It is so at the outset of social life, and it still continues substantially so.” And yet, if Mr. Spencer means the same thing that Judge Jameson means, what are we to think of the present fraternization of France and Russia? If the people be sovereign in France and the Czar sovereign in Russia, it is doubtless quite conceivable that one sovereign should love another; but if it be true, as Judge Jameson makes Mr. Spencer say, that it is the people, even in Russia, who are after all sovereign, what are we to think of the fondness of the French sovereign for a government which is holding the Russian sovereign in subjection? If this be correct thinking, it puts us into awkward quandaries, troubling our logic as well as condemning our lives. Apply this doctrine of our masters in American law to our actual political conditions, and see how far it simplifies the matter. In the United States (so runs the orthodox creed) the People is sovereign.--the verb is singular because the people, under this doctrine, constitute a unit. And yet it is notorious that they never have acted as a unit, nor ever can act as a unit under our existing constitution. They have always acted, and must always act, in state groups. And in state groups what action do they take? They assent to constitutional provisions, or refuse to assent to them; and they select certain persons to act as law-makers, as judges, or as executive officers of government. Do they choose policies? No. Do they frame constitutional provisions? Certainly not; they only accept or reject them. In the only case in which they speak directly concerning specific provisions of law, they neither command nor originate. They receive or decline what is offered them. They must wait until they are asked. They have neither initiative nor opportunity to construct. They must be consulted concerning government, but they do not conduct it. Nor is it otherwise, upon last analysis, in Switzerland, where the _Referendum_ exists, where, that is, the people vote upon specific measures of ordinary legislation not only, but where they are also provided with means of imperative initiative in legislation. By petitions bearing a certain large number of signatures they can propose definite legislation, compel action upon the matter of their petitions by their legislatures, and an ultimate submission of the question to popular vote. But see what this is, when examined. The eyes of the community, the men of observation and progress, get up a petition; that is, an indeterminate body and a minority demand that certain laws be formulated and put to the vote. The thing is done, but the measure defeated, let us suppose, at the polls. The eyes of the community have desired certain things, have offered them to the slow digestive organs, and they have been rejected. Are the digestive organs, then, sovereign, and not the initiative parts, the eyes and the reason? Is it sovereign to stomach a thing, and not sovereign to purpose a thing?