Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/669

Rh stroke of party warfare, when it wanted to upset a government which had a majority in the other House. A young commonwealth requires a written constitution, and a strict one. Moreover, the document, which becomes a political bible, is an instrument of no small power in educating the citizen, and has a conservative influence of the best sort over his mind.

The only point of first-rate importance which remains is the amendment of the Constitution. This ought to be distinctly vested in the nation at large, the sovereignty of which ought to be unequivocally proclaimed; and a mode should be provided by which the sovereign can exercise the power. An elective assembly will not terminate its own existence, or even pass a measure of reform affecting the position of a large portion of its members, if it can help doing so, any more than a king will abdicate of his own accord. The more vicious it is, the less amenable to opinion it will be. The English Parliament in 1832 did not voluntarily reform itself; reform was forced on it by the nation, which threatened it with violence if it held out longer. In 1867 it was let through a trap-door. The more insufferable the American House of Representatives becomes, the more tenaciously will it cling to its evil existence: and electing members pledged to consent to the submission of an amendment for its reformation or abolition would be a desperately difficult process for the people, when the organizations are in the hands of the politicians. The only visible remedy would be revolution: and a revolution, though not a bloody one, would apparently be inevitable if the British nation were to make up its mind to abolish the veto on national legislation at present possessed by the six hundred privileged families represented in the House of Lords. The object might be attained by providing that it should be lawful at any election of representatives for the electors to inscribe on the same ticket a requisition for the submission of a constitutional amendment, and that the Legislature should be bound to submit the amendment to a plébiscite, if a certain proportion of the electorate had supported the requisition. No one who is familiar with the character of democracies, and knows the extent of the vis inertiæ which prevails in them, will deem the power likely to be too frequently used.

The writer, let him say once more, is fully aware that much of what has been said will to many seem undeserving of practical consideration. He knows well that party government, a second Chamber, and direct election of the central Legislature by the people at large, are regarded as immutable ordinances of nature. Yet this does not shake his conviction that a single central assembly elected by the members of local assemblies, and itself electing the executive, will after sufficient experience be the form finally assumed by elective governments.—Nineteenth Century.