We are not to deceive ourselves by putting our heads into the sand and saying, “Everything is all right.”  Mr. Gladstone declared that the American Constitution was the most perfect instrument ever devised by the brain of man.  We have been praised all over the world for our singular genius for setting up successful institutions, but a very thoughtful Englishman, and a very witty one, said a very instructive thing about that:  he said that to show that the American Constitution had worked well was no proof that it is an excellent constitution, because Americans could run any constitution,—­a compliment which we laid like sweet unction to our soul; and yet a criticism which ought to set us thinking.

While it is true that when American forces are awake they can conduct American processes without serious departure from the ideals of the Constitution, it is nevertheless true that we have had many shameful instances of practices which we can absolutely remove by the direct election of Senators by the people themselves.  And therefore I, for one, will not allow any man who knows his history to say to me that I am acting inconsistently with either the spirit or the essential form of the American government in advocating the direct election of United States Senators.

Take another matter.  Take the matter of the initiative and referendum, and the recall.  There are communities, there are states in the Union, in which I am quite ready to admit that it is perhaps premature, that perhaps it will never be necessary, to discuss these measures.  But I want to call your attention to the fact that they have been adopted to the general satisfaction in a number of states where the electorate had become convinced that they did not have representative government.

Why do you suppose that in the United States, the place in all the world where the people were invited to control their own government, we should set up such an agitation as that for the initiative and referendum and the recall.  When did this thing begin?  I have been receiving circulars and documents from little societies of men all over the United States with regard to these matters, for the last twenty-five years.  But the circulars for a long time kindled no fire.  Men felt that they had representative government and they were content.  But about ten or fifteen years ago the fire began to burn,—­and it has been sweeping over wider and wider areas of the country, because of the growing consciousness that something intervenes between the people and the government, and that there must be some arm direct enough and strong enough to thrust aside the something that comes in the way.