e initiative or the referendum cannot be amended, but must
be accepted or rejected as a whole, and we may well inquire whether
this might not afford "the interests" quite as good an opportunity as
they would have in a legislature to "initiate" some measure which on
its face was wholesome and beneficent but within which was concealed
some little "joker" that would either nullify the good features of the
law or make it actively vicious, and which, through lack of
discussion, would not be discovered. Every day we have new and
incontestable proof that "in the multitude of counselors there is
wisdom." But that wisdom can never be had under a system of
legislation which lays before the people the work of one man's mind
to be accepted in whole or rejected altogether.

Once more let us observe that under this system, no matter how few
votes are cast upon a given measure, if there are more for it than
against it, it becomes a law, so that the possibility is always
present that laws may be enacted which represent the judgment or the
interest of the minority rather than the majority of the people.
Indeed, experience would seem to show that this is a probability
rather than a possibility, for in the last Oregon election not one of
the nine propositions enacted into law received as much as 50 per cent
of the total vote cast, while some of them received but little more
than 30 per cent of the total vote.

And finally and chiefly, without in the least impeaching the
intelligence of the people, remembering the slight and casual
attention the average citizen gives to the details of public
questions, we may well inquire whether the average vote cast upon
these proposed measures of legislation will really represent an
informed and well-considered judgment. In his thoughtful work on
democracy, discussing this very question, Dr. Hyslop, of Columbia
University, says:

People occupied with their private affairs, domestic and social,
demanding all their resources and attention, as a rule have little
time to solve the complex problems of national life. The referendum
is a call to perform all the duties of the profoundest
statesmanship, in addition to private obligations, which are even
much more than the average man can fulfil with any success or
intelligence at all, and hence it can hardly produce anything better
than the Athenian assembly, which terminated in anarchy. It will not
secure dispatch except