ibition did
not strike at the heart of State sovereignty as did national
regulation of the suffrage. But the abstract question of sovereignty
has had little interest for the nation since the Civil War; and if we
waive that abstract question, the Prohibition Amendment was an
infinitely more vital thrust at the principle of State selfgovernment.
The Woman Suffrage Amendment was the assertion of a fundamental
principle of government, and if it was an abridgment of sovereignty it
was an abridgment of the same character as those embodied in the
Constitution from the beginning, the Prohibition Amendment brought the
Federal Government into control of precisely those intimate concerns
of daily life which, above all else, had theretofore been left
untouched by the central power, and subject to the independent
jurisdiction of each individual State. The South had eagerly swallowed
a camel, and when it asked the country to strain at a gnat it found
nobody to listen. Our public men, and our leaders of opinion,
frequently and earnestly express their concern over the decline of
importance in our State governments, the lessened vigor of the State
spirit. The sentiment is not peculiar to any party or to any section;
it is expressed with equal emphasis and with equal frequency by
leading Republicans and leading Democrats, by Northerners and
Southerners. All feel alike that with the decay of State spirit a
virtue will go out of our national spirit--that a centralized America
will be a devitalized America. But when they discuss the subject, they
are in the habit of referring chiefly to defects in administration; to
neglect of duty by the average citizen or perhaps by those in high
places in business or the professions; to want of intelligence in the
Legislature, etc. And for all this there is much reason; yet all this
we have had always with us, and it is not always that we have had with
us this sense of the decline of State spirit. For that decline the
chief cause is the gradual, yet steady and rapid, extension of
national power and lowering of the comparative importance of the
functions of the State. However, the functions that still remain to
the State--and its subdivisions, the municipalities and counties --are
still of enormous importance; and, with the growth of public-welfare
activities which are ramifying in so many directions, that importance
may be far greater in the future. But what is to become of it if we
are ready to surrende