states, six tenths of the _people_ may reject these amendments.... So that we may fairly and justly conclude that one twentieth part of the _American people_ may prevent the removal of the most grievous inconveniences and oppression, by refusing to accede to amendments. A trifling minority may reject the most salutary amendments. Is this an easy mode of securing the public liberty? It is, sir, a most fearful situation, when the most contemptible minority can prevent the alteration of the most oppressive government; for it may, in many respects, prove to be such.” (3 _Ell. Deb._ 48.) So thundered Henry against the weakness of the Madison procedure in which only by proposal from governments could there be _constitutionally_ evoked the _exclusive_ ability of the citizens of America to dictate how much power to interfere with individual freedom should be left for the citizens of each state to use in governing themselves, and how much power _of that kind_ should be retained by the individual people of America themselves. Henry was opposing a Constitution in which the individual people of America were dictating that their general government, the Congress, should have only the enumerated powers of that kind which are in the First Article. In it, they were dictating that each state government, except as the American people forbade it, should have just so much _of that kind of power_ as the citizens of that particular state should grant that government. And in it, they were dictating that the people of America themselves, the most important factor and reservee of the Tenth Amendment, should retain all other power _of that kind_ to be granted only by themselves, the “conventions” of the Madison Fifth Article. Throughout all his thunder against that Constitution, Henry, like every other opponent of that Constitution, never questioned that this was the exact distribution of power to interfere with individual freedom which _was_ dictated in the Constitution. His only complaint, and their only complaint, was that the Madison Fifth Article, _because_ its constitutional procedure could only be evoked by a proposal from governments, was no protection to human liberty against the granted power _of that kind_ in the First Article. The absurd thought of our modern “constitutional” thinkers (contradicting the plain statement of the Tenth Amendment and contradicting _everything_ that was said in the “conventions” that made the Fifth Article) is that the Article itself is a “_grant_” of omnipotent power to governments (the legislative governments of the states) to interfere with individual freedom. When we contrast the knowledge of Henry and his colleagues with the modern absurdity, we echo Henry’s words and exclaim, “We suppose that we are mad, or that our modern constitutional thinkers are so.” If Henry had read into that Fifth Article, if the opponents of the proposed Constitution had read into it, any “_grant_” of ability to