And so we, of this later generation, sit in those “conventions” of the Seventh Article and we read the Fifth Article, where the same “conventions” are named, and look with awe upon the practical wisdom which dictated these words “in three fourths thereof,” after that mention of those “conventions” of the American people in the future. We realize now that those words are among the greatest securities to individual welfare written into the proposed Constitution by the wisdom and ability and patriotism of America, at Philadelphia. In that Constitution, other great securities protect individual welfare against usurpation from outside America and against usurpation by government or governments _in_ America beyond the exercise of the _national_ powers granted to each government by its own respective individual citizens. But this particular great security of individual welfare, the words “in three fourths thereof,” secures individual welfare against the unjust oppression of a majority or an aggressive minority _of the Americans themselves unless_ that majority or minority secure a majority of the Americans in _each_ of three fourths of the states to support the unjust oppression of individual welfare. And thus, in those conventions, _we_ realize, perhaps for the first time, that the _important_ statements of the Seventh and the Fifth Articles are, in substance, identical statements by the supreme will of the American people. They are respectively the two statements or commands of the citizens of America, the new nation, as to WHEN the grants of power in the First Article shall _be_ the grant of the American citizens and as to WHEN the grants of any _similar_ power, in the generations to come, shall _be_ the grants of the American citizens. In their language, in their purpose and in their plain command, both statements are exactly alike in substance. The statement or command of the American people, in the Seventh Article, is that the constitution of the government of interference with individual freedom, the First Article, shall _be_ the Constitution of the American people _when_ nine of the “conventions” (named in the Seventh and Fifth Articles) shall have said “Yes” to that constitution, to the enumerated grants of _national_ power in the First Article. The statement or command of the American people, in the Fifth Article, is that any new _proposed_ constitution of government of interference with individual freedom of the American citizen (the supposed Eighteenth Amendment being the first new constitution _of that kind_) shall be the Constitution of the American people _when_ three fourths of the “conventions” (named in the Seventh and the Fifth Articles) shall have said “Yes” to that new proposed constitution.