stion on to the Legislatures. On the contrary, the
two-thirds vote (and more) was pointed to as conclusive evidence of
the overwhelming support of the Amendment by the nation; the
Legislatures were expected to get with alacrity into the band-wagon
into which Congress had so eagerly climbed. Evidently, it would have
been far more difficult to get the Eighteenth Amendment into the
Constitution if the two-thirds vote of Congress had been the sole
requirement for its adoption. Congressmen disposed to take their
responsibility lightly, and yet not altogether without conscience,
voted with the feeling that their act was not final, when they might
otherwise have shrunk from doing what their Judgment told them was
wrong; and, the thing once through Congress, Legislatures hastened to
ratify in the feeling that ratification by the requisite number of
Legislatures was manifestly a foregone conclusion. Thus at no stage of
the game was there given to this tremendous Constitutional departure
anything even distantly approaching the kind of consideration that
such a step demands. The country was jockeyed and stampeded into the
folly it has committed; and who can say what may be the next folly
into which we shall fall, if we do not awaken to a truer sense of the
duty that rests upon every member of a lawmaking body--to decide these
grave questions in accordance with the dictates of his own honest and
intelligent judgment?

* This should be self-evident; but if there were any room for doubt.
it would be removed by a reference to the language of Article V of the
Constitution: "The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall
deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution"
which shall be valid "when ratified by the Legislatures of
three-fourths of the States." Thus Congress does not submit an
amendment, but proposes it; and it does this only when two-thirds of
both Houses deem it necessary. The primary act of judgment is
performed by Congress; what remains for the Legislatures is to ratify
or not to ratify that act.

CHAPTER V

THE LAW MAKERS AND THE LAW

WELL MEANING exhorters, shocked at the spectacle of millions of
perfectly decent and law-abiding Americans showing an utter disregard
of the Prohibition law, are prone to insist that to violate this law,
or to abet its violation, is just as immoral as to violate any other
criminal law. The thing is on the