sarily lessen the seriousness of the first. As Mill so clearly pointed out in his Essay on Representative Government, and as history has since so abundantly demonstrated, a body of men of any considerable size is by the very fact of its size disqualified from efficient administrative action. A sufficient unity and concert of action and a definiteness and stability of policy for such work cannot be obtained. There is a radical difference between the control, and the actual performance, of the business of government. The representative legislative body should restrict its functions to those of discussion, oversight, and determination. It should see that the proper activities of government are provided for and properly distributed, and should keep sufficient watch to see that their actual performance is properly done; but it should not attempt to perform them itself, or, what is practically the same thing, strive to determine in such detail the manner of their performance as to deprive the proper administrative officers of all responsibility and powers of discretion. The one great evil from which the present French government is suffering, is the extent to which its legislature interferes and meddles with administrative measures, introducing into them thereby its own fickleness and lack of technical skill. In our own country, also, we are not free from this error.

A third means, to which Mill calls especial attention, by which the legislative efficiency of large bodies may be increased, is the establishment of a smaller inside body composed of experienced members whose

duty would be the proper framing of laws. For this work technical legal skill and accuracy are demanded. The creation of such a body would therefore not only lighten the labors but increase the value of the product of the legislature. The larger body would of course still retain the entire power of enacting law. Only the formal and technical work would be given to the smaller committee. Thus in large measure this law-framing committee would bear the same relation to the whole assembly, that such assembly bears to the electorate in countries where the Referendum obtains.

Fourthly, and finally, an almost unlimited relief to overburdened national legislatures is possible through a further decentralization of functions. The extent to which this may be carried, varies in different cases, and depends upon conditions that we do not need here to consider.

In concluding these reflections upon the democratic State, it may appear that we have been able to discover only defects and difficulties, and that consequently only the most pessimistic predictions may be made regarding its future. But such is not the case. We have by no means a low opinion of the merits of popular government. On the contrary, the manly self-control which is taught and practised in this political form stamps it as the best type that developing civilization has thus far disclosed, and in the continued existence of democratic control we see the highest hopes of human progress. At the same time we are not blind to its defects, and these we

have emphasized because of the very general and indiscriminate laudation that popular government has received. The intention has been to show that a democracy is by no means a simple government, nor one easily administered, but rather the reverse that it is one which presupposes a high morality, an advanced state of education, a great degree of selfcontrol, a considerable amount of material and social equality, and, above all, the active and disinterested participation of the wisest and best of its citizens in its political life.

INDEX

ADAMS, H. C., State in Relation to | Bentham, Jeremy, Fragment on