Too many of our honest men have shirked election duty, as they have shirked jury duty; and just as ignorant or corrupt juries too often decide questions in the court house, so the ignorant or corrupt voters—pliant tools in the hands of unscrupulous politicians—decide questions of legislation which require the best thought and the best energies of our most intelligent and upright citizens. If direct legislation and the Recall should be put in practice, there could not be such things as corrupt legislatures, and therefore there would be no such thing as corrupt senatorial elections. The fountain having been purified, the stream would be pure. At present the fountain itself is too often impure, and therefore the stream which flows from it cannot be pure. * * * * * On the other two points made by Mr. Adams there will be greater difference of opinion. His objections proceed upon the assumption that the United States is a nation with a government national in all particulars. Here he is at fault. Our Government is only partially national. It is Federal, also, in part. It is not altogether the one nor altogether the other. Ours is a peculiar system. To the foreign world we present the aspect of a sovereign nation. Among ourselves we are a collection of sovereign states which, for purposes stated in the preamble of the Constitution, have delegated to the central Government a portion of those powers which once belonged entirely to those sovereign states. The state government existed before the Federal Government came into being. If the Federal Government were abolished tomorrow, each one of the states would still remain a sovereign state capable of conducting government. The state of Connecticut, for instance, was an independent republic when there was no such thing as the United States. Would Connecticut ever have gone into an “indissoluble union” if she had not been assured that this union was to be composed of “indestructible states”? The two propositions are linked together in Constitutional law. Among sovereigns all are, in law, equal, and each one of these states was sovereign at the time the union of states was formed. Would either of those independent sovereign states have accepted a place of inferiority in the Government? Assuredly not. Then how is the indestructibility of the states guaranteed in the Constitution? By giving the state, as a state, its full power in the United States Senate, and, in a smaller degree, in the election of Chief Magistrate.