32 1] INTRODUCTION 2$ 



applied with the same simpHcity with which it had been 

 worked two thousand or more years ago. The affairs of a 

 modern state were no longer a matter of interest of a single 

 locality or a number of cities. Nor was it still possible to 

 call the " freemen " of a country together at a certain date 

 and place as did the German tribes at the time of which 

 Tacitus wrote. The vote now had to be taken wherever 

 people lived and the results had to be communicated to a 

 central place, the seat of Government, or, according to the 

 system advocated by More in the Utopia, the people had 

 to send their chosen representatives to voice their opinion 

 and will through them and, if necessary, pass final judgment 

 of approval or rejection by popular vote on the decisions 

 reached by their representatives.*^ 



It was in France that the modern plebiscite found its 

 first application. Here Bodin, Bossuet, Fenelon, and their 

 adherents, the monarchists, opposed to popular sovereignty, 

 were followed by men like Rousseau, Voltaire, and others 

 who through their writings prepared the way for the re- 

 assertion of popular rights — and the culmination of that re- 

 assertion in the revolution. 



A reference to what may prove to be the earliest record 

 of an application of the principle of the modem referendum 

 or plebiscite in the affairs of state, we have in a letter writ- 

 ten to the Comte D'Argental by Voltaire, dated March 30, 

 1776. Speaking of the "Remonstrance of the province of 



<3 In his Utopia, in the chapter " Of the Magistrates," Sir Thomas 

 More tells us that " matters of great weight and importance are 

 brought to the election house of the Syphograuntes, who open the 

 matter to their families. And afterwards, when they have consulted 

 among themselves, they show their devise to the counsel" and 

 that " sometimes the matter is brought before the counsel of the 

 whole island." The Agreement framed by the Council of Crom- 

 well's army in 1647 as the basis for an adjustment with the King 

 and Parliament declared itself to be an expression of the will of the 

 people, and made the meaning of the declaration entirely clear by 

 providing that every individual who was included in the people 

 should sign that document (Dunning, A History of Political Theo- 

 ries from Luther to Montesquieu, pp. 238-239). 



