their wish through the legislative assembly which represents them? The answer is that under the representative system as we know it—and quite as much at its best as at its worst—the influence of the wishes of the electorate upon the representative body is not uniform and mechanical. Representatives are elected not upon one issue, but upon many, and it is always a question how definite the popular "mandate" has been upon any one of them. From this alone it follows that there is a large, though indefinite, region in which a representative may feel free to act according to the dictates of his own individual judgment. In the case of any question involving a fundamental and momentous change, it is necessary that the mandate be extremely clear before it can be regarded by intelligent and conscientious legislators as binding upon them; and to accomplish this the strength of the feeling among the people in favor of the measure must be shown in ways far more emphatic, far more conclusive of a firm and fixed desire, than the mere existence of a majority vote. The issue must virtually raise itself to a prominence and intensity commensurate with its importance. It must find its way not merely to a position in which, when people are challenged to say yes or no, a few more say yes than say no, but to a position in which it dominates other issues and is seen to represent the deliberate and imperative desire of the people. And when we add to this the constitutional checks that have thus far obtained both in England and in this country, together with the legitimate possibilities of parliamentary obstruction, we see how profound is the difference between the representative system and that of direct rule. It may almost be likened to the difference between a living organism, endowed with the power of discrimination and judgment, and a crude mechanical contrivance. In the one case, a great issue has to go through an ordeal fitted to its nature; in the other, it is put into the hopper along with the veriest trifles of every-day business, and its fate is settled by the same monotonous turn of the wheel.