ABSTRACT
The mechanism of direct legislation in the Free State owes a not inconsiderable debt to the elaborate designs evolved by Continental constitutionalists. Its spirit, however, is more in sympathy with that of the older democratic States. Consequent upon this temporary suspension, it might by the vote of three-fifths of its members invoke the Referendum. The Referendum, if it be optional, requires as a preliminary a delay in the promulgation of legislation. From the point of view of the national legislature the purpose of the Referendum, as President Lowell has remarked, is to correct its sins of commission, that of the Initiative to remedy its sins of omission. In the Free State this disappointment has led to subsequent constitutional amendment which has abolished the Initiative and Referendum; and from Poland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia direct action by the people in legislation has alrhost entirely disappeared.
