TEE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 285 



of the natural resources the people are but protecting their own. The 

 growth of the sense of common welfare has been greatly impeded by 

 court decisions based on common-law doctrines which the constitution 

 was designed to displace, decisions sometimes tincturing later legisla- 

 tion ; yet several courts have fairly kept pace with the growing sense of 

 eternal equities among the people — they who adopted the constitution 

 partly to provide a judicative mechanism adapted to their own needs 

 and subject to their own supreme will: The decision of the supreme 

 court of Maine that the public are entitled to a voice in the management 

 of forests affecting stream-flow; the finding of the New Jersey courf 

 of errors and appeals, sustained by the supreme court of the United 

 States, that the people have a residuary right in the waters ; the opinion 

 of the supreme court in the Rio Grande case that the government may 

 maintain navigability by protecting the source waters — these and other 

 decisions tending toward closer unity of interest among all the people 

 are signs of the times. So, too, are the enactments by the congress for 

 reclaiming lands and constructing canals under the " general welfare " 

 clause of the constitution, and providing for the Panama Canal and for 

 operations in the insular possessions under the same constitutional 

 warrant — enactments viewed askance by ultra-strict constructionists, 

 yet amply sustained by that court of final appeal, the judgment of the 

 people expressed through their franchise and sustained by their own 

 paramount power. 



V 



The waterway and conservation movements are still young, and may 

 reasonably be expected to contribute continuously to that public welfare 

 by which they were inspired. Whatever they may do in the future, they 

 have already done much. They have revealed to the people a growing 

 sense of their own powers and rights and duties as citizens. They have 

 brought to light and started toward rectification our ineffective if not 

 actually repressive methods of administration by legislative machinery. 

 They have shown the inherent rights of the people in and to those 

 material resources given value by their own work, and on which their 

 own prosperity and perpetuity depend; and thereby they have warmed 

 the spirit of unity among citizens and states. They have stirred patriot- 

 ism more than any peaceful issue before, deeply as only bloody wars 

 have done in the past. Incidentally, they are surely establishing the 

 elective function as the primary power of representative government, 

 and will no less surely establish the administrative function as correla- 

 tive with those of legislative and judicative character. 



