ABSTRACT
This chapter examines complaints and criticisms directed against the legislatures of the twentieth century to view the efforts which peoples delivered from the sway of decadent monarchies. Many restrictions have been everywhere imposed by constitutional amendments on the powers of State legislatures; and more recently many States have introduced the Referendum and the Initiative, the former to review, the latter from time to time to supersede the action of the bodies. The spirit of democratic equality has made the masses of the people less deferential to the class whence legislators used to be drawn, and the legislatures themselves are filled from all classes except the very poorest. The issues of policy which now occupy legislatures are more complex and difficult than those of half a century ago. Taking all these causes into account, whatever decline is visible in the quality and the influence of legislatures becomes explicable without the assumption that the character of free peoples has degenerated under democracy.
