t is not only
possible, but has actually occurred, may be "the best system ever
devised by the wit of man," as we have been vociferously assured, but
some of us may take the liberty of doubting it.

But the initiative and referendum, subversive as they are of the
representative principle, do not compare in importance or in possible
power for evil with the recall. The statutes of every state in this
Union provide a way by which a recreant official may be ousted from
his office or otherwise punished. That way is by process of law, where
charges must be specific, the testimony clear, and the judgment
impartial. But what are we to think of a procedure under which an
official is to be tried, not in a court by a jury of his peers and
upon the testimony of witnesses sworn to tell the truth, but in the
newspapers, on the street corners, and at political meetings? Can you
conceive of a wider departure from the fundamental principles of
justice that are written not only into the constitution of every
civilized nation on the face of the earth, but upon the heart of every
normal human being, the principle that every man accused of a crime
has a right to confront his accusers, to examine them under oath, to
rebut their evidence, and to have the judgment finally of men sworn to
render a just and lawful verdict.

Small wonder that the argument oftenest heard in support of a
proposition so abhorrent to the most primitive instincts of justice is
that it will be seldom invoked and therefore cannot do very much harm.
I leave you to characterize as it deserves a law whose chief merit
must lie in the rarity of its enforcement.

But will it do no harm, even if seldom enforced? It is urged that its
presence on the statute books and the knowledge that it can be invoked
will frighten public officials into good behavior. Passing by the very
obvious suggestion that an official who needs to be scared into proper
conduct ought never to have been elected in the first place, we may
well inquire whether the real effect would not be to frighten men into
demagogy--and thus to work immeasurably greater harm to the common
weal than would ever be inflicted through the transgressions of
deliberately bad men.

We have demagogues enough now, heaven knows, when election to an
office assures the tenure of it for two or four or six years. But if
that tenure were only from hour to hour, if it were held at the whim
of a powerful and unscrupulous newspaper, fo