THAT there are some things which, however good they may be in
themselves, the majority has no right to impose upon the minority, is
a doctrine that was, I think I may say, universally understood among
thinking Americans of all former generations. It was often forgotten
by the unthinking; but those who felt themselves called upon to be
serious instructors of public opinion were always to be counted on to
assert it, in the face of any popular clamor or aberration. The most
deplorable feature, to my mind, of the whole story of the Prohibition
amendment, was the failure of our journalists and leaders of opinion,
with a few notable exceptions, to perform this duty which so
peculiarly devolves upon them. Lest any reader should imagine that
this doctrine of the proper limits of majority power is something
peculiar to certain political theorists, I will quote just one
authority --where I might quote scores as well--to which it is
impossible to apply any such characterization. It ought, of course, to
be unnecessary to quote any authority, since the Constitution itself
contains the clearest possible embodiment of that doctrine. In the
excellent little book of half a century ago referred to in a previous
chapter, Nordhoff's "Politics for Young Americans," the chapter
entitled "Of Political Constitutions" opens as follows:

A political Constitution is the instrument or compact in which the
rights of the people who adopt it, and the powers and
responsibilities of their rulers, are described, and by which they
are fixed. The chief object of a constitution is to limit the power
of majorities. A moment's reflection will tell you that mere
majority rule, unlimited, would be the most grinding of tyrannies;
the minority at any time would be mere slaves, whose rights to
life, property and comfort no one who chose to join the majority
would be bound to respect.

All this is stated, and the central point put in italics, by Mr.
Nordhoff, as matter that must be impressed upon young people just
beginning to think about public questions, and not at all as matter of
controversy or doubt. The last sentence, to be sure, requires
amplification; Mr. Nordhoff certainly did not intend his young readers
to infer that such tyranny as he describes is either sure to occur in
the absence of a Constitution or sure to be prevented by it. The
primary defense against it is in the people's own recognition of the
proper limits of majority powe