fully one-half of the stuffing of the North Dakota constitution would have to be eliminated. That eminent jurist says: "But since, while constitutional provisions are in force, they are to remain absolute and unchangeable rules of action and decision, it is obvious that they should not be made to embrace within their iron grasp those subjects in regard to which the policy or interest of the state or of its people may vary from time to time, and which are, therefore, more properly left to the control of the legislature, which can more easily and speedily make the required change. A constitution is not the cause but consequence of personal and political freedom; it grants no rights to the people, but is the creature of their power; the instrument of their convenience. It is but the framework of the political government and necessarily based upon the pre-existing condition of laws, rights, and habits of thought. These instruments measure the power of the rulers, but they do not measure the rights of the governed. It is easier to tell what a constitution is not than what it is." This last remark was made before the constitutions of California and North Dakota.

But the jurist to the contrary notwithstanding, the decided tendency of the people to legislate directly for themselves as shown in these constitutions, illustrates, just as does the division of homogeneous legislatures, the distrust of the people in their representative bodies.

The common bribery of legislatures by various combinations and corporations to violate the popular will probably justifies the growing tendency of the people to give minute orders in state constitutions relative to the control of such combinations. I am inclined to think that these minute provisions of constitutions have come to stay, as a logical development and not as a fad, even as Justice Cooley himself is now the official defender of the principle of minute control of corporations, the advocacy of which a short ten years ago won the stigma of a demagogue, which was the crushing and only answer. Two things done will lead to great improvement of the character and work of state legislatures, viz: the settlement as definitely as possible of the question of legislative control of corporations, and the overthrow of the spoils system in parties. The first will destroy or weaken the motive of the venal and characterless men for getting

into the legislatures and their means of getting there. The latter, by weakening party ties, will open the way for better men into legislatures, will inspire them with the willingness, if not the ambition to get there, and will give freer play to those members who are of good inclinations, and so a vastly increased advantage over the bad. Mr. Bryce says: "The best men in both parties support the civil service commission, the worst men would gladly get rid of it.” I would modify this somewhat by saying: "The most thoughtful men are coming to support it, the most thoughtless oppose it."

There is a crying need for the scholar in politics and other independent and thinking men to leaven the sordid legislative lump. Doubling the term of Nebraska's senators would at least give some logical reason for their existence. Longer sessions of the state legislatures instead of the short limit, which is the tendency of the later constitutions, would doubtless be beneficial in securing more deliberate and careful work. One of the authors named herein maintains that there is a tendency toward longer sessions and cites in proof the cases of Nebraska and Colorado, where these sessions have been lengthened respectively from forty to sixty days and from forty to ninety days. But this does not hold good when it is considered that twenty-six of the states now limit the sessions; and in the constitutions of all four of the states just admitted the limit is not only made but confined to sixty days.

The Wisconsin plan of unlimited sessions and a salary of $500 for members would seem to be more rational than the prevailing tendency toward limited short sessions.

Another illustration of the distrust of and the tendency to muzzle legislatures is the fact that up to 1830 in no states were judges elected by the popular vote. Now only the legislatures of Rhode Island, New Jersey, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia elect judges, and these of the supreme and appellate courts.

When these restrictions are made as complete and comprehensive as they reasonably can be made; when the quality of membership of the legislature is so greatly improved as a reasonably intelligent and honest selection would improve it; and when the initiative to legislation shall be placed more in the hands of expert boards, such as boards of charities and reform, bureaus of statistics and industries,

of education, etc., then the need of the dual house artificial clog to the exercise of the definite powers and duties of the legislature, if it exist now, will be lessened or abolished. And these practical reforms only will still the all but universal cry: "Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, or for some Buddhistic Nirvana where the wicked legislatures cease from troubling and the weary people are at rest—from them."

POLITICAL SCIENCE IN AMERICAN STATE UNIVERSI

TIES.

BY AMOS G. WARNER.

[Read before a meeting of the Society, January 9, 1889.]

It has been said that students are apt to think too little of the amount that they do not know-to underestimate the extent of their ignorance. This is not true of students only but of mankind in general. Many have seen the ignorance of others and desired to educate them. The heads of paternal governments have desired to educate their subjects to obey. The infallible head of a world church has desired to educate all mankind to believe what he taught. The rich have desired to educate the poor to be contented and happy. The upper classes, whether political or industrial, have been anxious to educate the lower classes into the belief that "whatever is, is right." Philanthropists have sometimes been seized with an eleventh hour desire to educate posterity. And yet, however exceptional it may appear, the American people seem to have said in their hearts: "Go to, we are ignorant, let us educate ourselves."

The conscious need of self education developed early in our history. A university was planned for Virginia before the pilgrims landed in New England, and practical steps were taken to establish one at so early a day that the tenants of its lands were swept off by an Indian massacre. Massachusetts took the practical lead, however, when her great and general court established Harvard college to fit youth "for ye university." In 1660 the colonial assembly of Virginia voted "that for the advance of learning, education of youth, supply of the ministry and promotion of piety, there be land taken upon purchases for a college and free schoole, and that there be, with as much spede as may be convenient, houseing erected thereon for the entertainment of students and schollers." It is not the purpose to follow through the development of our educational system, but merely to note the fact that wherever the American has settled new territory

he has established new colleges and universities. The ordinance of 1787 which provided for organizing the northwest territory decreed that "means of education should forever be encouraged." Another step was the act of 1863, from which a part of our own endowment comes. This act was passed while, at least for all rhetorical purposes, the guns of the confederacy were shaking the senate chamber at Washington. Andrew D. White notes this fact, and would exalt the calm and confident dignity of this act above the auctioneering by Romans of the land on which Hannibal's soldiers encamped.

So much for American confidence in higher education, and for the willingness of our national and state governments to provide it. As we turn to consider the claims of political science in the curricula of our state universities, I would speak for a moment of European experience in this matter.

In the early part of the present century Germany was recovering from a great humiliation. The armies of Napoleon had swept over her, and when she drew herself together to avenge the insult it was in a humor that must henceforth forbid a German sovereign to keep in pay, as the great Frederic had done, a French corrector of bad verses. With genuine Teutonic thoroughness the work of fortifying the national sentiment was aided by the founding and strengthening of universities. In this work of revivifying German patriotism Barthold Georg Niebuhr, the acknowledged founder of the modern historical school, took an important part. He had been a politician before he had become an historian, and he studied the politics and even the economics of Rome that their lessons might be available in furthering German independence and German unity. Professor Maurenbrecher of Leipzig in reviewing the effects of this attempt to make the history of the past of practical service in dealing with the problems of the present says that for the most part history is not an experimental science, but in this case a chance to experiment occurred. Niebuhr, Droysen, Ranke, and others, by the study of ancient and modern history had concluded that the unity of Germany might be accomplished and most feasibly under the leadership of Prussia. Bismarck experimented and verified the conclusions of the historians.

At least four of the great modern historians, Ranke, Maurenbrecher, Freeman and Seeley, have taken for the subject of their