telephone, the immense development of industrial, commercial, and
financial organization, the growth of interwoven interests of a
thousand kinds, have brought the people of California and New York, of
Michigan and Texas, into closer relations than were common between
those of Massachusetts and Virginia in the days of Washington and John
Adams. In so far as the process of centralization has been dictated by
the clear necessities of the times, it would be idle to obstruct it or
to cry out against it. But, so far from this being an argument against
the preservation of the essentials of local self-government, it is the
strongest possible argument in favor of that preservation. With the
progress of science, invention, and business organization, the power
and prestige of the central government are bound to grow, the power
and prestige of the State governments are bound to decline, under the
pressure of economic necessity and social convenience; all the more,
then, does it behoove us to sustain those essentials of State
authority which are not comprised within the domain of those
overmastering economic forces. If we do not hold the line where the
line can be held, we give up the cause altogether; and it will be only
a question of time when we shall have drifted into complete subjection
to a centralized government, and State boundaries will have no more
serious significance than county boundaries have now. But if there is
one thing in the wide world the control of which naturally and
preeminently belongs to the individual State and not to the central
government at Washington, that thing is the personal conduct and
habits of the people of the State. If it is right and proper that the
people of New York or Illinois or Maryland shall be subjected to a
national law which declares what they may or may not eat or drink--a
law which they cannot themselves alter, no matter how strongly they
may desire it--then there is no act of centralization whatsoever which
can be justly objected to as an act of centralization. The Prohibition