There is no reason why the people of to-day should be governed by the laws and constitutions of men long since dead and buried. Surely those who understand the vital issues of this hour are better able to legislate for the living present than those who governed a hundred years ago. If the nineteenth century is to be governed by the opinions of the eighteenth, and the twentieth by the nineteenth, the world will always be governed by dead men.... The cry of centralization could have little significance if the constitution were so amended as to protect all United States citizens in their inalienable rights. That national supremacy that holds individual freedom and equality more sacred than State rights and secures representation to all classes of people, is a very different form of centralization from that in which all the forces of society are centered in a single arm. But the recognition of the principle of national supremacy, as declared in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, has been practically nullified and the results of the war surrendered, by remanding woman to the States for the protection of her civil and political rights. The Supreme Court decisions and the congressional reports on this point are in direct conflict with the idea of national unity, and the principle of States rights involved in this discussion must in time remand all United States citizens alike to State authority for the protection of those rights declared to inhere in the people at the foundation of the government.