“I have no intention of discussing the merits or demerits of the two systems, but the fact that direct democracy is old and our self-limited democracy is new must not be forgotten. When it is proposed to emasculate representative government, as was done by the Third Napoleon, or to take from the courts their independence, it may be a change for the better, as its advocates contend, because almost anything human is within the bounds of possibility, but it is surely and beyond any doubt a return from a highly developed to a simpler and more primitive stage of thought and government. A system of government which consists of executive and people is probably the very first ever attempted by men. Among gregarious animals we find the herd and its leader, and that was the first form of government among primitive men, if we may trust the evidence of those tribes still extant in a low state of savagery who alone can give us an idea of the social and political condition of prehistoric man.”
