I believe that we are upon the eve of recovering some of the most important prerogatives of a free people, and that the initiative and referendum are playing a great part in that recovery.  I met a man the other day who thought that the referendum was some kind of an animal, because it had a Latin name; and there are still people in this country who have to have it explained to them.  But most of us know and are deeply interested.  Why?  Because we have felt that in too many instances our government did not represent us, and we have said:  “We have got to have a key to the door of our own house.  The initiative and referendum and the recall afford such a key to our own premises.  If the people inside the house will run the place as we want it run, they may stay inside and we will keep the latchkeys in our pockets.  If they do not, we shall have to re-enter upon possession.”

Let no man be deceived by the cry that somebody is proposing to substitute direct legislation by the people, or the direct reference of laws passed in the legislature, to the vote of the people, for representative government.  The advocates of these reforms have always declared, and declared in unmistakable terms, that they were intending to recover representative government, not supersede it; that the initiative and referendum would find no use in places where legislatures were really representative of the people whom they were elected to serve.  The initiative is a means of seeing to it that measures which the people want shall be passed,—­when legislatures defy or ignore public opinion.  The referendum is a means of seeing to it that the unrepresentative measures which they do not want shall not be placed upon the statute book.

When you come to the recall, the principle is that if an administrative officer,—­for we will begin with the administrative officer,—­is corrupt or so unwise as to be doing things that are likely to lead to all sorts of mischief, it will be possible by a deliberate process prescribed by the law to get rid of that officer before the end of his term.  You must admit that it is a little inconvenient sometimes to have what has been called an astronomical system of government, in which you can’t change anything until there has been a certain number of revolutions of the seasons.  In many of our oldest states the ordinary administrative term is a single year.  The people of those states have not been willing to trust an official out of their sight more than twelve months.  Elections there are a sort of continuous performance, based on the idea of the constant touch of the hand of the people on their own affairs.  That is exactly the principle of the recall.  I don’t see how any man grounded in the traditions of American affairs can find any valid objection to the recall of administrative officers.  The meaning of the recall is merely this,—­not that we should have unstable government, not that officials should not know how long their power might last,—­but that we might have government exercised by officials who know whence their power came and that if they yield to private influences they will presently be displaced by public influences.