Now, gentlemen, is not that a
demonstration? Is not that a _reductio ad absurdum_ for this system of
pure and direct democracy?
CHAPTER V
MORE SIGNS OF THE TIMES
The present movement for a purer and more direct democracy--the
initiative, referendum and recall--is clearly an ineffective method of
securing wise legislation, good official agents, or even a real
expression of the people's will. The representative system is the most
valuable system that has thus far been invented to make popular
government possible and the introduction of more democracy, so-called,
is a retrograde step. It is going back to the machinery of the New
England town meeting and of the Republics of Greece and Rome, which we
have given up because conditions have so changed as to make it
impracticable and ineffective.
In the small number of people who constituted the town meeting in New
England, or in a Greek city, it was possible to discharge the
comparatively simple functions fulfilled by government because of the
high average intelligence of the freemen who took part.
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