Long after the conventions in which we sit, the Supreme Court paid the tribute to those who wrote the Fifth Article that they were “masters of apt, precise and classic English.” Keeping this thought in mind, our attention is directed to the three-time use of the one word “propose” in the Fifth Article. We know that to use the same word three times in one sentence is very poor English _unless_ there is a distinct and definite intent and purpose that the meaning each time shall be _identically_ the same. Such definite intent and purpose is the only deduction from what would otherwise be the inexcusable tautology of the language of the Fifth Article. So, when we read that Congress “shall _propose_ amendments” or shall “call a convention for _proposing_ Amendments” and that “one or the other mode of ratification may be _proposed_ by the Congress,” we know with certainty that each use of the word “propose” is intended to convey an identical shade of meaning. From which we know that, as the _proposal_ of a new Article (by Congress or a Convention) will be a mere proposal and will not make the proposed Article valid, so also the Congress _proposal_ of a mode of ratification will remain a mere proposal and will not make that proposed mode valid for that proposed Article, unless its proposed ratifiers are competent to make that particular kind of an Article. This is what they had just known at Philadelphia about their own proposals (both of Articles and of mode of ratification) to us as we sit in the “conventions.” And so, in these conventions, we know the proposals mentioned in the Fifth Article to be identical (in nature) with the proposals made from Philadelphia. We know the procedure outlined in the Fifth Article to be exactly the same procedure as has just been followed at Philadelphia. We know that our ratification (in these “conventions”) of that procedure will be our approval of the procedure they followed at Philadelphia and will be its prescription as the CONSTITUTIONAL procedure hereafter to be followed when either existing ability, that of the state governments or that of ourselves in “conventions,” is to be hereafter evoked to exercise. From all of which we recognize that, if Congress should propose a mode of ratification by state legislatures and the proposed Article is a grant of power to interfere with the individual liberty of the American citizen, the state legislatures will remain just as incompetent to make that Article as they were known to be at Philadelphia when Madison and his colleagues held them to be incompetent to make their proposed Article of that kind, the First Article. And so we understand that the mere Congress proposal of a mode of ratification (for _such_ an Article) by state governments will not give state governments ability to make such an Article.