There was once a Senator from Oregon named Jonathan Bourne, who advocated all this system of more democracy. He served one term in the Senate and then sent word back to his constituents that he was not coming home at the time of the primary. He said that he was not on trial, for a man who had worked as hard as he had for the people could not be on trial. Instead, he said, it was the people of Oregon who were on trial, to say whether they appreciated a service like his. They did not stand the test, and he was defeated at the primary. Then he concluded that after all he would have to forgive them and take pity on their blindness. So he went out to Oregon and ran on another ticket to give them the benefit of his service. But still they resisted the acid test. He himself went to the polls to vote at this election where there were thirty-one statutes to be approved or rejected. How many of the thirty-one submitted to him do you suppose he voted for? The newspapers reported him as admitting that he voted on just three, and the other twenty-eight he left to fate. Now, gentlemen, is not that a demonstration? Is not that a reductio ad absurdum for this system of pure and direct democracy?
CHAPTER V
MORE SIGNS OF THE TIMES
The present movement for a purer and more direct democracy—the initiative, referendum and recall—is clearly an ineffective method of securing wise legislation, good official agents, or even a real expression of the people's will. The representative system is the most valuable system that has thus far been invented to make popular government possible and the introduction of more democracy, so-called, is a retrograde step. It is going back to the machinery of the New England town meeting and of the Republics of Greece and Rome, which we have given up because conditions have so changed as to make it impracticable and ineffective.
In the small number of people who constituted the town meeting in New England, or in a Greek city, it was possible to discharge the comparatively simple functions fulfilled by government because of the high average intelligence of the freemen who took part. But even the Greeks ran into difficulties, and if you will read Lord Acton, possibly the greatest historical authority on the subject, you will find that pure democracy, as it is called, resulted in disaster. We now have a much more complicated government and more democracy will not supply its needs.
The representative system, much abused as it is, is the system that has rescued us from plutocracy. Its laws are the laws that have done the work. Congress has adopted laws that have taken hold of the corporations, and Congress is the most perfect model of representative government. Why did Congress act? Because the people were aroused. You must have the people aroused in order to make any system effective, and when this is the case under the representative system, there is no difficulty about its working.
The general primary is, of course, a good thing for certain leading offices, but if you resort to it for selecting judges or subordinate officials whose qualifications the public cannot be supposed to know, the result will be anything but good. Men will be put into office by some fortuitous circumstance, such as a particular advertisement in the newspapers. Thus your Senator, and your governor, might well be elected by the general primary as the result of party selection, but if the people selected judges and subordinate officers they would have to take men without regard to their qualifications. The short ballot means, as I said, that the people should select leading officers who should in turn select the subordinate officers and appoint the judges.
To the objection that voters will not vote on referendums, it is urged that they ought to be compelled to do so. This is a futile remedy. Burke said you cannot bring an indictment against the people, and it is equally true that you cannot indict a great majority of the electorate for not complying with their electoral duties. Suppose you attempt to forfeit their right to vote, you may injure them, but you injure the whole people a great deal more. The 80 per cent of the population whose welfare is directly affected by the action of the electorate, but who are not by law permitted to vote, are entitled to have the more intelligent voters retained in the electorate. For, I am sorry to say, it is generally among the intelligent part of the community that we find neglect of electoral duties. The wisest course, therefore, is to give to the people as much electoral duty as they are ordinarily able and willing to perform, and no more. The fundamental fallacies in the initiative, referendum and recall are, first, that they impose on the voters three times the electoral work they had to do under the representative system, and second, that the additional work involved is of a kind that could be done much better through agents than by the people directly. As to the recall of officers, I have only to say that if you elect a man for three years to try to help your city, or state, you must not make him subject to recall at any moment by those candidates or people whom he has had to disappoint in order to do his work effectively. Under the system of recall you are not going to secure the men who will work well by looking ahead to preserve the real public interest, but men who are trimmers, devoting their time to politics and doing as little as possible to avoid criticism. Your executive officers should be men of independence, courage and ability, who are interested in the public and willing to encounter criticism for the time being in order that they may carry out those policies that are going to inure to public benefit in the end. By making them subject to recall, you eliminate all independence and courage in your officers.