the country certain principles, and certain arrangements for the
distribution of power, which shall be binding in a peculiar way upon
generation after generation of the American people. Once so imbedded,
it may prove to be impossible by anything short of a revolution to get
them out, even though a very great majority of the people should
desire to do so.

If laws regulating the ordinary personal conduct of individuals are to
be entrenched in this way, one of the first conditions of respect for
law necessarily falls to the ground. That practical maxim which is
always appealed to, and rightly appealed to, in behalf of an unpopular
law--the maxim that if the law is bad the way to get it repealed is to
obey it and enforce it--loses its validity. If a majority cannot
repeal the law--if it is perfectly conceivable, and even probable,
that generation after generation may pass without the will of the
majority having a chance to be put into effect--then it is idle to
expect intelligent freemen to bow down in meek submission to its
prescriptions. Apart from the question of distribution of governmental
powers, it was until recently a matter of course to say that the
purpose of the Constitution was to protect the rights of minorities.
That it might ever be perverted to exactly the opposite purpose--to
the purpose of fastening not only upon minorities but even upon
majorities for an unlimited future the will of the majority for the
time being--certainly never crossed the mind of any of the great men
who framed the Constitution of the United States. Yet this is
precisely what the Prohibition mania has done. The safeguards designed
to protect freedom against thoughtless or wanton invasion have been
seized upon as a means of protecting a denial of freedom against any
practical possibility of repeal. Upon a matter concerning the ordinary
practices of daily life, we and our children and our children's