Could anything be more vitally important to individual liberty than that just such “conventions,” so chosen, not the state legislatures, each elected by the citizens of its own state _for an entirely different purpose_, should continue to have their exclusive ability to determine _how much_ power to interfere with individual freedom shall be surrendered by the American people, and how the quantum (which _is_ surrendered) shall be apportioned for exercise between the one American government and the respective states and their respective legislative governments? Later herein we shall learn how clearly Madison and Hamilton, responsible for the wording and meaning of the Fifth Article, knew and appreciated the practical and amazing importance as security to individual liberty, in this distinction between the _two_ makers (“conventions” of the American people themselves and state “legislatures”) named in their Fifth Article and in the distinction between their respective and _existing_ abilities to make Articles in a Constitution which is both a _federal_ and _national_ Constitution. And, as we know, as the Supreme Court has declared in the voice of the Marshall who sits with us in that Virginia convention, the knowledge and appreciation was not peculiar to Madison and Hamilton. It was the common knowledge and appreciation of all the Americans who _made_ the Fifth Article in those conventions. “To the formation of a league, such as was the Confederation, the state sovereignties were certainly competent”; but when a grant of enumerated power to interfere with individual freedom was asked, “the legal necessity of referring it to the people and of deriving its powers directly from them was felt and acknowledged by all.” When such a grant is asked, whether it be asked in the shape of the First Article or of the Eighteenth Amendment, it is not referred to the people at all, unless it is sent to them to be considered and discussed _before_ they choose, from among themselves, those of themselves who will assemble in the “conventions” for the one and sole purpose of uttering the carefully weighed “Yes” or “No” of the Americans in the state where the particular convention assembles. As all in those early conventions knew, as Marshall declared from the Supreme Court, _that_ assembling in those “conventions” is the only way in which the American people can act “safely, effectively and wisely” when asked for a grant of power to interfere with individual freedom, and, as the Statute of ’76 and good sense and practical experience alike teach all free men, that is the only way in which any just power of government can be derived “directly” from the citizens upon whom it is to be exercised.