after generation may pass without the will of the
majority having a chance to be put into effect--then it is idle to
expect intelligent freemen to bow down in meek submission to its
prescriptions. Apart from the question of distribution of governmental
powers, it was until recently a matter of course to say that the
purpose of the Constitution was to protect the rights of minorities.
That it might ever be perverted to exactly the opposite purpose--to
the purpose of fastening not only upon minorities but even upon
majorities for an unlimited future the will of the majority for the
time being--certainly never crossed the mind of any of the great men
who framed the Constitution of the United States. Yet this is
precisely what the Prohibition mania has done. The safeguards designed
to protect freedom against thoughtless or wanton invasion have been
seized upon as a means of protecting a denial of freedom against any
practical possibility of repeal. Upon a matter concerning the ordinary
practices of daily life, we and our children and our children's
children are deprived of the possibility of taking such action as we
think fit unless we can obtain the assent of twothirds of both
branches of Congress and the Legislatures of three-fourths of the
States. To live under such a dispensation in such a matter is to live
without the first essentials of a government of freemen. I admit that
all this is not clearly in the minds of most of the people who break
the law, or who condone or abet the breaking of the law. Nevertheless
it is virtually in their minds. For, whenever an attempt is made to
bring about a substantial change in the Prohibition law, the objection
is immediately made that such a change would necessarily amount to a
nullification of the Eighteenth Amendment. And so it would. People
therefore feel in their hearts that they are confronted practically
with no other choice but that of either supinely submitting to the
full rigor of Prohibition, of trying to procure a law which nullifies
the Constitution, or of expressing their resentment against an outrage
on the first principles of the Constitution by contemptuous disregard
of the law. It is a choice of evils; and it is not surprising that
many good citizens regard the last of the three choices as the best.
How far this contempt and this disregard has gone is but very
imperfectly indicated by the things which were doubtless in President
Angell's mind, and which are in the