570 CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 



are not allowed, as England had forbidden the taking bills. On the 

 other hand, the people are called upon to take a more active part 

 in the work of the legislature, with the referendum, of which we have 

 always more numerous applications even in Europe, and with local 

 option. 



More remarkable than all is the progressive increasing of the 

 powers of the executive, that is the government. That which in 

 the time of Jackson seemed a constitutional usurpation, is now con- 

 sidered as a necessity. And in the states as in the smaller local 

 organisms, the executive, much more than in the federal govern- 

 ment, was able to develop and reinforce in the houses its two func- 

 tions of cooperation and of antagonism. The exercise of the veto 

 is an ever serious and efficacious bridle and a far greater influence 

 is deriving to the executive from the right of appointing to the public 

 offices, which, in spite of many and lively oppositions, is always more 

 subjected to guaranties and to controls of undoubted efficacy. A 

 more strict chain of proceedings is accenting itself ever more strongly, 

 even in the federal government, between the executive and the legis- 

 lative power. Burgess 1 prophesied that these United States will be 

 induced to temper the presidential government with some rules of 

 the cabinet government, as this one has already the greatest inde- 

 pendence from the parliament. In conclusion, if Williams could 

 write 2 that an American citizen can pass his whole life without 

 invoking the federal laws, and putting into action the Union's 

 powers, to-day it is more exact to repeat with Wilson 3 that the 

 federal government is knocking at the door of every citizen with the 

 same authority of the state's government. 



Some find such a development of the authority of the American 

 government not existing without serious dangers. But you smile 

 at the new prophets of misfortune as at the old ones when, pre- 

 occupied with any anarchical phenomena, they elevated to the gospel 

 the letter in which T. Babington Macaulay described with dark colors 

 your future, like those who, seeing elected and reflected to the 

 presidency a general haloed with the glory of recent victories, had 

 already seen the democracy almost wrapped around as Laocoon 

 in the mortal coils of imperialism. To-day, for example, some one 

 preaches in the action of the trusts the sure victory of socialism. 



It is true that Charles Marx foretold a seeming capitalist concen- 

 tration as a sure preparation for the actuation of his doctrines. 

 But the trusts are reducing apparently the production to unity; in 

 reality they are multiplying it indefinitely with all the power of the 

 machinery of the joint-stock companies, because to three, ten, twenty 



1 Vol. n, pp. 38, et seq. 



2 Cited in Boutmy, chap. 2, p. 166. 



3 Congressional Government, p. 25. 



