486
THE GREEN BAG
test the validity of the legislation, the care for and reform homeless, dependent result is the same as if the law in terms and erring children, to ameliorate the prohibited the company from seeking judi condition of prisoners, to abate the spread cial construction of laws which deeply of tuberculosis and other diseases and affect its rights," and that "the provisions promote education. One who rises from of the acts relating to the enforcement of the review of all the legislation of a year the rates, either for freight or passengers, without a sense of general satisfaction by imposing such enormous fines and pos and stimulated hope, and impressed, not sible imprisonment as a result of an unsuc- by all the good that is manifest, but mainly sessful eff Jrt to test the validity of the by the crudities, the blemishes and the laws themselves, are unconstitutional on wrongs, and with a feeling of despondency their face, without regard to the question for the future of the country, must be of the insufficiency of those acts," will a hopeless pessimist. either bring legislators to a fairer treat The President of the United States in ment of the evils which they seek to remedy October, 1906, said: or will tax their ingenuity to devise some "The instinct for self-government among new method to evade federal restraint. the people of the United States is too strong
In our zeal to have the law symmetrical, to permit them long to respect any one's rights to exercise a power which he fails wise and clear we may unconsciously to exercise. The governmental control assume the critical rather than the judicial attitude toward legislation and thus have which they deem just and necessary they will have. It may be that such control our attention arrested more by its short would better be exercised in particular comings than by its excellences. If too instances by the government of the states many laws are passed we must not over but the people will have the control they look that but few are enacted in comparison need either from the states or from the with those that are rejected. Though national government, and if the states fail some are the offspring of prejudice and to furnish it in due measure sooner or passion, it must not be forgotten that often they are provoked by wrongs that later constructions of the Constitution will be found to vest the power where it arouse a just resentment. While adroit schemes for political patronage and graft will be exercised in the national govern are successfully contrived, yet the vast ment." majority of legislation is conceived for While the constitutional doctrine thus the general welfare. No one can examine promulgated, so shocking to any one who all the statutes of the states and of con holds that the states have the right to exer gress for any one year, without being pro cise or not exercise without danger of losing foundly impressed by the deep, earnest, them, powers which under the Constitution alert purpose, generally manifested, to of the United States belong to the states, promote the public good, and without independently of whether they exercise reaching a conclusion that, at no time in them or not, did not arouse any serious our history, has a higher moral sense or apprehension on the part of the states; it a more enlightened patriotism prevailed. came at a time when the inaction and Never have humanitarian considerations apparent indifference of many of the states been so dominant in legislation, as is to the welfare of their helpless citizens, manifested by the recent laws to secure and their own future dependent upon the pure foods, to 'prevent the sale of noxious character of their citzenship, was painfully drugs, to limit the abuses of liquor, to manifest.
