and probably will represent a complete reversal of experience, an absolute alteration of human relations, a paradox of all that has gone before; and even when they endeavor not to do so, as in the case of that Massachusetts statute above referred to, their authors' lack of education in the science of legislation may unintentionally cause a revolution in the law. And even when a statute does not do this, no lawyer can be certain what it means until, years or decades afterward, it has received recognition from an authoritative court. That is why much complaint has been made of lawyers; they are said not to know their business, not to be able to tell what the law is. The head of a great railroad has recently complained that he was only anxious to obey the law, but had great difficulty in finding out what the law was. Any good lawyer with common sense knows the common law and usage of the people; but no one could tell at the time of its passage what, for instance, the Sherman Act, enacted twenty-three years ago, meant; the twenty-three years have elapsed; the anti-trust law has been before the courts a thousand times, and the best lawyers in the country do not to-day know what it means; and the highest tribunal in the land is so uncertain on the subject that it has ordered the Standard Oil case reargued. This is not to say that one must not recognize the meaning and the need of law-making by statute; of law made by the people themselves to suit present conditions. "There should be a law about it," is the popular phrase--commonly there _is_ a law about it, and the best of all law, because tested by time and experience; only, the people do not realize this, and their power and practice of immediate legislation is not only the great event in our modern science of government, but it is also the greatest change in the rules and conditions of our _living_, and our _doing_, and our _having_. Not only our office-holders, but we ourselves, are born, labor, inherit, possess, marry, devise, and combine, under a perpetual plebiscitum, referendum, and recall. I can only hope that I have made some suggestions to my readers which will awaken their interest to the importance of the subject. INDEX