Fresh from the “conventions,” which knew that _they_ could have made what is supposed to be the Eighteenth Amendment, we could make the correct answer to that question. Our answer is that the “conventions” of the whole American people could have made this new Article in 1788 just as they did make the First Article of exactly the same kind. They could have made it, not because any Constitution gave them the power to make it. They could have made it because, in its making, they would have exercised exactly the same existing ability which they exercised when they destroyed the power of the British Government over themselves in 1776, which they exercised when they ended the complete independence of each state in 1788 and which they exercised when they made _all_ the Articles of 1788. When they did each of these things, they had prescribed no “constitutional” mode of procedure in which they might _constitutionally_ exercise that exclusive ability of their own. By the declaration of the Tenth Amendment, they reserved that exclusive ability to themselves. And, in the Fifth Article, they prescribed, for the first time, exactly the same mode, in which they were then exercising that exclusive ability, as the future CONSTITUTIONAL mode for its further exercise. As Marshall stated, in the Supreme Court, there is but one way in which they can exercise it, “safely, effectively, and wisely,” by assembling in their “conventions” in their respective states. If the accuracy and truth of this sole possible correct answer to the question of 1920 is so well known to us, certainly it should have been known to at least one of the “constitutional” lawyers of 1920. Moreover, _every_ “constitutional” lawyer of 1920 should have known that the mention of state governments in the Fifth Article was not intended to make them omnipotent over the individual rights of the American citizen or to provide an unsafe, ineffectual and unwise way or any way in which government in America could create new government power to interfere with individual freedom. Madison wrote the Fifth Article. Immediately after he had secured its proposal from Philadelphia, in the Virginia convention he paid his famous tribute to the “conventions”--but not to the “state legislatures”--which he mentions in his Fifth Article. “Mr. Chairman, nothing has excited more admiration in the world than the manner in which free governments have been established in America; for it was the first instance, from the creation of the world to the American Revolution, that free inhabitants have been seen deliberating on the form of government, and selecting such of their citizens as possessed their confidence, to determine upon and give effect to it.” (3 _Ell. Deb._ 616.)