It is a profitable study to read of the youth of great statesmen. Almost invariably you will find them as young men such as would to-day be sneered at as "book-worms." Napoleon, Pitt, Gladstone, Cavour, Mirabeau, the great Americans and many, many others before they entered public life were profound followers of the goddess of learning. It is not surprising to find that many of them obtained wisdom and enthusiasm from the pages of Plutarch’s "Lives of the Ancient Greeks and Romans." It was in Greece and Rome that we find the origins of most of our laws and institutions, and in the lives of the men who helped to establish them we may read of the tests and needs in their development. Considering the studies of great men it is always amusing to read the calendar which, upon the request of Mr. Madison, Senior, it is said, Jefferson arranged for the working hours of James Madison, Junior. Please note that Madison’s health broke down from overstudy while at Princeton, and it is not to be wondered at, for here is the schedule: until eight in the morning he should confine himself to natural philosophy, morals and religion; from eight until twelve, read law and condense cases, "never using two words where one will do"; from twelve to one, read politics in Montesquieu, Locke, Priestley, Malthus, and the Parliamentary Debates; in the afternoon relieve his mind with history, and when the evening closes in, regale himself with literature, criticism, rhetoric, and oratory. In those days they indeed believed in thoroughly equipping themselves for public life! A few years ago there was an agitation afoot in favor of establishing the systems of the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall. In the North, the South, the East, and the West it was hailed by the spellbinders as the cure-all for corrupt legislation and undesirable laws. It was argued that citizens, who did not have enough political acumen to elect honest and efficient representatives, would have enough to become their own law-makers. In the height of the political campaign Nicholas Murray Butler, the President of Columbia University, published a small book entitled "Why Should We Change Our Form of Government?" The author presented the hazardous risk that our profoundly important representative system would run of being subverted into a chaotic absolute democracy by instituting laws that would deprive the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of their independence and prestige. The republican forms would lapse back two thousand years to those democratic systems of the Grecian states that too invariably paved the way to the despotism of tyrants or the chaos of mob rule.