PREFACE
Many Americans are interested in the Eighteenth Amendment. Millions are interested in the American citizen.
It seems not to be known that the existence of one flatly denies the existence of the other. This is not theory. It is plain statement of a very simple fact. If there is an American citizen, the Amendment never entered the Constitution. On the contrary, if the Amendment is in the Constitution, there never has been an America or an American citizen.
Throughout this book the nation of free men is called “America.†This is done to distinguish the nation from the federation of states already existing and known as the United States, when the whole American people created the nation and continued the federation as a subordinate part of one system of government. The federation of states was proposed in 1777 and had complete existence in 1781. The nation of men was created in 1788.
On January 14, 1922, there was opened at Williamsburg, Virginia, the Marshall-Wythe School of Government and Citizenship. Judge Alton B. Parker, former Chief Justice of the New York Court of Appeals and a former candidate for President, delivered the opening address on “American Constitutional Government.†His eloquent address has since been made a public document and printed in theCongressional Record. In it, he warned us of the danger to Americafrom those who do not understand our form of government and are coming here to destroy it.
“As people of this class have been coming to us in large numbers from nearly every quarter of the globe, we must take up the task of so educating all classes of our vast population, as that they shall fully understand the importance of maintaining, in its integrity, our constitutional plan of government. They should be taught in the first instance, why it was that the people, in the formative period of our government, were bound to have, and did at last secure, a government which the people could control despite their legislatures, whether representing the states or the federal government.â€
The existence of the Eighteenth Amendment is based on the sheer assumption that we have not a government of that kind. By all who have discussed the Amendment, whether for or against it, one false assumption has been made. From that false assumption of all, the advocates of the Amendment have drawn their conclusion. On the conclusion is based the existence of the Amendment. The conclusion itself is the direct negation of the simplest and most important fact in America. Moreover, the conclusion itself means that the Americans, twelve years after they “did at last secure†the kind of government they “were bound to have†and of which Judge Parker spoke, voluntarily created a “government†of the opposite kind and made themselves its absolute “subjects.â€
And the conclusion is correct, if the premise, which is the false assumption of all, be true.
Of course, the assumption is absolutely untrue. But no one has seen its simple and patent untruth. Wherefore, the first step in our education is for us to acquire knowledge of the plain fact that it is untrue. Becauseour leaders do not know the fact, we must go to other teachers.
By the common false assumption, the early Americans—who “did at last secure†the kind of government they “were bound to haveâ€â€”are now charged with having committed the most monumental blunder in all history, a blunder which destroyed their entire achievement.
Rest assured! They did not commit that blunder. They themselves make that clear herein. In so doing, they teach us what, with Judge Parker, we agree that we all must know, if America and the American citizen are to remain. They are the best teachers in the world. They know what they teach because they did it. They do not weary or perplex us with theories or principles. Their teaching is the telling of simple facts. Best of all, they tell us in their own simple words, while they are talking to one another and engaged in the very accomplishment of the facts they teach.
It is a mere incident of their teaching that they settle the plain fact that the supposed Eighteenth Amendment is not in the Constitution.
It is our own candid belief that very few Americans will be found to prefer the existence of the Amendment to the existence of America itself. The early Americans make amazingly clear that there is no America and no American citizen if the Amendment is in the Constitution.
The nation of men, which we call America, and the subordinate federation of states, which we call the United States, are bound together in one dual system. They have a common name, “The United States of America.†They have a common Constitution, with national Articles for the men and federal Articles forthe states. They have a common government, national for the men and federal for the states.
This is exactly the America of which Judge Parker spoke. We want to keep it. The early Americans, who made it, will enable us to keep it, if we listen to their teaching of the simple facts which they accomplished. Such a result would be some credit to the supposed Eighteenth Amendment. Even those most opposed to it would be compelled to acknowledge that its brief imaginary existence awoke us all to our first real concept of what America, the nation of free men, really is.
Francis X. Hennessy.
342 Madison Avenue,New York City.March 17th, 1923.