A political Constitution is the instrument or compact in which the rights of the people who adopt it, and the powers and responsibilities of their rulers, are described, and by which they are fixed.  The chief object of a constitution is to limit the power of majorities.  A moment’s reflection will tell you that mere majority rule, unlimited, would be the most grinding of tyrannies; the minority at any time would be mere slaves, whose rights to life, property and comfort no one who chose to join the majority would be bound to respect.

All this is stated, and the central point put in italics, by Mr. Nordhoff, as matter that must be impressed upon young people just beginning to think about public questions, and not at all as matter of controversy or doubt.  The last sentence, to be sure, requires amplification; Mr. Nordhoff certainly did not intend his young readers to infer that such tyranny as he describes is either sure to occur in the absence of a Constitution or sure to be prevented by it.  The primary defense against it is in the people’s own recognition of the proper limits of majority power; what Mr. Nordhoff wished to impress upon his readers is the part played by a Constitution in fixing that recognition in a strong and enduring form.  The quotation I have in mind, however, from one of the highest of legal authorities, has no reference to the United States Constitution or to any Constitution.  It deals with the essential principles of law and of government.  It is from a book by the late James C. Carter, who was beyond challenge the leader of the bar of New York, and was also one of the foremost leaders in movements for civic improvement.  The book bears the title “Law:  its Origin, Growth and Function,” and consists of a course of lectures prepared for delivery to the law school of Harvard University seventeen years ago; which, it is to be noted, was before the movement for National Prohibition had got under way.  Mr. Carter was not arguing for any specific object, but was impressing upon the young men general truths that had the sanction of ages of experience, and were the embodiment of the wisest thought of generations.  Let us hear a few of these truths as he laid them down: 

Nothing is more attractive to the benevolent vanity of men than the notion that they can effect great improvement in society by the simple process of forbidding all wrong conduct, or conduct which they think is wrong, by law, and of enjoining all good conduct by the same means. (p. 221 )

The principal danger lies in the attempt often made to convert into crimes acts regarded by large numbers, perhaps a majority, as innocent —­that is to practise what is, in fact, tyranny.  While all are ready to agree that tyranny is a very mischievous thing, there is not a right understanding equally general of what tyranny is.  Some think that tyranny is a fault only of despots, and cannot be committed under a republican form of government;