to be bound. The exercise of such a power, if it is to exist, cannot be
limited to the particular cases which you or I or any man now living may
have in mind. It must be general. If it can be exercised at all it can and
will be exercised by the majority whenever they wish to exercise it. If it
can be employed to make a Workmen's Compensation Act in such terms as to
violate the constitution, it can be employed to prohibit the worship of an
unpopular religious sect, or to take away the property of an unpopular rich
man without compensation, or to prohibit freedom of speech and of the press
in opposition to prevailing opinion, or to deprive one accused of crime of
a fair trial when he has been condemned already by the newspapers. In every
case the question whether the majority shall be bound by those general
principles of action which the people have prescribed for themselves will
be determined in that case by the will of the majority, and therefore in no
case will the majority be bound except by its own will at the time.

The exercise of such a power would strike at the very foundation of our
system of government. It would be a reversion to the system of the ancient
republics where the state was everything and the individual nothing
except as a part of the state, and where liberty perished. It would be a
repudiation of the fundamental principle of Anglo-Saxon liberty which we
inherit and maintain, for it is the very soul of our political institutions
that they protect the individual against the majority. "All men," says
the Declaration, "are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.
Governments are instituted to secure these rights." The rights are not
derived from any majority. They are not disposable by any majority. They
are superior to all majorities. The weakest minority, the most despised
sect, exist by their own right. The most friendless and lonely human being
on American soil holds his right to life and liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, and all that goes to make them up by title indefeasible against
the world, and it is the glory of American self-government that by the