We have now read, in those conventions of old and with the Americans therein who made it, all of the Madison Fifth Article save the two exceptions at the end thereof, beginning “provided that no amendment, etc.” In those conventions, the meaning of those two exceptions needs but a moment’s thought. One exception is that no change may be _constitutionally_ made, prior to 1808, in relation to the existing evil of human slavery. The other exception is that no change may be _constitutionally_ made which shall give any state greater representation in the Senate than each other state. These are not exceptions to any power “_granted_” in the Article. No power of _any_ kind, as we already know, is “_granted_” anywhere in the Article, but the Article does _mention_ two existing abilities, one limited and the other unlimited, and prescribes the _constitutional_ mode of procedure in which each of the respective existing abilities may be exercised. The exceptions simply mean that the Article provides no _constitutional_ mode of procedure in which may be exercised existing ability to change the Constitution in the matters mentioned in the two exceptions. We average Americans have now examined carefully the record of the wording of all our Constitution at Philadelphia and particularly the record of the wording of the three Articles, the First and the Seventh and the Fifth, which either purport to give or mention future giving (by the “people,” who alone can give) power to interfere with the individual freedom of the American citizen. Furthermore, we have sat in the “conventions” of the American people, in which all those worded Articles were made, and have read, with the Americans in those “conventions,” the apt, precise and classic English of the Fifth Article, which told them, _as it tells us_, that the Article merely prescribes the _constitutional_ mode of procedure, in which thereafter can be exercised either the existing limited ability of the state governments or the existing unlimited ability of the American citizens themselves, the “conventions” of the Seventh and the Fifth Articles. We are certain, therefore, that nowhere in the Constitution, made in those early “conventions,” can the most ingenious mind discover what would have been the greatest blunder in the history of mankind, anything which changed the actual and legal relation of the individual American to government and made him the “subject” of any government or collection of governments in America. It would be unwise, however, for us to leave those conventions without listening to some few of the great Americans, who sat therein, telling us how the new Constitution does _secure_ the status of the free individual American and protect his individual freedom from all usurpation by any government or governments in America. CHAPTER XIII CONVENTIONS KNOW “CONVENTIONS” ARE “THE PEOPLE”