to the mode of electing drainage trustees, it was discretionary with it to provide for their election by cumulative voting."

Of course, preferential voting is entirely different from cumulative voting. Under the cumulative plan, the voter can cast three choices for one candidate. Under the preferential system he can cast only one choice for any one candidate, and no amount of adding of second or other choices ever gives him more than one effective vote. If the Illinois courts permit the use of cumulative voting under the Illinois constitution, in the selection of minor officials, then certainly they would permit the introduction of the preferential system in which there is no double voting.

The preferential ballot is an effort to make most effective the processes of democracy. It is an attempt to overcome that species of disfranchisement in the single choice plan which permits only a partial expression of the will of the voter. Under that plan, if there are six or more candidates the voter is denied the opportunity of expressing any opinion on any except the one of his choice. These other opinions he must keep to himself. There may be three other candidates almost as satisfactory as the one for whom he votes, and two thoroughly bad ones; but the voter after he has made his choice is bidden to hold his peace in regard to these others.

Democracy is going to attain its best form only when it has provided for the fullest and freest expression of public opinion. The preferential ballot is an effort in that direction. It is not a panacea. It is an opportunity. Like all good devices of democracy, it will not work satisfactorily unless the electorate uses it accurately and toward the promotion of the object for which it was designed. Experience in its actual use has thus far shown that it can be so used. Longer experience will make it more effective. It is, I believe, worthy of longer trial and more general adoption.

J. M. MATHEWS

University of Illinois

The importance of law enforcement is admitted by everyone, even by those who are most strongly in favor of home rule. It must be recognized, however, that the prevalence of the idea of home rule sometimes has an adverse effect upon the enforcement of state law. The present paper is intended to deal with certain phases of the subject suggested by the prevalence of the idea of local home rule and the influence of this idea upon the enforcement of state law in the various localities of the state.

State laws, like all Gaul, may be divided into three parts or classes. In the first place, there are laws which are, in the main, enforced, and may therefore be said to be “alive”. In the second place, there are laws which, because of changed conditions, ineffective machinery or other reasons, are not enforced, and are commonly called "dead". And, in the third place, there are laws which are neither dead nor alive, but in an intermediate state, similar to that of a trance, from which they occasionally and unexpectedly awake, to the consternation of the mourners. Those who are suddenly assailed by a law which seemed to be on the point of being buried are naturally somewhat disconcerted, and are frequently exceedingly indignant at the impropriety of such conduct. These returns from the other world are considered to be in very bad taste. The recent spectacular announcement of Mayor Thompson of Chicago, which had the effect of resuscitating the supposedly dead state Sunday closing law in that city, for the time being at least, has called public attention anew to the problem of state law enforcement in the localities.

There is, in the states, no close-knit administrative department of justice, but merely a congeries of more or less separate officers, charged by law with certain duties connected with one phase or another of law enforcement. It is natural

that, under these conditions, effective cooperation between the various officers and authorities is not always to be found. Thus, conflicts may arise with respect to the enforcement of anti-liquor or anti-vice laws between the law-enforcing officers of a county and of a city located within the county, as well as between state and local officers. In Cook County, Illinois, there are about a score of distinct governing agencies, most of them being largely independent of each other. Under these circumstances, conflicts between local law-enforcing officers, such as mayor and state's attorney, are the natural result, particularly when they belong to opposite political parties or factions. It may be noticed parenthetically that the cumbrousness and duplicated machinery of local government seriously complicate the question of granting complete local home rule. The more complicated the machinery of government, the less efficient it is likely to be, and the less efficient it is, the less safely can it be entrusted with important governmental functions.

Under the Illinois Cities and Villages Act, the mayor has the same authority as the sheriff to preserve peace and enforce order. If there is an understanding as to a proper delimitation of authority between these officers, this provision may work no harm, but, on general principles, it is not usually wise to entrust the same functions to be exercised by separate and independent officials in the same territory. The result of such a provision may sometimes be that responsibility is divided, and an opportunity is provided whereby local officials may engage in the unedifying pastime of "passing the buck" in an attempt to shift responsibility for lawless conditions. Thus, internal conflict arises between the various law-enforcing authorities, and the result is lack of cooperation, dissipation of energy, and the frequent evasion of the law by those who should be brought to justice. When this result takes place, the people do not usually know whom to hold responsible, for the force of public sentiment, instead of flowing

full and strong in one effective channel, is rendered ineffective through dissipation among many channels. The separation of powers and the duplication of governmental machinery place, in ordinary times, too great a task upon public opinion for it to perform.

In general, the state has legally full power to determine the measure of home rule with which the localities shall be entrusted. The determination of the exact measure of home rule is a question of public policy and expediency. There may be cases where it is for the best interests and welfare not only of the locality in question, but also of the state as a whole that such locality enjoy a larger measure of home rule than the law, as it stands, allows. Under these circumstances, if the locality is powerless to obtain an alteration of the law, it may perhaps, with some show of justification, secure the same end by virtually suspending the operation of the law within its jurisdiction. The exercise by local officers and authorities of the power to suspend state laws may take on a color of justification on the ground that it affords a measure of home rule and local self-government to an extent which is denied under the terms of the existing law.

The legal position of cities in relation to the state in most parts of the country has sometimes been denounced as one of legislative bondage. From the standpoint of a mere consideration of the terms of the law, this is true, but it has not been sufficiently taken into account that, from the practical standpoint, such bondage is by no means complete. This condition arises in part from the practice of legislatures in passing laws relating to the localities, but entrusting the enforcement of such laws to the very localities against which they are to be enforced. The natural result is that, in many cases, they fail to be enforced, and thus, in spite of the legal supremacy of the state government, there may be practically a considerable measure of home rule.

Whatever justification there may be, however, for the exercise by the localities of the power to suspend laws with

respect to purely local matters, there is no justification for the exercise of this power with respect to laws the enforcement of which is of concern to the whole state. It may not be easy to draw a sharp line between purely local matters and those of state-wide concern, but about many matters there can be little doubt. "When," says Professor William Bennett Munro, "the police administration of a large city has come to be hopelessly honeycombed with the by-products of local politics, so that the laws of the state stand disregarded, it is idle to urge that legislative interposition in the interest of law and order must be forever forestalled by some dogma of political laissez-faire."

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The exercise by localities within the state of the dispensing power may result in the practically open defiance of state law. Thus, the city of Denver adopted an amendment to its home rule charter, purporting to give the city the right to regulate the sale of intoxicating liquors and to sell liquor licenses extending beyond the date when the state prohibition law was scheduled to take effect. In 1874, the Chicago city council repealed the Sunday closing ordinance which Mayor Medill had attempted to enforce. This action of the council was a virtual notice to the state that there was no intention on the part of the city government to enforce the state law in that city. The council flung down the gauntlet to the state, but the challenge was not accepted, and the state has weakly contented itself with a policy of inaction, neither repealing the law nor providing any effective means for its enforcement. What virtually amounts to a referendum on the question of the enforcement of this law has been afforded in practically every recent mayoral campaign in Chicago, for candidates have pledged themselves to disregard this law if elected, and no candidate has had much chance of election who did not give such a pledge. A former mayor of Chicago recently made the public statement that during more than twenty years while he and his father occupied the mayoral

'Government of American Cities, p. 60.