RECENT GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS OF POLITICAL INTEREST 183 Transvaal and Orange River Colony, Further correspondence relating to affairs in the. [July, 1906 to April, 1907.] Colonial office. (cd. 3528.) 1s. 6d. Turkish custom duties, Correspondence respecting the increase of the. 1907. Foreign office. (cd. 3455.) 2s. Vivisection, Royal commission on. Second report. 1907. (cd. 3461, 3462.) 10 d. HONDURAS El liberalismo. Su reorganizacion en Honduras. Estudio historico politico por Fernando Somoza Vivas. 1906. 144 pp. Ministerio de la gobernación. TRANSVAAL Land bank commission, Report of the, together with minutes of proceedings, minutes of evidence and statements. 1906-7. Pretoria, 1907. xxv, 227 pp. INTER-PARLIAMENTARY UNION Inter-parliamentary union. Official report of the fourteenth conference held in the royal gallery of the House of Lords. London, July 23 to 25, 1906. 303 + x pp. The American Vol. II FEBRUARY, 1908 No. 2 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION THE FUTURE OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT Mr. Chairman, Fellow-Members of the American Political Science Association, Ladies and Gentlemen: In the United States we have seen a revival of the ancient discussion. concerning the line of demarcation between national and State authority under our complex federal system, but there is an underlying question which cannot have escaped the thoughtful observer involved in the growing popular distrust of the representative system whereon both federal and State governments are based. This tendency is being manifested in very material modifications in representative government, as understood by the founders of our government, and I therefore ask your attention to the consideration of The Future of Representative Government. This form of government, wherein the sovereign power of lawmaking is wholly delegated to deputies elected by the people, is of comparatively modern origin, and in the modern sense of the term it was unknown to the ancients. While its origin is obscure, we know that it was in England that representative government found its development in the form in which it was so greatly impressed upon the framers of our Constitution. Sir Henry Maine in his Popular Government says that it was virtually England's discovery of government by representation which caused parliamentary institutions to be preserved in England from the destruction which overtook them everywhere else, and to devolve as an inheritance upon the United States. Rousseau, whose influence was so profound upon the active spirits of the French Revolution, declaimed against any delegation by representation of the powers of the people. He required in his policy that the entire community should meet periodically to exercise its sovereignty, and he therefore deemed popular government impossible except in a restricted territory. Mr. Jefferson thought that the New England town meeting was the nearest approach to a popular government, but he doubted that it would be practicable beyond the limits of a New England town meeting. While representative government was assumed by the founders of our government to be the only possible basis of government over an extended territory, they did not entertain the view of Rousseau that a pure democracy was an ideally perfect government, and that representation would be merely a means of securing an expression of the average intelligence in legislation. On the contrary, they deemed that the ideally perfect government was that in which the intelligence of the community, the fittest men, should be selected, that is, the selectmen were to be secured by this means for the purpose of administering the government. This was the conception of representative government expressed in the profound analysis of John Stuart Mill, who declared that the ideally perfect government must be representative, and thus those competent to govern would be selected for that purpose by their fellow men in a true representative system. Guizot says, "What we call representation is nothing else but the means to arrive at the result. It is not an arithmetical means employed to count individual wills, but a natural process by which public reason, which alone has a right to govern society, may be extracted from the bosom of society itself." REPRESENTATION IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT Representation was established in the United States in the creation of our federal government, not only because it was deemed the only means by which popular government could be maintained over any extended territory, but also because it was believed that it was the only means by which the requisite intelligence and wisdom for legislation could be selected by the people. The all but universal system of American constitutional law rests upon the same framework of government-an executive with a bicameral legislature and this has been adopted not only in our States, but in many of our city charters. The framers of our Federal Constitution were so profoundly impressed with the necessity of deliberate selection in representation that they adopted the system of double representation in the election of the president and also of the senators. These provisions were believed by the founders to be of the most lasting importance in securing a wise deliberation in these selections. Hamilton predicted that this method of electing the president afforded a moral certainty that the office of president would seldom fall to a man who was not endowed in an eminent degree with the requisite qualifications. The generation of the founders had hardly passed away before the electoral scheme for the selection of the president, so carefully devised, was undermined by public opinion, and the intention of the Constitution framers was completely defeated. The electors for nearly a century have been nominated and selected for the sole purpose of giving the vote of the State to a certain party candidate, and they are as securely bound by custom and honor so to vote as they would be by statute. The electoral college has become a mere voting machine, and the president himself may be selected by a convention of the dominant party, as the result of a deal or a stampede, a result that the framers of the Constitution thought they had effectually prevented by their precautions. The indirect choice in the election of senators by the State legislatures has lasted longer. This double representation attracted the admiration of Tocqueville (chapter xiii), when he visited this country during the administration of Jackson, and he thought that this plan of election would have to be introduced more frequently into our system, or we should incur no small risk of perishing miserably on the shoals of democracy. Sir Henry Maine1 in 1886 thought that the great source of the power of the senate was this method of their election by the legislatures of the several States. The democratic trend was first observable as to the senators in the |