“We may study experiments in direct democracy in Athens and in Rome more than two thousand years ago and at a later time in some of the mediæval Italian cities. This examination will reveal the fact that representative government on a large scale is a modern development originating in England, and also that while the people began long ago to place limitations on the once unrestrained power of the crown or the kingship, it was in our Constitution that a people for the first time put limitations upon themselves, which has hitherto been considered an evidence of unusual intelligence and of a high civilization.”
