Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-05-27
EVEN THE DEMOCRATS ARE
GOOD HAMILToNIANS TODAY

plcatlons of Federalist Doctrine,
the Father Of the League of.
Nations Idea
| THE spiritualistic mediums" are miss
ing an opportunity by failing to get
! into communication with Alexander
Hamilton and reporting to us what this
great federalist thinks Of the things that
have happened since the bullet of Burr
cut short his brilliant career.
There is hardly an item in the recent
programs of progressive legislation
which the Democratic contemporaries of
Hamilton would have supported. Hamil-
tons opponents argued for the preserva-
ton of the autonomy of the states and
against the concentration of power in
Washington. The opponents Of the
adoption of the constitution attacked
that document because It compelled the
states to surrender some OF their sover-
eighty. They attacked Hamilton as the
advocate of an aristocratic despotism
centered in the national capital. Their
doctrine of states rights was responsible
for the Civil War and that war forced its
supporters to abandon it only so far as it
related to the right of state to secede
from the Union.
There is hardly vestige of the doc
trine left today. Congress has long been
interfering with commerce among the
states, and it is admitted that where
intrastate commerce has any relation to
interstate commerce Congress may also
regulate that.
Under the old theory the regulation of
the traffic in Intoxicating liquors be-
longed exclusively to the states, just as it
is still admitted that the police regua-
tion of traffic on the highways belongs to
the states. But no one knows how long
the states will be permitted to control
their own highways. Congress may
build post roads, and under this grant
of power it is appropriating money to be
used in the different states for highway
| building. We may wake up b)me morn
ing to discover that Congress has passed
an automobile license law under which
permit is granted to operate a motorcar
on any highway in the nation toward the
construction of which the national gov
ernment has contributed.
The police power of the states over
the liquor traffic will become thing of
the past next year, for Congress has
approved and ali but three of the states
have ratified a constitutional amend
ment prohibiting the manufacture and
sale of intoxicants for use as a bever-
age. Such an amendment would not
have received a moments consideration
a hundred years ago, not because the
attitude of the nation toward intoXicants
was different then, but because it would
have been regarded as a tyrannous inter-
Serence with the police power of the
states.
In like manner the woman suffrage
amendment to the constitution, which
| will be submitted to the states in the near
| future, would have been laughed out of
court. The right of the states to fix the
| qualifications of electors was expressly
! recognized in the original constitution.
! No modification of it was made until
after the Civil War, when it was pro
vidod by an amendment that the right to
vote should not be restricted on account
| of race, color or previous condition of
servitude The advocates of equal suf-
frage, not content with the progress
making through the action of the indi-
vidual states, have succeeded in persuad-
ing the nation that no state should be
allowed to prevent women from voting
The House has already adopted the
amendment by a large majority and a
poll of the Senate indicates that that
body will approve it. And no one be
Iieves that enough states will refuse tc
surrender their sovereignty to prevent
the final incorporation of the amendment
in the constitution.