The first consideration is that free government is impossible except
through prescribed and established governmental institutions, which work
out the ends of government through many separate human agents, each doing
his part in obedience to law. Popular will cannot execute itself directly
except through a mob. Popular will cannot get itself executed through an
irresponsible executive, for that is simple autocracy. An executive
limited only by the direct expression of popular will cannot be held to
responsibility against his will, because, having possession of all the
powers of government, he can prevent any true, free, and general expression
adverse to himself, and unless he yields voluntarily he can be overturned
only by a revolution. The familiar Spanish-American dictatorships are
illustrations of this. A dictator once established by what is or is alleged
to be public choice never permits an expression of public will which will
displace him, and he goes out only through a new revolution because he
alone controls the machinery through which he could be displaced peaceably.
A system with a plebiscite at one end and Louis Napoleon at the other could
not give France free government; and it was only after the humiliation of
defeat in a great war and the horrors of the Commune that the French people
were able to establish a government that would really execute their will
through carefully devised institutions in which they gave their chief
executive very little power indeed.

We should, therefore, reject every proposal which involves the idea that
the people can rule merely by voting, or merely by voting and having one
man or group of men to execute their will.

A second consideration is that in estimating the value of any system of
governmental institutions due regard must be had to the true functions
of government and to the limitations imposed by nature upon what it is