“Is the government of Virginia a state government after this government is adopted? I grant that it is a republican government, but for what purposes? For such trivial _domestic_ considerations as render it unworthy the name of a legislature.” (3 _Ell. Deb._ 171.) So thundered Patrick Henry to the Americans assembled in convention in Virginia, while these Americans still heard the echo of his charge that the new Constitution made the state legislatures “weak, enervated and defenseless governments.” But these are the governments which all lawyers of 1920 “knew” had been made the attorneys in fact for the citizens of America, possessors of the supreme will in America. These are the governments to which all advocates of the Eighteenth Amendment contend that the Americans, in the “conventions” with Henry, gave the entire omnipotence of the American people to be exercised by these governments, without any constitutional restraint. The real fact is, although all lawyers of 1920 failed to know the fact, that these state governments were only named in the Fifth Article, _because_ they already had an existing limited ability to make _federal_ Articles, an ability _not_ granted by the citizens _of America_ but possessed by each of those governments as attorney in fact for the citizens _of its own state_. That it _was_ an ability not granted by the citizens _of America_, must be apparent when we recall that it was exercised by those governments in 1781--seven years before there was such a thing as a citizen of America. That the lawyers of 1920 neither knew nor realized the importance of this fact, is apparent when we recall that every brief of _those_ lawyers asserted that these governments get their ability to make Articles by a “grant” in the Fifth Article. Our knowledge of the nature of _every_ challenge to the new Amendment, and our knowledge that each challenge involved the assumption that the Fifth Article _was_ a “_grant_” to these state governments, is a knowledge which is certain from our study of the conclusions of the Supreme Court which negatived each challenge. The certainty is emphasized by our memory of the reply of Rice in that Supreme Court, when, without one dissent from the challengers, he stated his and their conviction that the “conventions” of 1788--the challengers all forgetting that those “conventions” named _themselves_ in the Fifth Article--provided no CONSTITUTIONAL mode of procedure in which their own exclusive power could be again exercised to make Articles like the First Article and the Eighteenth Amendment. Let us again emphasize our certainty by a few moments with the briefs of the challengers.