time, for these rules of action are themselves
subject to popular control. If the rules are so stated that they are
thought to prevent the doing of something which is not contrary to the
principles of liberty but demanded by them, the true remedy is to be found
in reconsidering what the rules ought to be and, if need be, in restating
them so that they will give more complete effect to the principles they are
designed to enforce. If, as I believe, there ought to be in my own state,
for example, a Workman's Compensation Act to supersede the present
unsatisfactory system of accident litigation, and if the constitution
forbids such a law--which I very much doubt--the true remedy is not to cast
to the winds all systematic self-restraint and to inaugurate a new system
of doing whatever we please whenever we please, unrestrained by declared
rules of conduct; but it is to follow the orderly and ordinary method of
amending the constitution so that the rule protecting the right to property
shall not be so broadly stated as to prevent legislation which the
principle underlying the rule demands.

The difference between the proposed practice of overriding the constitution
by a vote and amending the constitution is vital. It is the difference
between breaking a rule and making a rule; between acting without any rule
in a particular case and determining what ought to be the rule of action
applicable to all cases.

Our legislatures frequently try to evade constitutional provisions, and
doubtless popular majorities seeking specific objects would vote the same
way, but set the same people to consider what the fundamental law ought
to be, and confront them with the question whether they will abandon in
general the principles and the practical rules of conduct according to
principles, upon which our government rests, and they will instantly
refuse. While their minds are consciously and avowedly addressed to that
subject they will stand firm for the general rules that will protect them
and their children against oppression and usurpation, and they will change
those rules only if need be to make them enforce more perfectly the
principles which underlie them.

Communities, like individuals, will declare for what they believe to be
just and right; but communities, like individuals, can be led away from
their principles step by step under the temptations of specific desires and
supposed expediencies until the principles are a dead letter and a