Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/754

 738 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

it is not to be revoked either by the legislature or by the supreme court; and should the supreme court assume to exercise such superior authority, it can be disposed of in the same manner as that by which the law it seeks to annul was enacted. Supreme courts would very soon lose their power to pass upon the constitu- tionality of any and all legislation. It would become a mere judicial figurehead; one of the creatures of the popular law- making power, as the initiative proponents boldly assert, and subject constantly to their interference and intimidation.

Another eminent Swiss authority, Numa Droz, a statesman and economic writer of reputation among economists, and an ex-president of the republic, after giving a dispassionate history of the initiative and referendum and their workings in his coun- try, with apparent inclination everywhere to favor the referendum, speaks in most doubtful terms concerning the initiative. He finds that it furnishes a basis for demagogism, and encourages hot- heads and agitators whose business it seems to be to sow dis- content. Mr. Droz declares that the Swiss are uneasy under the popular initiative. In his own words :

A democracy should rest on a secure foundation, and the power of the initiative puts it in question at every moment. Self-appointed committees and demagogues continually work for disintegration and destruction.

Of course, it will be asserted at once that it has not worked disintegration and destruction in Switzerland; which is true; but it has only been in operation as a national institution a few years, and it is impossible to say that nothing worse will ever come from it. The mere fact that only seventeen out of the twenty-two cantons have adopted the initiative is proof conclusive that the others have been and still are in doubt and fear of it. Mr. Lowell repeatedly points out that the weakness of the institu- tion lies in the inability of the people to comprehend proposed laws. The idea of the right of everybody to make laws is attractive, but it has not proved of value.

I quote again from Borgeaud :

A law that may become part of the constitution, stand as a model for future legislation, which judges will have to apply and jurists to expound .... may be drawn up behind closed doors or around the council board of some committee, which is then as important as the government.