“So long as Vox Populi, Vox Dei, was believed to be an aspect of cosmic truth, the stress of reforming effort was laid upon getting the Populus as big and as powerful as possible, and upon this the Radical doctrine followed, that a democratic franchise meant an intelligent and a progressive state. The doctrine did not rest at the just and proper claim that such a franchise was a necessary condition of such a state, but it related the one and the other in bonds of cause and effect. The error survives to this day amongst the many suggestions made from time to time as to our methods of government. The mechanical reformer is not yet at rest, and his newest discovery is that the representative system has been a failure, and that we must have direct democracy. This is no place to discuss either the representative system and its alleged failures, or direct democracy and its alleged successes; but it is impossible to see from our own experience how the substitution of the latter for the former will have any revolutionary and practical results. For, if the masses were so vigilant, so disgusted with representative authority, so clear-sighted regarding political aims, so interested in the making of the statute-book, as the friends of direct democracy assume, it is difficult to believe that those qualities could be entirely set aside at election times and that public opinion, when it has the opportunity, should show so few indications of that self-possession and independence of thought which we are asked to believe it would show if it voted on the details and not on the principles of legislation.”
