men who are to do their common work.

II. We come, then, to the statement of the main features of a system framed to give us a people's government.

One point of objection had best be met. here.

There is the disease. But then come the questions, What is the remedy? And how is the remedy to be applied?

In the present paper, an attempt will be made to answer the first of these questions -to find the remedy. The disease is deepseated. The remedy must go to the root of the disease, and not play with the symptoms. The disease comes, if the diagnosis is correct, in the main from constitutional defects in our system of government, from a wrong use of the process of election, and the use of a wrong form of that process. The treatment, then, must be directed to those constitutional defects. In the compass of this paper necessarily only an outline of a system can be given, for the purposes of thought and discussion.

In the attempt to outline such a system of government, it will be necessary to consider:

1. What a people's government is; 2. The main features of a system framed to give us a people's government;

3. The results which a system so framed would give;

4. The reasons why the system would give us those results.

I. A people's government is an organization for doing the people's common work, according to the people's common will, by the hands of the people's common servants. What this common work is, is not within the line of the present argument.

This common work is to be done, as most Americans will agree, not according to the will of any one man or class of men, but according to the common will of the whole people.

And it must be done, not " by the people" (for that means nothing), but by the hands of their servants-by men specially selected, in some way, for the special work they are to do. The people can at most

It is often said that governments cannot be constructed on paper-that they must grow. Governments do, indeed, grow; but how do they grow? This National Government under which we now live was first framed on paper. That was the way in which its growth began: So it was, too, with our State governments. And shall we have our governments grow wild? How do governments get the best growth-without or with the hand and thought of man? The American method, the scientific method, the common-sense method, is first to draft a scheme of government on paper, as the first stage of its growth; then to think of it, discuss it, and change it; then to enact it, or make it into a constitution; and after that, when time develops faults, when faults grow, then to devise such changes in the scheme as will meet the faults. But it has never been the method of the American people to say that "nothing can be done."

As the next stage, then, in the growth of our system of government, let us see if we cannot work out on paper some of the main features of a people's government.

These features are, as it seems to me, as follows:

1. All political action, by more men than one, should be taken by men meeting and acting as one body-giving to every man one voice.

The meaning of this is, that citizens would act in their own persons only in the affairs of towns, or of small districts where the numbers of the citizens are not too large for them to meet and act as one body. In all other public action, whether as to the affairs of cities, counties, States, or the nation, whether it be the choice of public officers or the adoption of public measures, whenever the numbers of the citizens who are to act are too large for them to meet and act as one body, then they should act by delegates.

This is, as it seems to me, the key-stone of the political arch, the fact which lies at the very foundation of popular government.

Its especial importance is in its application to the process of election. And its application to the process of election is this: Instead of the citizens of a large city, or a large district, or a State, casting their ballots

directly for a mayor, or a member of the State legislature, or a governor, or a presidential elector, or a representative to Congress, the citizens in each small election district (which should, as a rule, have not more than five hundred voters) would meet in one place, as one body, at one time, and vote for a member of an electoral convention-an elector. This voting by the citizens should be done on a call of names, each citizen giving his vote aloud at the call of And, to insure greater deliberation and greater unanimity, a two-thirds vote rather than a majority, as it seems to me, should be required for a choice. The delegates thus chosen to an electoral convention would in their turn meet, as one body, at one time and place, and would elect the mayor, or member of the State legislature, or governor, or presidential elector, or representative to Congress. It is at once seen that, in some instances, it would become necessary, on account of the large number of voters, to use an intermediate convention (or it might be more than one) to choose the members of the final electoral convention, which should elect the officer himself. That would depend on the size of the voting constituencies. Each successive convention should, as to its membership, be kept, as to numbers, within the limit which will secure deliberate action. That limit seems to be about five hundred men. It may add clearness to the statement of the plan proposed to give one illustration of its working, with the figures. In electing a President of the United States, for instance, the number of citizens entitled each to his one voice in the choice of his President is, taking it roughly, nine millions. If we make the number of the electors who vote directly for the President, in the final convention, three hundred, that would give ninety thousand voters to each district which would choose a presidential elector. If, then, each of these districts of ninety thousand voters were divided into small districts having each two hundred and fifty voters, there would be three hundred and sixty of these small election districts, each of which would have one delegate in the convention which should choose the presidential elector.

The reasons in favor of such a system, especially for elections, are these:

(a) The system is simple and practical. It is the system which is, in form, used for the nomination of candidates-a system which has grown, which has been called

into existence, without the aid of any enactment, by a living and growing need. It is the system which the national party organizations have been compelled to adopt in order to get any common action of their members. It is, in substance, the system which the framers of our national Constitution supposed they had adopted for the election of the President. But they overlooked the necessity of having the electoral college of presidential electors meet as one body. Nor did they anticipate the effect of the growth of population, and the consequent increased numbers of popular constituencies.

(b) This system is the only way in which we can secure a common judgment of the people, as to men or measures.

The result which we wish to secure by any political action, where the action is by more men than one, is the judgment of those men, and not merely their choice between two lists of names or two measures prepared by the hands of others. And we wish to get, not a mere declaration of the individual judgments of the single men who make up the body, but the common judgment of the whole body. And that common judgment can be had only by a meeting, a conference, of the men who are to act, where each man can be heard, and can hear other men; where each man can change his own opinion, and change the opinions of other men; where men and measures can be discussed on their merits; where a common judgment-a different thing from the judgment of any one, two, or three individuals-a new thing-can grow and take form; where new combinations can be made, on the spot, and at the time; where it will be impossible for a small knot of men to force a vote for some one man or measure, as a mere choice between two evils, simply because it is then too late to combine on any other man or measure.

This method of having the citizens ot each small election district meet and choose their one delegate to cast their collective vote will secure, as far as any system can, the common judgment of the whole people. The result of the action of the delegate may not be, in all respects, what any individual citizen would most wish. But it will be a result to which, as a whole, all the citizens can agree. The delegates, if there be a reasonably large number of them, will be as sure as any body of men can be to represent fairly the common opinion of the citizens who have chosen them. But whenever we

present, what manner of man is it that they will choose? One or the other of these two classes it will be. I do not say that, in such cases, the people would never be deceived, but, in a very large majority of instances, the man who would be thus chosen by a real vote of the people would be a man long and widely known for his honorable life. When the delegates should meet in convention, though each man might be influenced by his personal prejudices, yet they would have to agree on some one. And they will not agree on a man unknown. Neither will they agree on a man known for his bad deeds. Again, in the very large majority of instances, their vote will be for a man known, and widely known, for his honorable life. The wider the district becomes from which the delegates assemble, the wider will be the reputation of the man who can command their voices. When we come to a convention of delegates from a whole State, or from the whole country, the choice of a public officer by such a convention will, in all human probability, be a man of wide reputation, and he will very certainly be a man of great ability, and honesty. For those delegates will be as free as men can be from improper influences. Each one of them will have his own private interests and prejudices. But these will neutralize one another. It cannot be said that an unfit man would never be chosen by such a convention, but we make the chance of such a thing as small as any system can make it. Each successive stage in the ascending series of conventions will tend more and more to separate the delegates from local and improper influences. They will be as favorably situated as men can be for giving us a wise and upright choice of men.

The men who would be chosen to our national Congress or to our State legislatures under such a system would be very certain to be the ablest and wisest men among us. And the common action, the action approved by the common judgment, of such a body of men, as to either men or measures, would be not only a different thing, but a better thing, than the individual thought and action of nine out of ten of the individuals who make up the body. This is the method of the old town-meeting, of the Convention which framed our national Constitutionthat "most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man," as Mr. Gladstone says. It is a method which gives us the best result that a people is capable of reaching. We should get, in

sober truth, the distilled essence of the wisdom of the whole people. This stream would rise higher than its source. This force of gravitation would work upward, and not downward. The ablest and most honest men would rise to the top, as they always do when things are free, when nature's forces are allowed to operate under nature's laws.

To group the arguments in favor of this return to the simple methods of the old town-meeting and the Constitutional Convention of 1787, they are these: A system so framed is simple and practical; it is the only way in which we can secure a common judgment of the people, as to men or measures; it is the only way in which we can secure to each man his one voice and his full weight; it is the only way in which we can secure to the people the free choice of their public servants; it will secure, as surely as any system can, the selection for the people's service of the people's best and wisest men.

Can more than that be said of our present system?

2. The people should act, in their own persons, only in the local affairs of the small districts, where they can meet and act as one body.

This has been argued. It is separately stated for the sake of completeness.

3. In all other than the local affairs of these small districts, the people should act by delegates.

This has been argued. It is separately stated for the sake of completeness.

4. Each man and each public body, whether in the town, city, county, State, or national governments, should have work of only one kind.

Especially the men who have to do with executive administration should have nothing to do with general supervision-the work of the legislature. And the men in the legislature should have nothing to do with the details of administration, especially with appointments to executive offices. Either work needs different men, with different training, and requires the undivided time and efforts of the men who are to do it. A public servant, if he is to do his work well, cannot be a man-of-all-work. Here is one of the main defects in our present system of government, and in what is called parliamentary government. Both those systems compel the chief public officials to give much of their time and thought to election work and the keeping their places. But, aside from

that point, under what is called parliament- | ary government, the men who are at the head of executive departments are compelled to give their energies chiefly to work in the legislature. For it is on a vote in the legislature that they depend for keeping their executive positions. The consequence is that their executive work is done, in the main, by subordinates-in other words, it is substantially not done at all. The work of organizing is left undone. For subordinates cannot organize; they can never be the strong, moving will and brain of administration. The men who are to organize and supervise the executive departments cannot, if that work is to be well done, have on them also the burden of work in a legislature. Mr. Gladstone, who is, in his way, one of the great men of his time, is gradually breaking down under the attempt to do two kinds of work, both of which no one man can do, and for one of which he is not fitted, either by temper or training. He is a great, impetuous parliamentary orator; he is not an administrator. The two powers are seldom combined in one man. In order to have an illustration of the methods of the parliamentary system, we have only to look at the working of the British War Office. Sir James Stephen, as long ago as in 1847, said that if a European war occurred, the British War Office would "utterly break down." And the prophecy

came true in the first war that Great Britain afterward had-the war of the Crimea. A military correspondent of the London "Times" has lately written that the British army "is in a state of collapse." During the present disturbances in Ireland, the War Office of the British Government has proved unequal to the work of supplying and moving quickly a force of less than one thousand men. Even the British navy is not managed on sound professional principles. An English admiral, Admiral Lord Dunsany, in the "Nineteenth Century," May, 1881, has just given us the exact statement of the situation. He writes: "The truth is, our navy is a House of Commons navy,' devised to suit financial, or, as the French would say, 'budgetary,' considerations, and to meet the criticism of a body profoundly ignorant of all military. and technical considerations." British ministers are almost always men who are ignorant of matters of administration. They are selected on other tests. They are House of Commons men. They are able men, if they were in the right place, but they are out

of place. That is the reason why the British army has been, in the language of Sir Garnet Wolseley, "unworthy of being classed as a fighting implement fit to be employed against an enemy more formidable than a Kaffir or an Asiatic." Navies should be managed by sailors, armies by soldiers, postal affairs by trained postal officers, foreign affairs by diplomates, and a great House of Commons orator-should stay in the House of Commons.

5. The only elective officers should be the chief executive, and the members of the supreme supervisory body-which we commonly call the legislature.

This is intended to apply to city, State, and national governments alike, as are all the general principles here laid down. In a city, the mayor should be the only elective executive official. He should be the responsible head of all city executive administration. He should appoint and remove the head of each executive department. In the same way, in a State, the governor should be the only elective executive official. He should be the responsible head of all State executive administration, of every kind,

canals, schools, prisons, and public charities. He should appoint and remove the head of every executive department. So it should be, too, as in law it now is, with the President of the United States.

There are two main reasons for this: The first is, that the appointment and removal of every official throughout the executive administration, from the very top to the very bottom, should be in the hands of his immediate superior; for he is the only man in a position to judge wisely of the fitness of the subordinate.

The second is, that this rule would diminish greatly the number of elective offices, and, therefore, the amount of election work to be done. It would take from the people the burden of nominally electing a large number of officials as to whose fitness they cannot possibly have knowledge.

6. In executive administration each kind of work should be in the hands of one man. And each officer should have the appointment and removal of his own immediate subordinates.

This is a point which all practical men of affairs well appreciate. To secure efficiency, we must have the responsibility of one man. And to secure the responsibility of one man, we must put power in the hands of one man. Each single office must be under one control, each division and department