Constitutional history -- United States; United States -- Politics and government; United States. Constitution. 18th Amendment
There can be no mistake about the Tory mental attitude of the supposed
American government which asked the governments of _state_ citizens
to make the 1918 command to the American citizens, interfering with
their individual liberty on a matter outside the First Article. The
request was a frank avowal of the Tory concept that the people are
“subjects” and that government can constitute new government of men “in
all matters whatsoever.” Even in choosing the time for the proposal
and the command, there was sincere and flattering imitation of a Tory
precedent of Revolutionary days. When Americans of New York were away
from their homes and at the battlefields of the Revolution, it was
a Tory who stirred up the House of the Six Nations to make a home
attack upon what was cherished by those Americans. And it cannot be
ignored that it was in 1918, when millions of Americans were away from
their homes either fighting or prepared to fight for human liberty,
the Houses of forty-five distinct nations were stirred up to make a
home attack upon what those Americans cherished, their individual
freedom. And the analogy does not end with this fact. Whenever the Tory
concept of the relation of government to “subject” has prevailed,
government has never recognized any obligation of government to obey
law made by government. In the years which followed 1918, this was
strikingly exemplified by the sole American government which had asked
the governments of _state_ citizens to make a command to the citizens
of America. The command, in simple English, forbade that certain
things be done in “the United States and all territory subject to
the jurisdiction thereof.” The American government insisted that its
citizens must obey the command. But the American government itself
frankly added that, on its own ships which flew the American flag, it
would not pay the slightest attention to the command. And not until
this frank Tory attitude had been given unenviable notoriety did the
American government ask the remarkable information from its Attorney
General whether ships, owned by the American government and flying the
American flag, constituted “territory subject to the jurisdiction”
of America. Then, while the chief champion of the new Article before
the Court of 1920 and his associate government officials waited for
the information from their associate Attorney General, the American
government continued to act on the claimed assumption that its ships
were not “territory subject to the jurisdiction” of America. Facts
speak for themselves. It seems impossible to question the consistent
Tory attitude of the American government in every matter relating to
the supposed Eighteenth Amendment.
Let us now consider the second section of this amazing new Article, as
such second section was originally suggested by the Senator from Texas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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