Forewarned of such necessity, we return with renewed interest to the examination of the record of the day on which it is assumed that Madison suggested that the Fifth Article should be changed into a “grant” and then proposed to the American people, so that they might voluntarily relinquish their status as free men and become “subjects” of a government with omnipotent ability to legislate in restraint of their individual freedom “in all matters whatsoever.” It ought not to detract from our amusement that this remarkable proposal of such a “grant” (as our modern leaders see it) was to go to the American people in each state and there be approved by that people with the knowledge that the people in that particular state, on the occasion of a future proposal, might not elect a single member of the legislative governments who would exercise that omnipotent power over their every individual right. Our amusement is not lessened when we find that the supposed “grant” was suggested by Madison and seconded by Hamilton. The Philadelphia Convention was being held in the America which had just emerged from an eight year Revolution to establish the doctrine that no government could be omnipotent in its ability to interfere with individual freedom. The Convention itself had devoted three months and ten days, before the day in question, to bitter dispute about giving even enumerated powers _of that kind_ to the American government mentioned in the First Article. It is therefore, with great amusement _but with serious intent never to forget_, that we note that not a single voice was raised in the Convention either to uphold or to protest this supposed and absurd “grant” of omnipotence to an entirely different government. On the contrary, as we note with intent never to forget, the newly worded Article was treated by the Convention as if every _important_ matter in it had been settled before the state governments were even mentioned in it as makers of the kind of Articles which they already had the power to make, _federal_ Articles. As soon as the newly worded Article had been suggested by Madison and Hamilton, the Article which Madison himself describes as a _constitutional_ mode for the exercise of existing abilities to make Articles, only one change (utterly unimportant now) was suggested in the new wording. This was the suggestion that the Article should not provide a _constitutional_ mode in which existing ability to interfere with slavery could be _constitutionally_ exercised prior to the year 1808. This change was immediately made by the Convention. Then, without the slightest objection to any other part of the supposed absurd “grant,” the Convention approved the newly worded Article.