Theoretically there is no justice in the doctrine of majority rule. It is a useful and practical method of carrying on popular government, but that is all. No better method has been devised, but there is something abhorrent in the idea of fifty-one per cent of the population being able to force its ideas on forty-nine per cent—of sixty-one million people governing fifty-nine million. The fact is that it cannot be done without the acquiescence of the forty-nine per cent, or, indeed, any considerable minority. Fortunately the minority usually does acquiesce, for it realizes that the importance of carrying on the government is greater than any temporary discomfort or even oppression caused by the decision of the majority. But we must not lose sight of the[Pg 140] fact that in the American system sovereignty is supposed to reside in the people at large, and that majority rule is merely an expedient for determining the will of the people. But if the will of a sufficiently large minority is deliberately and persistently thwarted by the majority, revolt of some sort is inevitable. V In America revolt always takes one of two forms—nullification of the law or armed rebellion. We have had the American Revolution, Shay’s Rebellion, the Whisky Insurrection, and the Civil War. The other method—nullification—has been used so often as to make it useless to catalogue even the more noted instances. No one believes for a moment that Prohibition will result in civil war; but it is obvious that this particular law is against the will of so large a minority, if it is a minority, of the people that thorough and impartial enforcement is impossible, and that the old American weapon of nullification will continue to be used against it. It is evident that not even the United States government can patrol eight thousand miles of boundary and put a policeman in every one of twenty million homes. A very considerable number of our people consider the law to be unwise, unjust, and tyrannical. Throughout the whole of English and American history there have always been men who had the courage to defy such laws, and, largely depending upon their ultimate success, history has recorded them as patriots or malefactors. I do not say that the Eighteenth Amendment is of such a character as to warrant infringement of it in the name of patriotism, but I do believe that is unwise[Pg 141] and unjust, and it does seem to me to come perilously near being tyrannical.