perfectly good intentions. The only safeguard against such evils and the
only method by which intelligent legislation can be reached is the method
of full discussion, comparison of views, modification and amendment of
proposed legislation in the light of discussion and the contribution and
conflict of many minds. This process can be had only through the procedure
of representative legislative bodies. Representative government is
something more than a device to enable the people to have their say when
they are too numerous to get together and say it. It is something more than
the employment of experts in legislation. Through legislative procedure
a different kind of treatment for legislative questions is secured by
concentration of responsibility, by discussion, and by opportunity to meet
objection with amendment. For this reason the attempt to legislate by
calling upon the people by popular vote to say yes or no to complicated
statutes must prove unsatisfactory and on the whole injurious. In ordinary
cases the voters will not and cannot possibly bring to the consideration of
proposed statutes the time, attention, and knowledge required to determine
whether such statutes will accomplish what they are intended to accomplish;
and the vote usually will turn upon the avowed intention of such proposals
rather than upon their adequacy to give effect to the intention.

This would be true if only one statute were to be considered at one
election; but such simplicity is not practicable. There always will be, and
if the direct system is to amount to anything there must be, many proposals
urged upon the voters at each opportunity.

The measures, submitted at one time in some of the Western States now fill
considerable volumes.

With each proposal the voter's task becomes more complicated and difficult.