s which our forefathers were so anxious to secure has been found
to be a fruitful source of corruption. A realization of this fact has
been responsible for the introduction of the recall system under which
the people enforce official responsibility through their power to remove
by a vote of lack of confidence in the form of a petition signed by a
certain percentage of the voters. Such an expression of popular
disapproval has the effect of suspending from office the offending
official who can regain the office only by offering himself again as a
candidate at an election called for that purpose. This is as yet merely
an innovation in municipal government, but if it proves to be
satisfactory, the principle will doubtless be incorporated, not only in
municipal charters generally, but in our state constitutions as well.

Simultaneous with this movement to make government really representative
by enforcing official responsibility is another movement which also
aims to make the will of the majority supreme, but by a totally
different method of procedure. This is the movement looking toward the
establishment of the initiative and the referendum. Instead of leaving
power in the hands of representative bodies and seeking to make them
responsible as the first plan of reform contemplates, the second plan
would guard representative bodies against temptation by divesting them
of all powers which they are liable to misuse and conferring them
directly upon the people. This is merely an attempt to get back to the
basic idea of the old town meeting, where local measures were directly
proposed and adopted or rejected by the people. It is, moreover, the
logical outcome of the struggle which the advocates of majority rule
have been and are now making to secure control of our state and
municipal governments. The constitutional checks on democracy have
greatly obstructed and delayed the progress of political reform. Some of
them have been removed, it is true, but enough still remain to make it
possible for the minority to defeat the will of the majority with
reference to many questions of vital importance.

It must be admitted, when we review the course of our political
development, that much progress has been made. But the evolution has
been toward a direct rather than toward a representative democracy. The
reason for this is not far to seek. The system of checks which limited
the power of the majority made the legislature largely an irrespo