a

very pompous-looking man, with whom he commenced a conversation in a rather free and easy manner. At length the pompous one said, "My good man, reserve your conversation for one of your own equals. I would have you know that I am a "K.C." The Irishman jumped up and held out his hand. "Begorry, shake!" he exclaimed. "Oi'm a Casey meself."-Boston Transcript.

"Enuff." He was a Scottish advocate, and in his pleading he had several times pronounced the word "enow" for "enough." "Mr. the judge remarked at length, "in England we sound the ough as 'uff'-enough, not 'enow.""

"Verra well, ma lord," continued the self-possessed pleader, "of this we have said enuff, and I come, ma lord, to the subdivision of the land in dispute. It was apportioned, ma lord, into what in England would be called pluffland; a pluffland being as much land as a pluff man can pluff in one day, and pluffmen-"

But his lordship could not withstand the ready repartee, and burst into a laugh, saying:

"Pray proceed, Mr.: we know 'enow' of the Scottish language to understand your argument."-London TitBits.

Comfort not Considered. There is a deputy marshal in Mississippi who does not permit any such trifles as extradition laws to stop him in the performance of his duties.

When a certain term of the court was about to begin a man who was out on bail was reported to be enjoying himself over in Georgia. The deputy marshal went after him. The next day he telegraphed the judge:

"I have persuaded him to come."

A few days later he rode into town on a mule, leading his prisoner tied up snugly with a clothes line. The prisoner looked as if he had seen hard service.

"Why, Jim," said the judge, "you didn't make him walk all the way from Georgia ?"

"No, sir. Part of the way I drug him, and when we come to the Tallapoosa river, he swum."-Harper's.

Pretty Good Evidence. "Not guilty, sir," replied the prisoner.

"Where did you find the prisoner, constable ?" asked the magistrate.

"In Trafalgar Square, sir," was the reply.

"And what made you think he was intoxicated?"

"Well, sir, he was throwing his walking stick into the basin of one of the fountains, and trying to entice one of the stone lions to go and fetch it out again.'-Minn. Journal.

Additional Parties. The Lawyer"The precedents are against you, madam." The Lady-"Well, sue them, too, then."-Boston "Transcript."

Poor Memory. A stout, elderly farmer called on a solicitor, and explained that he wished to make a will.

"I'll leave my brass to the wife," he said; "we've been married thirty years." The solicitor prepared to receive particulars.

"What's your wife's Christian name?" he asked.

The farmer scratched his head, thought, scratched his head again, and said he couldn't remember.

The solicitor thought of a ruse.

"Walk to that door," he suggested, "and call upstairs as if you were calling her."

The farmer did so, and called out, "Missus!"-Rochester Times.

Plenty of Time for Action. The police magistrates so often admonish women complainants to come back and report any further wrongdoing on the part of husbands who have been released that these judges fall into the habit of repeating the admonition on every occasion in which a man and wife are concerned.

The other day a woman told one of the magistrates that her husband had threatened to kill her.

"Very well, madam," said the magistrate, mechanically, "very well, if he does, you come back and tell me, and I will punish him."

VOL. 23

HE use of the initiative and referendum in the United States is still in the experimental stage. The system, no doubt, must be dealt with as a permanent part of the American plan of self-government, but methods vary in the different states. Plans and amendments are put forward tentatively, subject to modification and improvement as experience justifies. The courts are deciding concrete cases arising out of the exercise of the power, but as yet there is no body of settled principles or established precedents that all recognize as fundamental and controlling.

Time will bring many more changes and amendments, and some of these differences in methods will be harmonized. But no state can as yet claim to have evolved a model plan worthy of being held up as a pattern for others to follow, and in the meantime it is worth while to make comparisons and to take advantage of improvements that have been worked out. Experience already justifies some generalizing and some deductions more or less instructive.

No. 5

Direct legislation seems to be too unwieldy to afford a complete substitute for legislatures. In some of the states in which the system has been adopted, it is expressly declared by the Constitution that the authority of the state shall be vested in the legislative assembly, but the people reserve to themselves the power to propose laws and amendments to the Constitution, and to enact or reject them at the polls. Whether thus distinctly stated in the organic law or not, it has been generally assumed by theoretic writers that direct legislation is to be relied upon principally for emergencies, and is to be held in reserve for use when necessary. Earnest advocates of the system have argued that the power need not and probably will not be frequently used, since the fact that it is ready for use will in itself operate to accomplish the purpose of bringing the representatives to a consciousness that they are bound to represent the sovereign people. Thus the avowed purpose of the plan is to obtain genuine representative action on the part of legislative bodies.

It will be generally conceded that the representative system, provided the representatives are honest and intelligent, is the ideal plan both for the Republic and for the several states. Improvements in governmental methods should, therefore,

broadly speaking, be directed to bettering the representative system, rather than to seeking to make direct legislation a substitute.

Experience shows, however, that notwithstanding the theory this method of legislation has been freely used in some of the states, and oftentimes upon measures that might well have been left to the legislature. The election ballots have been overloaded, and in these states the object of using the system for emergencies only has been lost sight of. But on the other hand, the recent popular impulse to turn to direct legislation as a certain cure for all the evils of the legislative system has visibly waned, and states that have not already adopted the system seem inclined to wait until they can profit by the experience of the pion

eers.

and

The fundamental and inherent defect of all schemes of direct legislation lies in the fact that this method of lawmaking precludes the opportunity for preliminary debate, correction, amendment, modification, and eliminates the salutary influence of the minority in molding and modeling the measures. The proposed law is prepared by interested persons, and when launched and set afloat is a completed thing, and must be accepted or rejected as a whole.

That this is a serious defect, and one that curtails the practical usefulness of direct legislation, needs no argument to demonstrate. It is of less importance in the referendum than in the initiative, for referendum measures, as a rule, have had the benefit of the legislative processes, including reference to committees, printing, hearings, newspaper publicity, open debate in two legislative houses, and, finally, the approval or rejection by the Executive. While referendum measures must be accepted or rejected as a whole and without amendment after coming on for popular vote, yet because of the preliminary steps in the preparation and the consideration of these measures in the legislative assembly, it may be presumed that they have already reached a certain degree of perfection of form and contents. Initiative measures, on the other hand, have none of the bene

fits of preliminary debate and amend

ment.

Now this defect in the initiative may be overcome by requiring any such measure to be first submitted to the legislature, and if there adopted without change the necessity of submitting the same to popular vote is obviated, but if not so adopted it may then be submitted to the electors, together with any amended form, substitute, or recommendation of the legislature, and in such manner that the people can choose between the competing measures, or reject both. Obviously this simple expedient, which seems sufficient in itself to greatly strengthen the initiative as a practical means of legislation, should be generally adopted by all states in which direct legislation is in use. states so far has adopted it. The plan is not original there, for it has long been in use in Switzerland. In a modified form it has been applied to several city charters. Its natural tendency is to diminish the number of measures upon the ballot, and to save the expense of circulating petitions and holding elections where the legislature accomplishes the

purpose.

Yet but one of the

Another patent defect in the direct legislation system lies in the circumstance that many, if not most, voters do not qualify themselves for intelligent action at the polls. It is a practical impossibility for all voters to know the contents of the measures, or to form a solid opinion as to the import of words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs. The best that can be expected is an expression by the elec torate as to the general desirability of legislation to accomplish a particular object, or upon a particular subject. The votes of all but the very few must be based upon the title of the measure, rather than upon the measure itself. The attempt to minimize this, in some states, by requiring the printing and distribution, at public expense, of the full text of the measures in advance of the election, is helpful, but does not reach the root of the difficulty. The fact still remains that the ignorant and unqualified voter counts in the returns for exactly the value of the expert and the specialist.

But advocates of the system believe