Enough members of that legislature so far forgot the radical demands of their constituencies, and became so extremely conservative, that the legislature, as a whole, gave far greater satisfaction to the party which opposed it than it did to the party which elected it. The greatest service which the last legislature rendered the people of the State, is, that it showed them beyond question that representative government is not democratic government. To this great benefit the most venal, as well as the most conservative members contributed most. If the last legislature failed ignominiously in putting into execution, to any considerable degree, the cardinal tenets of the party which elected it, what may the people expect from a constitutional convention made up of the same class of men?

The repeated and fruitless efforts to secure a constitutional convention, and to secure alterations in the constitution by amendment, ought to teach the politicians that the people of Kansas have decided to abandon delegated` government, and to take the reins of power into their own hands. They will not grant to the politicians a constitutional convention. Neither will they accept a politician-made constitution. It is surprising that we find preserved in our present constitution the recognition of the sacred right of the people to have amendments referred to them before their adoption. This, more than any other feature of our state government, is a recognition of the basic principles of democratic institutions. Governments are best made by evolution. Our present constitution has checks and hindrances which not only impede the smooth and natural development of our institutions, but they amount to positive obstructions to any development at all. It repudiates the fundamental principles of self government by the people; and it substitutes the most vicious form of minority rule for the republican principle of majority rule.

Section 1 of article 14 of the present constitution provides the method by which the constitution may be changed or amended. It reads:

"Propositions for the amendment of this constitution may be made by either branch of the legislature; and if two-thirds of all the members elected to each house shall concur therein, such proposed amendments, together with the yeas and nays, shall be entered on the journal; and the Secretary of State shall cause the same to be published in at least one newspaper in each county of the state where a newspaper is published, for three months preceeding the next election of representatives, at which time the same shall be submitted to the electors for their approval or rejection."

There are three main objections to this method of amending the constitution. The first and most vital is that the cardinal principle of self government by the people is denied. While the people are permitted to accept or reject amendments proposed by others, they have no power to propose changes themselves. Their tongues are speechless. They must use their only spokesman a lobby-hounded legislature. Not content with depriving the people of the right to propose changes in the constitution the present method does not even permit a two-thirds majority of the members elected to the legislature to propose amendments, but it requires a two-thirds ma

jority of each house to favor the submission of the amendment before it can go to the people for acceptance or rejection. Such a vicious establishment of minority rule would have delighted the very soul of Hamilton in his efforts to set up an aristocratic republic. It is exactly such provisions as these that caused Andrew Carnegie in his book entitled "Triumphant Democracy" to recommend to the British people the adoption of such a constitution as we have in America as best affording protection to the ruling aristocratic classes of that empire. The third objection to the present method of amending the constitution is, it is inordinately expensive. As it now stands each proposed amendment must be published for one-fourth a year in at least one newspaper in each of the more than one hundred counties of the state. The cost of printing incident to the submission of the last proposed amendment was $10.721.85. No special care seems to have been taken to secure any material reduction of this expense. These difficulties and objections have hitherto proven so insurmountable that the matter of amending the constitution has been about abandoned. Attention has been directed almost wholly to securing a constitutional convention.

If we are right in our theory of government, that is, that ours is "a government of the people, for the people, and by the people," then let us "trust the people," and adopt forms of government that will give to the people the powers of government. If our theory is right, that the majority should rule, let us hasten to make our institutions conform to the true theory. The suppression of the voice and rule of the people either by constitutional prohibitions, or by debauching their legislatures and elections is an open invitation to revolution.

It is to be hoped that we, in Kansas, are about ready to make our state government in fact what it is in theory, self government by the people. This can be done by so amending the constitution that the desired changes may be proposed by the people themselves. What is wanted is a people-made rather than a politician-made constitution. Section 1 of article 14 of the constitution should be so amended as to incorporate into it the principles of self government and majority rule, and the expensive feature should be eliminated. Whenever a reasonable number of the people of the state desire that a proposed amendment should be submitted for the consideration of the people that right should be secured by petition. Whenever a majority of the members of the state legislature desire that a proposed change in the fundamental law be made, they should have the right to cause it to be submitted to the consideration of the people.

The state should take advantage of the inventions and improvements in printing, and should own and operate its own printing plant. It should publish periodically a State Bulletin which should contain all legal publications of state character, and in which should appear the reports of the various state officers and the proceedings of the state legislature, and in which, would, of course, appear the proposed amendments. This Bulletin should be furnished to the people at cost.

If the next legislature will cut down the cost of printing to one-third or one-fourth what it now is, and will submit some such amendment as the following, it will probably be ratified by the people:

Resolved, By the Legislature of the State of Kansas, two thirds of the members of each house concurring therein:

That section 1 of article 14 of the constitution of the State of Kansas shall be amended so as to read as follows:

"Section 1. Whenever one-third of the legally qualified electors of the State of Kansas who shall have voted therein at the last general election for state officers shall propose by petition any change in or amendinent to the constitution of the State of Kansas; or, whenever a majority of the members of the state legislature shall, in joint session, propose by resolution or otherwise any change in, or amendment to the said constitution, it shall be the duty of the secretary of state to cause such change or amendment to be submitted at the next general election for state officers, to the legally qualified electors of the state for their acceptance or rejection. The correctness of the petitions shall be verified, and the notice of the submission of the proposed change or amendment shall be made as shall be provided by law."

Such an amendment ought to receive the hearty support of every individual and every organization in the state whose efforts are devoted to any kind of reform requiring legislation. For such an amendment the advocates of the initiative and referendum, the advocates of equal suffrage, the advocates of the single tax, and those favoring the resubmission of the prohibitory amendment ought to work in unison. For such an amendment every believer in free institutions and self government by the people ought to labor. If submitted by the next legislature such an amendinent will probably carry by an overwhelming majority. Its adoption would mark an epoch in the evolution of democratic government. I am not unmindful of the consequences of such a change in our institutions. It would indeed, be great; its results in the end would be good.

It is here, in the valley of the Mississippi that the future great achievements of the human race are to be wrought out; here will be witnessed the evolution of science, of art, of literature, of invention, of commerce, and here will be witnessed the evolution of democratic government. The people of Kansas, by intelligence, by learning, by a study of political principles and political history, by character, and by courage are qualified to take this step. Let them demand the right to re-make their constitution, and to re-make it in their own way. It may be declared an axiom that any people will have a government as free and as perfect as they have intelligence to invent and courage to demand. Let us have a new constitution, but let it be people-made.

A Study in the English Constitution.

BY LUCIUS H. PERKINS.

It was a wise saying of a great teacher of philosophy in my college days, who, when we complained that we could not understand Carlyle, in his great prose poem, was wont to say: "Young men, do you know the French Revolution? If not, how do you hope to understand Carlyle?"

No man who is not a student of history will ever understand the spirit of a constitution.

No man who conceives that history is the story of kings and ministers and intrigues and conquests in war and peace, or even the rise and fall of empires, will ever understand the spirit of a constitution.

He who would interpret a constitution must first know history and then become imbued with the philosophy of history. The roots of the present are buried so deeply in the past that to comprehend the fruit one must know the food it fed on.

We are joint heirs of all that has been. It and we compose The Now. What a marvelous inheritance is the accumulated wisdom of the ages! And what great luck not to have been born too soon!

Facts, events, the things that came to pass are the warp, causation in the woof of history.

Constitutions are the residuum of experience. They should represent the combined wisdom of all the people past and present. They flow from the people to the people. They are the aggregate voice of the people.

We are so prone to think of a constitution as a sacred writing, numerously signed, formally adopted, fixed in form, firm in foundation and unchangeable

as the everlasting hills, that we are at first lost when we approach the English Constitution.

We have grown used to the unwritten common law, but an unwritten constitution presents obstacles, numerous, weighty, well-nigh insurmountable to a foreigner.

How shall we come at it? Where shall we find it? How shall we recognize it? What manner of thing is this gradual growth of fourteen hundred years, which men call the English Constitution?

As there were men before there were manners, so there were manners before there we were human laws.

Constitution is the name of the ultimate or fundamental law to which all other laws must conform. Hence the roots of the constitution of a primitive people must be sought in the primitive manners and customs of that people. Old England is not the fatherland of Englishmen. The ancient Briton, savage or Romanized, concerns us little in the study of the English Constitution.

As the Indian retreated before the Pilgrim Fathers, so did the ancient Briton give over his birth-right to the conquerer, and Angleland became his henceforth no more forever.

One of the most remarkable migrations in history was the movement of the Angles from the peninsula of Schleswig, where authentic history first finds them, to the island of Briton. They moved with their wives and children, their tangible belongings, and their household gods, their manners, their customs and their laws, and left a desert behind them.

Standing on the cliffs at Ramsgate, the eastern-most extremity of England, looking over the German Ocean toward the rising sun, we may, in fancy, see the coming of Hengist and Horsa and their landing at Ebbsfleet, and witness the dawn of English History in merry England in the year of grace 449.

This is holy ground which first felt the thrill of the tread of Englishmen. Pirates and roving adventurers! do you say? Heathen worshippers of Woden and Thor! Subverters of Christianity and a higher civilization than their own! Merciless butchers, who devastated the land with fire and sword and refused all quarter to the race they dispossessed!

Yes, all this and more.

In their conquest of extermination our fierce forefathers swept away the language, the literature, religion, customs and laws of Briton and Roman and transplanted in that plundered soil their own. But from the ashes of this ruin sprang a nobler type of manhood than that which perished in the flame. Following the Angles came their kindred the Saxons, from the same German shore, with Cerdic at their head, who gave to the new Anglo-Saxon England its first dynasty of kings.

And so it will be in the manners and customs of the primitive Angles and Saxons that we shall find the first rudiments of the English Constitution.

On an occasion such as this when the greatest of all the graces is brevity,