he amendments that were
adopted as a consequence of the Civil War were designed to put an end
to slavery and to guarantee to the negroes the fundamental rights of
freemen. With the exception of the amendments adopted almost
immediately after the framing of the Constitution itself, and
therefore usually regarded as almost forming part of the original
instrument, the amendments just referred to are the only ones that had
been adopted prior to the Eighteenth; and it happens that these
amendments--the Sixteenth, the Seventeenth, and the group comprising
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth--deal respectively with the
three kinds of things with which the Constitution was originally, and
is legitimately, concerned: the division of powers between the Federal
and the State governments, the structure of the Federal government
itself, the safeguarding of the fundamental rights of American
citizens.

One of the gravest indictments against the Eighteenth Amendment is
that it has struck a deadly blow at the heart of our Federal system,
the principle of local self-government. How sound that indictment is,
how profound the injury which National Prohibition inflicted upon the
States as self-governing entities, will be considered in a subsequent
chapter. At this point we are concerned with an objection even more
vital and more conclusive.

Upon the question of centralization or decentralization, of Federal
power or State autonomy, there is room for rational difference of
opinion. But upon the question whether a regulation prescribing the
personal habits of individuals forms a proper part of the Constitution
of a great nation there is no room whatever for rational difference of
opinion. Whether Prohibition is right or wrong, wise or unwise, all
sides are agreed that it is a denial of personal liberty.
Prohibitionists maintain that the denial is justified, like other
restraints upon personal liberty to which we all assent;
anti-prohibitionists maintain that this denial of personal liberty is
of a vitally different nature from those to which we all assent. That
it is a denial of personal liberty is undisputed; and the point with
which we are at this moment concerned is that to entrench a denial of
liberty behind the mighty ramparts of our Constitution is to do
precisely the opposite of what our Constitution--or any Constitution
like ours--is designed to do. The Constitution withdraws certain
things from the control of the majority f