nitiate
legislation. And this is the plain and simple meaning of the two
instruments of the Referendum and the Initiative. Their effect is to shift
sovereignty from the parliament to the people, where the revolutions of
the 17th and 18th centuries shifted sovereignty from the king to the
parliament.

It frequently happens that theories (for whatever they may be worth) are
carried to their logical ends by practical people and not by
theorists--for theory generally lags in the rear of practice. So it
happened in this case. For it was the soberly practical and conservative
people of Switzerland who in modern times first devised the Referendum,
and then the Initiative. Since then they have been adopted in many
countries, chief of which are Belgium, Australia, and many of the American
States; and they appear in most of the constitutions recently adopted in
Europe. But it is in Switzerland that they can most usefully be studied,
for there they have a solid experience of ninety years continuous practice
behind them.

The Referendum came first; and in its modern form was first adopted in the
Constitution of the canton of St. Gall in 1831, the second and third
articles of which read:

Art. 2.--The people of the canton are sovereign. Sovereignty, which
is the sum of all political powers, resides in the whole body of
citizens.

Art. 3.--It results from this that the people themselves exercise the
legislative powers, and every law is submitted to their sanction.
This sanction is the right of the people to refuse to recognise any
law submitted to them, and to prevent its execution in virtue of
their sovereign power.

From St. Gall it spread to each of the other twenty-two cantons, and to
the legislation reserved to the Federal Assembly. Everywhere it is either
compulsory for every law to be submitted to the people by Referendum, or
for laws to be submitted when a given number of electors, within a limited
period of time, have demanded that the Referendum be exercised, some of
the cantons having adopted it in one form and some in another, the
Confederation adopting it in the optional rather than in the obligatory
form. Then, after the Referendum, followed the Initiative with quick pace,
by which the people asserted the right, not merely that laws may be
submitted to them for their approval or rejection, but that a given number
of electors (in writing) may demand that the Legislature proce