We recognize immediately, in this extract from the briefs of 1920, our own exact knowledge brought from those “conventions.” And, when this briefer challenges the existence of the Eighteenth Amendment on the ground that the people who made it showed “in Article V itself” that “the convention idea was in the minds of the framers” and “when it came to the matter of ratification,” a “Yes” or “No” was to be considered by “conventions” in the various states, we are amazed to find no upholder of the Eighteenth Amendment replying to this attack upon its validity. The challenge to validity again and again touches on the monumental error of the Tory concept behind all claim to validity. The challenge puts its finger at once upon the absurd assumption, on which the Eighteenth Amendment wholly depends for existence, the assumption that the Americans we have just left ever considered the “people” as the “legislature” or the “legislature” as the “people.” The challenge emphasizes the fact we all know, that the “conventions” knew that “conventions” _were_ the “people” and that “legislatures” never were the “people.” But we are mistaken in believing that this clear challenge was not met by some “constitutional thinker” in his effort to uphold the new supposed NATIONAL Article, made by the governments or “legislatures” which the old “conventions” so well knew were not the “people.” In the brief of one champion of the new NATIONAL Article, we find this clear reply to the challenge. And we notice how the reply is not mere assertion. No one can deny the tremendous “support,” in history and in decision and in the Fifth Article itself, for the full reply that the Fifth Article states definitely that “the only agency which is authorized to ratify the Amendment is the state legislatures!” We have only one comment to make on the challenge itself and the destructive reply to it, that the state legislatures are the “only agent” authorized by the Fifth Article to amend our NATIONAL Constitution. It is an interesting comment. Both the challenge and the reply are from the brief of Wheeler, counsel for the political organization which directed that governments make this new national government of men.