The Compulsory Referendum; that is to say, a requirement that under certain conditions laws that have been agreed upon by a legislative body shall be referred to a popular vote and become operative only upon receiving a majority vote. The Recall of Officers before the expiration of the terms for which they have been elected by a vote of the electors to be had upon the demand of a specified number or proportion of them. The Popular Review of Judicial Decisions upon constitutional questions; that is to say, a provision, under which, when a court of last resort has decided that a particular law is invalid, because in conflict with a constitutional provision, the law may nevertheless be made valid by a popular vote. Some of these methods have been made a part of the constitutional system of a considerable number of our states. They have been accompanied invariably by provisions for very short and easy changes of state constitutions, and, so long as they are confined to the particular states which have chosen to adopt them, they may be regarded as experiments which we may watch with interest, whatever may be our opinions as to the outcome, and with the expectation that if they do not work well they also will be abandoned. This is especially true because, since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the states are prohibited from violating in their own affairs the most important principles of the National Constitution. It is not to be expected, however, that new methods and rules of action in government shall become universal in the states and not ultimately bring about a change in the national system. It will be useful, therefore, to consider whether these new methods if carried into the national system would sacrifice any of the essentials of that system which ought to be preserved. The Constitution of the United States deals in the main with essentials. There are some non-essential directions such as those relating to the methods of election and of legislation, but in the main it sets forth the foundations of government in clear, simple, concise terms. It is for this reason that it has stood the test of more than a century with but slight amendment, while the modern state constitutions, into which a multitude of ordinary statutory provisions are crowded, have to be changed from year to year. The peculiar and essential qualities of the government established by the Constitution are: First, it is representative. Second, it recognizes the liberty of the individual citizen as distinguished from the total mass of citizens, and it protects that liberty by specific limitations upon the power of government. Third, it distributes the legislative, executive and judicial powers, which make up the sum total of all government, into three separate departments, and specifically limits the powers of the officers in each department.