ability and public spirit.  When such men drifted into a local legislature, they naturally escaped as soon as they could to some larger and less obstructed field of action.  If the American people want better legislatures, they must adopt one of two courses.  Either they must give their legislative bodies something more and better to do, or else they must arrange so that these bodies will have a chance to perform an inferior but definite service more capably.

The legislatures have been corrupt and incapable, chiefly because they have not been permitted any sufficient responsibility, but this irresponsibility itself has had more than one cause.  It cannot be traced exclusively to the diminished confidence and power reposed in representative bodies by the state constitutions.  Early in the nineteenth century, the legislatures were granted almost full legislative powers; and if they did not use those powers well, they used them much better than at a later period.  Their corruption began with the domination of the political machine; and it is during the last two generations that their powers and responsibilities have been more and more restricted.  They have undoubtedly been more corrupt and incompetent in proportion as they have been increasingly deprived of power; but the restrictions imposed upon them have been as much an effect as a cause of their corruption.  There is a deeper reason for their deficiencies; and this reason is connected with mal-adaptation of the whole system of American state government to its place in a Federal system.  The Federal organization took away from the states a number of the most important governmental functions, and in certain respects absolutely subordinated the state to the nation.  In this way the actual responsibilities and the powers of the state governments were very much diminished, while at the same time no sufficient allowance for such a diminution was made in framing their organization.  Their governments were organized along the same lines as that of an independent state—­in spite of the fact that they had abandoned so many of the responsibilities and prerogatives of independence.