So spoke Congressman Webb, introducing the proposed Eighteenth Amendment, exactly as it now reads, to the House of Representatives, on December 17, 1917. This was the day on which that House discussed and passed the Senate Joint Resolution 17, which proposed that Amendment and submitted it to _governments_ to make it. Webb was a lawyer of renown and chairman of the Judiciary Committee and had entire charge of the passage of the Resolution in the House on behalf of those who had ordered the American Congress to pass that Resolution. From one instance alone, we may immediately glean how clearly Webb and all leading supporters of the Eighteenth Amendment, in and out of Congress during the past five years, have shown an accurate “knowledge” of the basic principles of all government in America. We realize that such knowledge, if human liberty is to remain secure, is an essential qualification of leaders of a people once “better acquainted with the science of government than any other people in the world.” No sooner had Webb read the Section 2 and made his quoted statement of its purpose than he was asked a pertinent and important question. The query was whether, if Congress and a state government each passed a law and they flatly conflicted, which law would control? Webb had made long preparation to carry out his purpose that the Eighteenth Amendment be inserted in the Constitution _by government_. He was prepared with his immediate response to that ignorant question. His prompt answer was: “The one getting jurisdiction first, because both powers would be supreme and one supreme power would have no right to take the case away from another supreme power.” (_Congressional Record_, Vol. 56, p. 424.) It is sad to relate that this lucid explanation of the manner in which _two_ distinct supreme powers dictate to one “subject,” the American citizen, elicited the next query, “Does the gentleman say that as a lawyer?” With the charity that real intelligence displays to ignorance, Webb again explained the simple proposition of two distinct _and supreme_ powers to command on exactly the same matter. We commend Webb’s American mental attitude, without the slightest Tory taint, and his mastery of American law, to all who ever wish to dictate to human beings as “subjects.” Fresh from our education in the experience of the earlier real Americans, we deem it proper to dwell for a moment further on that opening statement of Webb: “We thought it wise to give both the Congress and the several states concurrent power to enforce this Article and let that power be set forth and granted in the Article we propose to submit” to the state governments.