What Prohibition Has Done to America | Page 2

designed to put an end to slavery
and to guarantee to the negroes the fundamental rights of freemen.
With the exception of the amendments adopted almost immediately
after the framing of the Constitution itself, and therefore usually
regarded as almost forming part of the original instrument, the

amendments just referred to are the only ones that had been adopted
prior to the Eighteenth; and it happens that these amendments--the
Sixteenth, the Seventeenth, and the group comprising the Thirteenth,
Fourteenth and Fifteenth--deal respectively with the three kinds of
things with which the Constitution was originally, and is legitimately,
concerned: the division of powers between the Federal and the State
governments, the structure of the Federal government itself, the
safeguarding of the fundamental rights of American citizens.
One of the gravest indictments against the Eighteenth Amendment is
that it has struck a deadly blow at the heart of our Federal system, the
principle of local self-government. How sound that indictment is, how
profound the injury which National Prohibition inflicted upon the
States as self-governing entities, will be considered in a subsequent
chapter. At this point we are concerned with an objection even more
vital and more conclusive.
Upon the question of centralization or decentralization, of Federal
power or State autonomy, there is room for rational difference of
opinion. But upon the question whether a regulation prescribing the
personal habits of individuals forms a proper part of the Constitution of
a great nation there is no room whatever for rational difference of
opinion. Whether Prohibition is right or wrong, wise or unwise, all
sides are agreed that it is a denial of personal liberty. Prohibitionists
maintain that the denial is justified, like other restraints upon personal
liberty to which we all assent; anti-prohibitionists maintain that this
denial of personal liberty is of a vitally different nature from those to
which we all assent. That it is a denial of personal liberty is undisputed;
and the point with which we are at this moment concerned is that to
entrench a denial of liberty behind the mighty ramparts of our
Constitution is to do precisely the opposite of what our Constitution--or
any Constitution like ours--is designed to do. The Constitution
withdraws certain things from the control of the majority for the time
being--withdraws them from the province of ordinary legislation--for
the purpose of safeguarding liberty, the Eighteenth Amendment seizes
upon the mechanism designed for this purpose, and perverts it to the
diametrically opposite end, that of safeguarding the denial of liberty.

All history teaches that liberty is in danger from the tyranny of
majorities as well as from that of oligarchies and monarchies;
accordingly the Constitution says: No mere majority, no ordinary
legislative procedure, shall be competent to deprive the people of the
liberty that is hereby guaranteed to them. But the Eighteenth
Amendment says: No mere majority, no mere legislative procedure,
shall be competent to restore to the people the liberty that is hereby
taken away from them. Thus, quite apart from all questions as to the
merits of Prohibition in itself, the Eighteenth Amendment is a
Constitutional monstrosity. That this has not been more generally and
more keenly recognized is little to the credit of the American people,
and still less to the credit of the American press and of those who
should be the leaders of public opinion. One circumstance may,
however, be cited which tends to extenuate in some degree this glaring
failure of political sense and judgment. There have long been
Prohibition enactments in many of our State Constitutions, and this has
made familiar and commonplace the idea of Prohibition as part of a
Constitution. But our State Constitutions are not Constitutions in
anything like the same sense as that which attaches to the Constitution
of the United States. Most of our State Constitutions can be altered
with little more difficulty than ordinary laws; the process merely takes
a little more time, and offers no serious obstacle to any object earnestly
desired by a substantial majority of the people of the State.
Accordingly our State Constitutions are full of a multitude of details
which really belong in the ordinary domain of statute law; and nobody
looks upon them as embodying that fundamental and organic law upon
whose integrity and authority depends the life and safety of our
institutions. The Constitution of the United States, on the other hand, is
a true Constitution--concerned only with fundamentals, and guarded
against change in a manner suited to the preservation of fundamentals.
To put into it a regulation of personal habits, to buttress such a
regulation by its safeguards, is an atrocity for which no characterization
can be too severe. And it is something more than an atrocity; the
Eighteenth Amendment is not only a perversion but also a degradation
of the Constitution. In what precedes,