"The representative system, Mr. Chairman, was not adopted in Massachusetts as a question of expediency. Representative government was adopted, sir, because no direct democracy in the history of the world ever had proved a success, and the framers of our Constitution knew that to be so. They knew that where democracy had been allowed to go uncontrolled, democracy had degenerated in the first place into anarchy, and from anarchy into a despotism. How long did it take the people of France, when they first burst asunder the barriers which had held them in check for centuries, to progress through the stages of constitutional government as laid down by their constitutional assembly and as embodied in the Constitution which they adopted, to anarchy? How long was it after they had established the Commune and other tribunals not properly elected, mere voluntary associations to direct the public effort, before under such domination they confiscated estates, they murdered their King, they killed their nobles, and thus prepared through such a process, the path for a Napoleon? If that example is not sufficient for us and for those who advocate direct democracy, how long has it taken Russia to go from an autocracy all the way through the stages of a popular frenzy in attempting to vote prosperity and happiness into their midst? How long has it taken them, Mr. Chairman, to go through those stages and arrive under the dictatorship which... is to treat those who do not agree with and who do not support this provisional government with the sword and with the bullet? In other words, Mr. Chairman, the advocates of direct democracy cannot point to a time in history or to an illustration in history when direct democracy in a large and heterogeneous community has done anything else than to degenerate into anarchy and to point the way for the despot and the autocrat who has ground those who were seeking liberty under his iron heel. So I say advisedly that the framers of our Constitution adopted representative government not as a question of expediency; they adopted it advisedly in the light of history, because, sir, they had an idea that a body of representative men chosen by the people, meeting annually in election, chosen from among the number of the people who appeal most to the voters as being capable of representing them,—that body so chosen should then meet in a proper form, far removed from the clamor of the market-place, in a higher atmosphere than the disturbing elements which every-day life and contact and attrition have upon the momentary judgment of a large crowd of irresponsible people, that such a body so chosen, sitting in such an atmosphere would be more apt to pass legislation in the interest of all the people of the community, regardless of class, regardless of color, regardless of all of the other handicaps which have retarded the development of particular groups in the community, whether social or industrial, that such a body of representative men, in other words, would be more apt to express in the form of legislation the real, sound, fundamental will of all the people than any other method that could be devised for framing legislation."