Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1912. THE REFERENDUM

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVII, Issue XLVII, 5 March 1912, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1912. THE REFERENDUM

ITS USE IN THE UNITED STATES. SOME very interesting points in regard to the use of the referendum have cropped up in America in connection with a recent decision of the Supremo Court. It is well known that the referendum has been used as a method of counteracting the evils of graft in State and municipal government. An authority, in referring to th e matter, points to the fact that in 1908 South Dakota led the way by adopting the constitutional amendment providing for the application of the principle of the referendum and initiative to the administration of the State, and subsequently extended the scope of the amendment to municipal corporations within its borders. Other States, it is pointed out, have followed the example wholly, or with modifications or innovations In South Dakota the principle has been used to establish the commission plan of city government—that is, the vesting of the municipal control of a city in the hands of a. commission Not only have the people th e right directly to initiate legislative or administrative projects, but they are also empowered to recall things done in those directions. This power of recalling the newest of the measures of relief, seems to have been first applied to municipal government in America in 1903, when Los Angeles, in California, made it a part of the city charter. The importance and its bearing on the question of effective civic reform is emphasised in the United States, where municipal "graft" has so often taken the form of aldermanic transactions for personal gain in what they call "franchises"— monopolistic rights to supply such institutions as tramways, water, gas electricity, telephones, and the like.

The decision of the Supreme Court of ithe United States-, that the question whether the new methods are or are not repugnant to the republican form of government, this authority points out, is one for legislative and not for If gal determination and is backed by common sense. However inadvisable it may b e to apply the referendum to the great variety of questions sometimes covered by it in United States politics, the right of the people to legislate in that way if they choose to do so is one that could be denied only by doing violence to the spirit of democracy. The experience of the country in municipal corruption has been so unfortunate that the expedient of allowing the people to decide all important questions of government directly, and deputing to commissioners the duty of giving effect to the decisions thus arrived at, may be wholly justified. At all events, the spread of the system indicates that it has been tried.

But British ideas everywhere predominantly cling to the principle of unimpaired responsible government. The remission by the Parliament to the people of specific questions such as those involved in the last and previous Federal referenda is not to be confounded with the new United States practice. In Australia the referenda were for the amendment of a Constitution accepted by a direct and not a representative vot e of the people, and the provision was that only the same authority could make amendments. The practical difficulty of returning a plain affirmative or negative vote to a complicated question or series of questions was .demonstrated on the occasion of the Federal referenda in April last, when' many electors who were not averse to giving the Federal Government some of the powers it asked for were obliged to refuse them becaus e consent involved th t parting with other powers which tne popular will was jealous that the States, as such, should retain. The fact that the referendum system calls for unqualified assent to or dissenfi from, a proposal must always seriously limit its popular usefulness, but nevertheless the pr6gress made by the United States in its development will be watched with world-wide interest.