inferior class of legislative agents.  If the legislature is to perform the inferior but still necessary functions that will necessarily remain in its hands, an attempt should certainly be made to obtain a better quality of representation.  No direct system of state government can constitute any really substantial improvement on the existing system, unless either the legislature is deprived of all really essential functions, or the quality of its membership improved.

The legislature, or some representative body corresponding to it, cannot, however, be deprived of certain really essential functions.  The task of preparing legislation for reference to the people, so that a question of public policy will be submitted in a decisive and acceptable form, belongs naturally to a representative body; and the same statement is true respecting the legislative work essential to the administration of a state’s business affairs.  The supply bills demand an amount of inspection in detail, which can obtain only by expert supervision; and so it is in respect to various minor legislative matters which do not raise question of general policy but which amount to little more than problems of local administrative detail.  A representative body must be provided which shall perform work of this kind; and again, it must be said that existing legislatures would perform these more restricted functions even worse than they have performed a completer legislative duty.  Their members are experts in nothing but petty local politics.  They are usually wholly incapable of drawing a bill, or of passing intelligently on matters either of technical or financial detail.  If they represent anything, it is the interest of their district rather than that of the state.  The principle of direct legislation, in order to become really constructive, must bring with it a more effective auxiliary machinery than any which existing legislatures can supply.

The kind of machinery needed can be deduced from the character of the work.  The function of the representative body, needed under a system of direct legislation, is substantially that of a legislative and administrative council or commission.  It should be an experienced body of legal, administrative, and financial experts, comparatively limited in numbers, and selected in a manner to make them solicitous of the interests of the whole state.  They should be elected, consequently, from comparatively large districts, or, if possible, by the electorate of the whole state under some system of cumulative voting.  The work of such a council would not be in any real sense legislative; and its creation would simply constitute a candid recognition of the plain fact that our existing legislatures, either with or without the referendum, no longer perform a responsible legislative function.  It would be tantamount to a scientific organization of the legislative committees, which at the present time exercise an efficient control over the so-called legislative output.  This council would mediate between the governor, who administered the laws, and the people, who enacted them.  It would constitute a check upon the governor, and would in turn be checked by him; while it would act in relation to the people as a sort of technical advisory commission, with the duty of preparing legislation for popular enactment or rejection.