Page:The Referendum and the Recall Among the Ancient Romans (Abbott, 1915, hvd.32044080048069).pdf/6

4 practised the recall a century or more, and direct legislation was a part of their system of government even longer. I presume the long stretch of the Dark Ages which separates us from Roman times prevents us from seeing how much there was in them which we can study with profit. It is quite true, of course, that a political system which works well with one people or generation may not be applicable to another, so that if we had a long experience of our own with these two institutions, on which conclusions could be based, it would be a waste of time to look to the history of another people. But, as we have seen, we must wait a generation for the data to collect. Even if the experience which the Roman people had with the recall and the referendum should not held us to solve our problems, the way in which these two methods of enforcing the popular will developed in another democracy may not be without interest. The fact that Rome's territory was as widespread, her population as heterogeneous as our own, makes the comparison of her experiences with ours the more tempting and pertinent. Another striking point of similarity may be found in the political genius of the two peoples.

The Romans showed, as the Anglo-Saxons have shown, skill in adapting means to an end, a high regard for tradition, and a contempt for political philosophy and logic. The fact that our industrial organization, thanks to the use of steam and electricity, is more highly developed than the Roman was does not materially affect the cast. The trend of Roman civilization under the late Republic and the early Empire was remarkably like our own. As soon as he had accustomed himself to certain superficial differences, for instance, in the matter of dress, architecture, and manner of life, the American of to-day, if set down in the Rome of two thousand years ago, would have felt himself at home. Mark Twain showed a lively sense of the fitness of things, or rather a true feeling for the incongruous, when he put his Yankee, not in the Rome of Cæsar, but at the Court of King Arthor. The twentieth-century American transplanted to Rome might miss the moving-picture show or the daily newspaper for a time, but, whether his lot was cast in the slums of the Subura or among the smart set on the Palatine, he