If this fact had been kept clearly in mind by our modern leaders and lawyers, the history of the supposed Eighteenth Amendment would never have been written. When the whole American people assembled in their conventions in their respective geographic states, they did not assemble therein as the citizens of their respective states. It is true that the Americans, who assembled in any particular convention, happened to be citizens of a particular state. But they were also part of the whole American people, _whose act as a whole people_ had freed all the colonies and had permitted the Americans in each colony to constitute a nation for themselves. And, when the Americans in each convention assembled, it was to decide whether that part of the American people, which resided in that state, would agree with the American people residing in other states to become members and citizens of an entirely different society of men and grant to the government of the new society power to interfere with the individual rights of the members of the new society. How could the “citizens” of an independent nation, in their capacity as such citizens, become “citizens” of an entirely different nation, with an entirely different human membership or citizenry? If the individual members of a large athletic club in the City of New York should assemble in its club house to determine whether they, as individual human beings, should join with the human members of a number of other athletic clubs and create a large golf club, with a large human membership, and become members of that large golf club, would any of them entertain the absurd thought that he was becoming a member of the golf club in his capacity as a member of his existing and smaller athletic club? This is exactly what happened when the American people as a whole assembled in their conventions and decided to become members or citizens of the new and larger political society of men, while still remaining members and citizens of their respective smaller societies of men.