n of Senators touch anything except the private control
of seats in the Senate? We remember another thing: that we have not been
without our suspicions concerning some of the legislatures which elect
Senators. Some of the suspicions which we entertained in New Jersey about
them turned out to be founded upon very solid facts indeed. Until two
years ago New Jersey had not in half a generation been represented in the
United States Senate by the men who would have been chosen if the process
of selecting them had been free and based upon the popular will.

We are not to deceive ourselves by putting our heads into the sand and
saying, "Everything is all right." Mr. Gladstone declared that the
American Constitution was the most perfect instrument ever devised by the
brain of man. We have been praised all over the world for our singular
genius for setting up successful institutions, but a very thoughtful
Englishman, and a very witty one, said a very instructive thing about
that: he said that to show that the American Constitution had worked well
was no proof that it is an excellent constitution, because Americans could
run any constitution,--a compliment which we laid like sweet unction to
our soul; and yet a criticism which ought to set us thinking.

While it is true that when American forces are awake they can conduct
American processes without serious departure from the ideals of the
Constitution, it is nevertheless true that we have had many shameful
instances of practices which we can absolutely remove by the direct
election of Senators by the people themselves. And therefore I, for one,
will not allow any man who knows his history to say to me that I am acting
inconsistently with either the spirit or the essential form of the
American government in advocating the direct election of United States
Senators.

Take another matter. Take the matter of the initiative and referendum,
and the recall. There are communities, there are states in the Union, in
which I am quite ready to admit that it is perhaps premature, that perhaps
it will never be necessary, to discuss these measures. But I want to call
your attention to the fact that they have been adopted to the general
satisfaction in a number of states where the electorate had become
convinced that they did not have representative government.

Why do you suppose that in the United States, the place in all the world
where the people were invited to control their own government