Still the legislature is and must be supreme.

However the executive may be chosen, he is properly only the agent of the legislature. As such he is not called upon to exercise discretion, which is the prerogative of legislators, but to execute laws exactly as their framers contemplated. He is, therefore, strictly speaking, not a party official but a non-partisan agent.1

And speaking of the ideal legislature reformed by proportional representation, he says:—

It might then be expected that the legislature would resume its rightful place as the sovereign branch of government. Unquestionably its position is such that, no matter how degraded its character, unless restricted by the Constitution, it gradually absorbs supreme control of the other departments. It alone can grant and withhold financial support; and sooner or later this power subordinates the executive, the judicial, and the administrative branches. The national Congress, notwithstanding presidential vetoes and popular distrust, has drawn to itself the management of the details of administration. State legislatures and municipal councils would have done the same but for the increasing constitutional restrictions which have subordinated their financial powers to the judiciary and the executive. Could the Federal Constitution be readily amended, doubtless similar restrictions would be imposed upon Congress.2

The only restriction upon the legislature is the Constitution, which emanates directly from the people. Nothing is to be hoped for from the executive, which yet emanates just as directly from the people.

The legislature could then safely be made the sovereign organ of the government and the promoter of social reform. The executive would sink to its true position, that of an agent for carrying out the policy of legislation, and the judiciary, instead of annulling the laws, would simply apply them to concrete cases.

That is to say, government by the legislature alone is the foundation principle of our institutions. All that can be done is to improve the legislature.

How closely Professor Commons, up to a certain point,

agrees with the present writer is shown in the following passage:

If the people wish to bring to their legislatures intelligence, experience, ability, probity, and sympathy with popular aims, they should first develop those forms of government and that political machinery which will insure adequate security, support, and dignity to such qualities...

The American Speaker, unlike the English and Canadian, is a man of dictatorial power. In the national government he is ranked next to the President. He appoints the committees, lays down the rules, and controls legislation. He has a similar position in all State legislatures, and in many municipal councils. Leadership is essential wherever a body of men are compelled to act in council. But there are two kinds of leadership. One is that of debate, argument, and statesmanship, depending upon ability and enthusiasm, where the followers have confidence in their chief, accept his leadership, and act in concert with him voluntarily. This is the leadership of Gladstone in the House of Commons. The other is that of coercion, growing out of necessity and circumstance, where followers distrust the ability of any leader they may choose, where they distrust their own ability to follow, and therefore they consent to the abdication of selfgovernment and the elevation of a tyrant. This is the leadership of the American party Speaker. If the members should keep the control of affairs in their own hands, there would be wrangling and wirepulling over the appointment of committees, and then factions and mutiny on account of their final disposition. The only escape from this evil is the power of the Speaker. . . .1

Though the Speaker has a unique dominion, there is another power in American councils, legislatures, and Congress still more ominous, the lobby. It is the lobby which controls legislatures to-day. If any law demanded by the people at large, or even by a majority of the lawmaking body, is defeated or emasculated, its fate can be traced to the dominating influence of the lobby.

The lobby is a new feature of representative government. It is coincident with the very recent growth of large private corporations. It is organized by them. They have such immense interests at stake on the turn of legislation, that their lobby, with unlimited resources at its disposal, is almost irresistible.

But the lobby could not have acquired its powerful influence were it not for certain qualities in the legislative bodies themselves, which place them at its mercy. Corruption is not the only explanation. Legislators fall into the nets of lobbyists largely because of inexperi

1 Op. cit., pp. 43, 44.

ence and incapacity. The lobbyists themselves are the shrewdest, brightest, and most influential men of the State or nation. They often control the party spoils, and an ambitious legislator cannot afford to antagonize them. The lobby is organized as well as the legislature itself. It has its chiefs who band together. All of the corporations and enterprises interested in legislation practically combine as a unit. Then these able and honorable chiefs employ their resources of argument and suggestion with individual legislators and before committees. They take the dimension of every individual who comes in their way. But if their honorable methods are inadequate they then turn the legislator in question over to the petty lobbyist who carries the pocket-book. Their own hands are clean.

It is not to be inferred that the lobby alone is responsible for corrupt legislatures and councils. It is equally true that corrupt legislatures are responsible for the lobby. Lawmakers introduce bills attacking corporations for the express purpose of forcing a bribe. This is called a "strike," and has become a recognized feature of American legislation, to meet which the corporations are compelled to organize their lobby. . . .1

Both machines in nation, State, and city are the tools of the corporations and speculators who plunder the public. Consequently those voters who would be independent, and would gladly revolt against ring rule, have no place. They cannot elect an independent candidate unless they carry a majority of their petty ward or district. This is almost impossible in the face of the party organizations. They can do nothing but combine with one machine against another. Hence come hopelessness and apathy of the better classes of citizens. Hence, also, come those violent explosions and hysterics of reform, those popular uprisings, which occasionally break down the barriers of machine rule, but relapse again, like a mob in contest with troops. The gerrymander and inequality in the representation of parties are bad enough, but the deadly evil of the system is the expulsion of ability and public spirit from politics, and the consequent dictatorship of bosses and private corporations.2

It is in the conclusion from these premises that our argument differs toto cœlo. The position here taken is that the absence of leadership, the rule of the Speaker, of private interests, and the lobby, result from the fact that the legislature is composed of precisely equal units, subject to no authority, jealous of each other and of any personal prominence, so that the majority, which is the 2 pp. 84, 85,

1 Op. cit., pp. 45-47.

only possible instrument of doing any work, has to be obtained by the processes described; in short, that the trouble is inside and not outside of the legislature.

Professor Commons takes a different view.

a

We have now been able to follow the various evil phases of recent American political life directly or remotely to their root, in the system of electing single representatives from limited districts, system which we have inherited unchanged through six centuries of political and social revolution. At the present time, when political parties based on social questions divide the people and seek representation, we are using a system of representation based on locality. The political parties inevitably seize upon this machinery and use it for party ends. Thus violently distorted, it represents neither sections nor parties. Instead, it has divided the people in every district into two camps, each dictated by its party machine and spoilsmen.1

Referring to the guilds of the Middle Ages, he says:—

The circumstances of the times and the needs of defence drew the residents nearer together in common interests. This appears first in the development of the guilds of merchants. Through commerce they gained wealth; this brought political power; and soon the merchant guild absorbed the lawmaking power of the entire city, its charter became the city charter, and its maire the city mayor. In still later times, when manufactures rose into prominence alongside merchandising, new guilds were organized, representing different trades. There were the weavers, the shoemakers, the goldsmiths, the butchers, and many others. Each of these craft-guilds had its own president, the alderman. They soon demanded a share in the city government, which was finally granted, and their aldermen were given the right to sit together as a lawmaking body, each representing his own guild.

The question arises, How came it that so rational a system as the election of aldermen by the different organized interests of the cities should have been displaced by the arbitrary system of election by territorial districts or wards? 2

We think there is a very cogent and sufficient reason for this.

The grand panacea for this poison of single-district elections is to enlarge the areas so as to include a number of candidates, and then to allow the voters to distribute

their votes, so that different groups of voters, interested in different social and political questions, may have a chance of securing a representation.

On this point we take issue from the start. Assuming that the way to reach the multitude is through men and only indirectly through measures, that method is the most effective which most strongly puts forward personality. Mr. Commons complains that the district voter finds but one candidate of each party for each place, and is compelled to choose between those two. Exactly, and it is the competition of the two parties in their nominations which has enabled the voters to maintain the standard of public men as high as it is now. That they cannot do more is owing to the want of machinery for testing and making clear to them the quality of the men whom they have chosen. Any increase in the number of candidates of each party for each place, whether to two, six, or ten, renders the average voter confused and uncertain. Of a single candidate he may have some knowledge, either personal or by hearsay, or failing that he has at least party to guide him. But as soon as more candidates are offered he has to decide upon their relative merits without even the party guide, a task for which he is unfitted and which, unless he has some special object to gain, he will soon renounce in disgust. For example, in Boston, where twelve aldermen are nominated at large, of whom each voter has to select seven, it is ludicrous to see the helplessness with which voters, even among the well-to-do and educated, gaze at this list of twelve names, which to them mean absolutely nothing else.

It is a principle in elective constituencies that the larger the area over which a district extends, the more distinguished and capable are the candidates of all parties.1

1 Op. cit., p. 39.