Is The Popular Will To Be Ignored?

Theoretically the people of Michigan are self-governing, through their representatives in the state legislature. In practice, however, it looks very much as if the people were being governed by their own servants. The demand for a primary election law is general. Both political parties have asked for such a law, the press are nearly a unit in favor of it, the leaders of opinion in all parts of the state have endorsed the proposition and wherever the voters have had a chance to record their will in the matter, as in Kent county at the spring election, they have strongly supported it.

And yet the state senate is holding up the primary election bill. All sorts of excuses are made for postponing its consideration, (Defeated since this was written. - Ed.) and if the politicians who hold sway In the south end of the capitol have their own way about it, there will be no action upon the measure this term. The fact is a majority of the senators are strongly averse to giving up the convention system with all its possibilities for boodleism and bossism and if they dare to defeat the bill they will gladly do it.

Thus we have a conflict between the inclination of these senators and the will of the people. As self-respecting, conscientious men, they certainly have a right to their opinion and as legislators they may fairly be accorded a reasonable degree of independence in the exercise of their law-making function. But they certainly knew before they were elected that the demand for deliverance from the evils of the present corrupt system of nominating candidates was universal and that the people would expect the legislature of 1903 to grapple seriously with the problem and solve it. And now if these senators, after the lower house has passed the bill, refuse to give their constituents the reform which is demanded by everybody except a few machine politicians, they will lay themselves open to universal censure. By defying public sentiment and ignoring the will of the voters they not only become a stumbling block to reform but nullify the very principle of popular representative government. For when men are elected on a certain well understood condition they cannot ignore that condition without deservedly incurring the condemnation of the constituents whom they have betrayed. If the people's will, as expressed at the polls, is to be utterly Ignored by the men elected to carry that will into effect, then popular government is a farce and a failure.- Hastings Herald.