ABSTRACT
In treating of the referendum, the initiative and the other rights of the Swiss people, I endeavoured to elucidate the more important of their results. With occasional exceptions, direct democracy has conduced to progress, and has cleared away obstacles which hinder it under other political systems. As we saw, it draws all classes together in the equality of the ballot; it sets a limit to revolutionary agitation by depriving it of all pretexts’; it restrains turbulent minorities by assuring them a share in public affairs; it frequently involves discord between the legislature and other political authorities; it displays little favour towards bureaucracy and big salaries, and in this respect tends at times to practise economy at the expense of efficiency; it welcomes social reform but recoils from extensive bureaucratic machinery; it worships governmental stability and retains its public men in office even till the verge of senility; it professes dislike for militarism, and sometimes is induced with difficulty to make the sacrifices required in the interest of national defence’; it shows a decided preference for graduated taxes upon capital and income. Had we been able to investigate its effects in other spheres, for example, in the departments of education and public works, we should have found it inclined to open-handed liberality, multiplying institutions for higher, secondary, elementary and professional education. Wherever we looked, we should find it well disposed towards innovations brought forward at the right moment with substantial backing, and yet remaining all the time attached to its traditions. An excursion into the world of journalism would have shown us a serious Press—serious sometimes to boredom—a Press which so far has displayed no alacrity in the use of extreme violence or in the exploitation of sensational news, a Press which is free from the tutelage of great financial interests and is subsidized neither by governments nor by public men. It would seem, indeed, that Switzerland illustrates the profound truth of Tocquevilie’s remark that ‘extreme democracy anticipates the danger of democracy.’
