The reply is: Direct legislation is not foreign to this country. Since the settlement of New England its practice has been customary in the town meeting, an institution now gradually spreading throughout the western states--of recent years with increased rapidity. The Referendum has appeared, likewise, with respect to state laws, in several forms in every part of the Union. In the field of labor organization, also, especially in several of the more carefully managed national unions, direct legislation is freely practiced. The institution does not need to be engrafted on this republic; it is here; it has but to develop naturally. _The Town Meeting._ The town meeting of New England is the counter-part of the Swiss communal political meeting. Both assemblies are the primary form of the politico-social organization. Both are the foundation of the structure of the State. The essential objects of both are the same: to enact local regulations, to elect local officers, to fix local taxation, and to make appropriations for local purposes. At both, any citizen may propose measures, and these the majority may accept or reject--_i.e._, the working principles of town and commune alike are the Initiative and the Referendum. A fair idea of the proceedings at all town meetings may be gained through description of one. For several reasons, a detailed account here of what actually happened recently at a town meeting is, it seems to me, justified. At such a gathering is seen, in plain operation, in the primary political assembly, the principles of direct legislation. The departure from those principles in a representative gathering is then the more clearly seen. In many parts of the country, too, the methods of the town meeting are little known. By observing the transactions in particular, the reader will learn the variety in the play of democratic principle and draw from it instructive inference. The town of Rockland, Plymouth county, in the east of Massachusetts, has 5,200 inhabitants; assesses for taxation 5,787 acres of land; contains 1,078 dwelling houses, 800 of which are occupied by owners, and numbers 1,591 poll tax payers, who are therefore voters.