appealing necessarily to a rather narrow interest were so kindly received by students of political institutions in this country, England and France that it has encouraged me after these seven years to return to the subject in the present work. Although my earlier studies regarding the referendum have furnished the frame for some of the chapters of the present volume every sentence, I think, is new and many of the facts are from sources which were then but barely tapped. I cannot flatter myself with the hope that such a recital will be interesting reading to every one, but I have made an effort to keep it from being too dry and insipid to the general taste. In seven years very great advances have been made in the development of the direct principle in law-making not only in this but also in other lands. Mr. Bryce, Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, Prof. A. V. Dicey, Mr. A. L. Lowell, Mr. E. L. Godkin and many other writers on constitutional subjects have carefully and attentively noted these manifestations in our political life; and indeed in all countries where representative government has been tested and its weaknesses have been revealed the system of law-making by direct popular vote has come to claim a large share of public interest. The question of introducing the referendum into Belgium was seriously discussed during the recent constitutional controversy which preceded and accompanied the revision of the organic law of that kingdom. More recently it has engrossed public attention in Australia in connection with the movement to unite and federate the various Australian colonies. Coincidently the subject has rapidly gained a place for itself in Socialist and Labor party platforms in Europe and America. In the United States the demand that the people should have a larger share in the making of the laws has spread over a great area and through many strata of the population. In most of the Western States the referendum has been taken up with zeal by the advocates of radical social reforms in the belief that it is only the representative system which stands between them and the realization of their ideals. Seeing the light first in the political program of the "Farmers' Alliance" the referendum made its way into the platforms of the so-called "Peoples' Party", which polled a very large popular vote until its principles, the referendum with the rest, were transferred almost bodily to the platforms of the Democratic party. Not a few societies and leagues exist for the purpose of advancing this reform, in the East as well as in the West, and there are not many parts of the country where the referendum is now a strange name even to the common man. That the education of the people respecting such a subject is, in a way, a gain in a democracy it is not possible to doubt, and it leads one to hope that a question so vitally affecting our constitutional system may be still more deeply examined into so that a true idea may be secured as to the worth of the referendum in contrast with the older representative type of government which is the heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race. If, in this work, I shall succeed in doing ever so little to make the issue clearer in the minds of those to whom the book may come, I shall feel it an abundant recompense for my somewhat tedious labors among the law books of the American States. It should be explained that the first two chapters of this work are the result of a study undertaken long ago in another connection when I had hoped that the engagements of life would permit me to complete a constitutional history of the State of Pennsylvania, in the preparation of which I had made more than a beginning. I think, however, that it can not be wholly inappropriate to incorporate these chap- ' ters in this volume since they illustrate some phases of popular government in America of which we all have need of being occasionally reminded. These initial chapters will serve, I hope, as an historical background for those which follow, and will tend, perhaps, to a better understanding of some developments in the political experience of the United States of a later time. Lest in these chapters I should be accused of partisanship against Dr. Franklin and in favor of John Adams, which is a fate that has been met by not a few writers before me, I wish in advance to disclaim any such intention of prejudice. The student who looks for his sources in regard to this subject will find many of the most valuable of them in John Adams' " Works ", and Mr. Adams' theories have found their justification in the course of later events while Dr. Franklin's were discredited long ago. There is no desire on the part of this author to take away anything from Franklin's glory in any direction or to make his figure appear in any other than an historically correct light. The historian has accorded him a high place among his compeers and my only aim here has been to investigate the course of his life as it bears upon political science, in which respect he was, I think, a mistaken adviser of his fellow men. I wish sincerely to thank my preceptors and friends at the University of Pennsylvania, under whose inspiration this work was begun, while I was still a student in that institution, for their interest and advice during the progress of these studies. I desire particularly to name Prof. Edmund J. James, the President of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, earlier of the University of Pennsylvania, but now of the University of Chicago; Prof. Simon N. Patten, of the University of Pennsylvania, and Prof. John Bach McMaster, of the University of Pennsylvania. I wish, too, to acknowledge the great courtesy of the officers of the Pennsylvania Historical Society and of the Law Association of Philadelphia, whose valuable collections I have constantly referred to while engaged in the preparation. of these chapters. ELLIS P. OBERHOLTZER. PHILADELPHIA, August, 1900. |