These prudential measures have not served to improve the legislative output, and the reformers are now crying for more drastic remedies.

In the West the tendency is to transfer legislative authority from a representative body directly to the people.

A movement in favor of the initiative and the referendum is gaining so much headway, that in all probability it will spread throughout the country much as the Australian ballot did over a decade ago.

But the adoption of the initiative and the referendum substitutes a new principle for the one which has hitherto underlain American local institutions.

Representative government is either abandoned thereby or very much restricted; and direct government, so far as possible, is substituted for it.