Sitting in those conventions of old, we are in the company of many of the men who were at the Philadelphia Convention. In Virginia we see Madison and Randolph and Mason and others; in New York we see Hamilton and others; in Pennsylvania we see Wilson and others; in South Carolina we see the Pinckneys and others. That is our experience in all the conventions. On all sides, among the American people assembled therein, are those familiar with and talking about the work at Philadelphia and the great debate there, in which was _ascertained_, from the character of the Articles drafted there, _which_ maker of Articles, the state legislatures, with their existing ability to make federal Articles, or the “people” themselves, the “conventions,” with their existing unlimited ability to make all Articles, could make the Articles drafted and about to be proposed. These men, by their presence and their words, remind us how the nature of their First Article, the fact that it constituted government to interfere with human freedom, compelled the announcement of the decision that legislative governments could never make _that_ kind of an Article. These men, by their presence and their words, remind us how they reached the ascertainment of the fact which _compelled_ their Proposing Resolution _to propose_ a mode of ratification by the “people” themselves, by the “conventions” of the Seventh and the Fifth Articles. They remind us, as one of the men with us later said in the Supreme Court, that all assembled in our “conventions” feel and acknowledge the legal necessity that every power to interfere with individual freedom must be derived by direct grant from the people. And, sitting in those conventions with them, where we all read the Fifth Article they are asked to make, we recognize _with certainty_ that it prescribes that the Congress shall do exactly what the Philadelphia Convention has just done--propose, and nothing more. The words of the Fifth Article tell us that only Congress shall draft and propose a new Article, just as the Philadelphia Convention drafted and proposed its new Articles; that, after Congress has drafted its new Article and is about to propose it, just as the Philadelphia Convention did, _when it exercised no power at all_, Congress shall examine carefully the nature of the drafted Article and, having ascertained by such examination _which_ existing ability to make Articles (the limited ability of legislative governments or the unlimited ability of the “people” or “conventions”) is competent to make that particular Article, Congress shall propose ratification by the ability which can make the proposed Article.