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 minds of most persons who publicly
express their regret over the prevalence of law-breaking. What they
are thinking about, what the Anti-Saloon League talks about, what the
Prohibition enforcement officers expend their energy upon, is the sale
of alcoholic drinks in public places and by bootleggers. But where the
bootlegger and the restaurant-keeper counts his thousands, home brew
counts its tens of thousands. To this subject there is a remarkable
absence of attention on the part of the Anti-Saloon League and of the
Prohibition enforcement service. They know that there are not hundreds
of thousands but millions of people breaking the law by making their