the light there let in by a free discussion, renders later success so doubtful that such bossing will not be risked.

Given a convention of a hundred members, no boss on earth can carry it against fifty-one of such members, if they have serious wishes on the subject. If an elector has no serious notions on the subject, nothing will protect him. And, after all, I am not sure but that it all comes down to having serious notions and being willing to fight for them. There is no method of procedure that will make a lion into a sheep, or a sheep into a lion. And I want to lay it down as a postulate, that nobody is ever really bossed politically, who, way down in his heart (whatever he may say about it) is not willing to be bossed.

But it is said finally that the people want direct primaries and those opposed may as well yield, since opposition is useless. There are two ways of treating an agitation for some proposition you believe wrong. One is to yield to it, no matter how wrong; the other to argue it out and convince the people that it is wrong, or yourself be convinced. You cannot shirk the responsibility by saying what someone else wants. The one test for you is, is it right? And until this question is settled right, it is not settled at all, and, in its settling, it is your duty not to consider any chances of successs or failure.

Better, like Hector, on the field to die,

Than, like the perfumed Paris, turn and fly.

It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts,-but how did you fight, and why?

I long ago reached the conclusion that whenever a majority of the people want a change that is within the lines of the constitution, they are entitled to have it. The minority must either accept it, or get out. But that fact does not lessen your duty or mine to oppose any innovation we think wrong, until it has been adopted-to prevent the change if we can. The trouble with the interpretation of the people's rights in these strenuous times is that to the undoubted and indubitable right of the majority to have what they want, there is attempted to

179 be grafted the doctrine that they have the right to have it the first fifteen minutes they think of it. No such right as that, constitutional or other, belongs to any one. It is no denial of constitutional government, it is no denial of the right of the majority to rule, to insist upon a reasonable time for reflection before changes are made. To the gospel of strenuousness there must be added the doctrine of thoughtfulness, or we have set sail on a dangerous sea.

Mr. Chairman, I believe in representative government; with my whole being I believe in it. I believe in it for government. I believe in it for party. I believe in it as giving the largest measure of individual participation, with the surest result of deliberation and reflection. And I want to say to you that the fathers who, in their wisdom, established representative government in this land, did not do it from any lack of knowledge of the workings and of the exact value of a pure democracy. When they came together for the purpose of framing a government which would protect them and their descendants, as they hoped and prayed, to the latest generation, they did not select the representative form from all the forms then existing or theretofore existing, because they were ignorant of any of the virtues or merits of an unmixed democracy. They had studied the democracy of Greece, and knew its history. They remembered its treatment of Socrates; they did not forget the history of Aristides. They selected representative government because they believed, not that it gave the people the widest measure of direct and immediate influence upon the government at every moment of time, but because they believed that it assured that balance in government, that thoughtfulness in its conduct, without which it would not be worthy of the name, or survive the first shock of the storm. They believed, in doing this, they had so combined the right of every individual to be represented in the government, that it gave to every one a voice and an influence, but that at the same time it prevented the government from the shock of yielding to every sudden craze that should sweep over the people. And so they studied Magna Charta; they studied the Petition of Rights; they studied the Bill of Rights; they studied the principles of the

common law; and in making their framework, they omitted not one of them that made for enduring liberty. The result was what we have, and what I believe and what the broadening experience and study of the years makes me believe more and more, was the wisest and best solution of governmental questions that ever mortal brain gave out. And, having done it, having established the form of government in which they meant carefully to preserve individual rights and, at the same time, to give that stability to government which they believed and I believe necessary, they "lived out their lease of life, and paid their debt to time and mortal custom," in the confident conviction that their work was wise and that they had succeeded where all others had failed.

The burden rests upon us-upon you and me, not as a general, far-off proposition, but here and now, not alone in the question we are here discussing, but in all the successive problems in government that come to us, to see to it that we neither do, nor without protest permit to be done anything that will diminish our heritage.

We must not be reactionary, but we must see to it that, no matter how rapid the progress, it shall be along lines that the experience of the past pronounces good.

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STATEMENTS ON DIRECT PRIMARIES

I

JOB E. HEDGES, Candidate of the Republican party for governor of New York:

In the canvass of the state which preceded my nomination for governor at Saratoga, I visited nearly every section of New York, appealing directly to the voters without previously seeking the sanction of anyone. My belief was, and still is, that the voters are entitled to such a procedure. To have done otherwise and to have relied upon influence which entails rewards, was to have abandoned the right of free speech and free conduct. Belief in the people and in the direct primary, so-called, is shown in practise and not in rhetorical expression. The announcement of my candidacy stated:

If elected governor I shall consider it a binding obligation to stimulate popular interest in public questions, and to endeavor to provide therefor, by law, means of expression, simple and direct. Whenever new conditions shall arise requiring statutory provision, enactments of the legislature passed in expression of the popular will and making government by the people real and not a fiction will meet executive approval.

That was my pledge then and is my pledge now.

The successful candidate for governor must command public confidence regardless of party affiliations. People must believe in his character, constructive ability and unqualified independence. The four most distinctive issues in the state campaign are: Personal obligation and individual responsibility in all social and political matters; honest, economical and efficient administration; the attempted solution of the high cost of living and a more practicable working out of the ends of social justice.

Within the category of the first clause falls the direct primary. With regard to this issue as with respect to the whole subject of primary and general elections, I tried to sum up the whole

1 Read at the dinner of the Academy of Political Science, October 25, 1912.

subject in a speech at Madison Lake in July before an assemblage of farmers, and specifically with relation to the FerrisBlauvelt primary law and the Levy election law.

If I am elected Governor I will urge an immediate repeal of the Ferris-Blauvelt primary law. It is involved, cumbersome, burdensome to tax payers, full of chicanery and obviously intended to sicken people of the direct primary idea. As a substitute I should recommend the enactment of a law which would permit the voter to express at the primary his preference as to nominations and party control by the simplest and most direct means, leaving, until the experiment can be worked out to a practicable conclusion, the convention plan as to governor and state offices. I should veto any act which made of either primary or general election ballot a puzzle. The ballot should be so simple that every voter could comprehend it. I should not favor any act which placed insuperable obstacles in the way of independent voting. As a Republican partisan I am absolutely and unqualifiedly in favor of a primary and an election law in consonance with the unmistakable meaning of the constitution. Such an act would not only be a recognition of the inalienable right of citizenship, but also, from my point of view, the very best policy in politics. I should endeavor, however, to make the people understand that no primary law is or can be of itself a panacea. At best it can be only a means to an end and an instrumentality of correction. No primary act can be effective to a greater degree than the willingness of the people to advantage themselves of the opportunity to express their preference. Further than this, a primary act is useful only as an instrumentality through which the people can readily punish their political leaders when those leaders disregard their obligation to their party and the public.

I should veto any act which, like the Wisconsin law, seems, as shown in the Stephenson senatorial investigation, to handicap ability and conviction and to put the ambitious rich man and the ambitious poor man on an unequal basis. The limitation of the amount of campaign expenditures, however, is not so important as the precise definition, in a corrupt practises act, of the purposes for which money can and cannot be expended;