The history of the Referendum in Switzerland confirms the fact that, as a rule, the people are not favorable to legislation; and that the necessity must be very great and the good ends aimed at very manifest, to withstand a direct consultation of the constituencies. The ancient republics hardly legislated at all. Their democratic energy was expended upon war, diplomacy, and justice; putting nearly insuperable obstacles in the way of a change of law. From fundamental and permanent causes springs this legislative infertility in republics. Changes are at once conservative and progressive; conservative because progressive, progressive because conservative. The Referendum reserves to the people, as the old Swiss expression ran, _höchste und grösste Gewalt_, the highest and greatest power. The foremost statesman in Switzerland, a member at present of the Federal Council,[54] calls it _l’essai le plus grandiose qu’une République ait jamais tenté_, the grandest attempt ever made by a republic. The constitutional provision that when a certain number of voters demand a particular measure, or require a further sanction for a particular enactment, it shall be put to the vote of the whole country, certainly presents a considerable future before democratically governed societies. Peradventure the United States may realize the prophecy made by Mr. Labouchère in the House of Commons, in 1882, that the people, tired of the deluge of debate, would some day substitute for it the direct consultation of the constituencies. The Referendum is practically in use in the United States for constitutional amendments, but so far American publicists seem to regard it quite out of place for ordinary laws, and allege that its introduction would obscure the distinction on which the whole American system rests. For this reason the growing tendency of the people, in the several States, to take a direct part in legislation, even by means of constitutional amendments, is regarded by the same school of thinkers as a danger, which, if it goes too far, will be a serious injury to the American theory of government.