The truth is, that certain very deep and permanent causes underlie American legislative degeneracy.  When the American legislative system was framed, a representative assembly possessed a much better chance than it does now of becoming a really representative body.  It constituted at the time an effective vehicle for the formation and expression of public opinion.  Public questions had not received the complete ventilation on the platform and in the press that they obtain at the present time; and in the debate of a representative assembly the chance existed of a really illuminating and formative conflict of opinion.  Representatives were often selected, who were capable of adding something to the candid and serious consideration of a question of public policy.  The need helped to develop men capable of meeting it.  Now, however, American legislatures, with the partial exception of the Federal Senate, have ceased to be deliberative bodies.  Public questions receive their effective discussion in the press and on the platform.  Public opinion is definitely formed before the meeting of the legislature; and the latter has become simply a vehicle for realizing or betraying the mandates of popular opinion.  Its function is or should be to devise or to help in the devising of means, necessary to accomplish a predetermined policy.  Its members have little or no initiative and little or no independence.  Legislative projects are imposed upon them either by party leaders, by special interests, or at times by the executive and public opinion.  Their work is at best that of committee-men and at worst that of mercenaries, paid to betray their original employers.  A successful attempt to bestow upon legislative bodies, composed of such doubtful material and subject to such equivocal traditions anything resembling complete governmental responsibility, would be a dangerous business.  Legislatures have degenerated into the condition of being merely agents, rather than principals in the work of government; and the strength and the propriety of the contemporary movement in favor of the initiative and the referendum is to be attributed to this condition.

The increasing introduction of the referendum into the local political organization is partly a recognition of the fact that the legislatures have ceased to play an independent part in the work of government.  There is every reason to believe that hereafter the voters will obtain and keep a much more complete and direct control over the making of their laws than that which they have exerted hitherto; and the possible desirability of the direct exercise of this function cannot be disputed by any loyal democrat.  The principle upon which the referendum is based is unimpeachable; but a question remains as to the manner in which the principle of direct legislation can be best embodied in a piece of practical political machinery; and the attempt to solve this question involves a consideration of the general changes in our system of local government, which may be required, as a result of the application of the new principle.