necessarily reduced to its simplest expression, and so placed before
them as to be capable of an affirmative or negative answer. In practice,
therefore, the discussion of details is left to the representative
assemblies, while the people express approval or disapproval of the
general principle or policy embraced in the proposed measure. Public
attention being confined to the issue, leaders are nothing. The
collective wisdom judges of merits."

A.V. Dicey, the critic of constitutions, writes in the "Nation," October
8, 1885: "The Referendum must be considered, on the whole, a
conservative arrangement. It tends at once to hinder rapid change and
also to get rid of that inflexibility or immutability which, in the eyes
of Englishmen at least, is a defect in the constitution of the United
States."

A Swiss radical has written me as follows: "The development given to
education during the last quarter of a century will have without doubt
as a consequence an improved judgment on the part of a large number of
electors. The press also has a rôle more preponderant than formerly.
Everybody reads. Certainly the ruling classes profit largely by the
power of the printing press, but with the electors who have received
some instruction the capitalist newspapers are taken with due allowance
for their sincerity. Their opinion is not accepted without inquiry. We
see a rapid development of ideas, if not completely new, at least
renewed and more widespread. More or less radical reviews and
periodicals, in large number, are not without influence, and their
appearance proves that great changes are imminent."

Professor Dicey has contrasted the Referendum with the _plébiscite_:
"The Referendum looks at first sight like a French _plébiscite_, but no