laws as the shifting conditions of the times require, but let us never abandon or weaken this fundamental and essential characteristic of our ordered liberty. EXPERIMENTS IN GOVERNMENT AND THE ESSENTIALS OF THE CONSTITUTION BY ELIHU ROOT United States Senator and former The Stafford Little Lectures delivered at Princeton University 1913. In his preface Senator Root says that the people of this country have entered "a period of re-examination of their system of government'', and with these sentences explains the situation and his aim in this discussion of it: "Not only are political parties denouncing old abuses and demanding new laws, but essential principles embodied in the Federal Constitution of 1787, and long followed in the constitutions of all the states, are questioned and denied. The wisdom of the founders of the Republic is disputed and the political ideas which they repudiated are urged for approval. "I wish in these lectures to present some observations which may have a useful application in the course of this process.' "Americans who desire to retain a government which makes real the union between civil order and popular liberty will profit by the careful reading of these lectures."-Boston Transcript. "The informed observer of affairs can read much between the lines, and can be trusted not to lay the pages down until the last has been turned."-N. Y. Times. "Well worth reading."-The Oregonian. "Very able papers, elevated in style and apparently far above the level of partisan politics."-St. Louis Post Dispatch. "It would be a good thing if every citizen of the United States were to read them and study their import."-Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. 88 pages, cloth bound, $1.00 net, by mail $1.00 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY Specimen page 24 EXPERIMENTS AND ESSENTIALS will doubtless be an improvement upon the old methods. There is another class of new methods which do relate to the structure of government and which call for more serious consideration here. Chief in this class are: The Initiative; that is to say, direct legislation by vote of the people upon laws proposed by a specified number or proportion of the electors. The Compulsory Referendum; that is to say, a requirement that under certain conditions laws that have been agreed upon by a legislative body shall be referred to a popular vote and become operative only upon receiving a majority vote. The Recall of Officers before the expiration of the terms for which they have been elected by a vote of the electors to be had upon the demand of a specified number or proportion of them. The Popular Review of Judicial Decisions upon constitutional questions; that is to say, Specimen pag fairs must agree that the evils to be cured have been real and that the motive which has prompted the proposal of the Initiative and Referendum is commendable. I do not think that these expedients will prove wise or successful ways of curing these evils for reasons which I will presently indicate; but it is not necessary to assume that their trial will be destructive of our system of government. They do not aim to destroy representative government, but to modify and control it, and were it not that the effect of these particular methods is likely to go beyond the intention of their advocates they would not interfere seriously with representative government except in so far as they might ultimately prove to be successful expedients. If they did not work satisfactorily they would be abandoned, leaving representative government still in full force and effectiveness. There is now a limited use of the Referendum upon certain comparatively simple questions. No one has ever successfully con |