_in_ their states. But the measures they adopt do not, on that account, cease to be the measures of _the people themselves_ or become the measures of the _state governments_.” Yet, when we later come to the modern days of 1917 and 1920, we shall see all _our_ leaders, whether for or against the Eighteenth Amendment, blandly assume a most extraordinary meaning from the Fifth Article mention of the state legislatures. Not a single member of any state legislature is elected by the citizens of America. Moreover, the Tenth Amendment expressly declares that the Constitution--that great power of attorney from American citizens to their only American government--gives no power whatever to the states or _their_ governments. Nevertheless, with amusement and absolute incredulity, we shall hear every statesman of 1917 and every lawyer of 1920 assume and act and argue upon the extraordinary concept that the Fifth Article of that Constitution is a great power of attorney to the state legislatures as attorneys in fact for the American citizens. “We all know the severe scrutiny to which the Constitution was exposed--some from their own knowledge, others from different sources. We know with what jealousy, with what watchfulness, with what scrupulous care its minutest provisions were examined, discussed, resisted, and supported by those who opposed and those who advocated its ratification.” (4 _Ell. Deb._ 486.) So spoke Martin Van Buren in the Senate on April 7, 1826. We sit in the conventions which made the Constitution of which he spoke. We listen to every word that is said therein. We hear the Fifth Article explained by its worder, Madison, as nothing but a mode of procedure. From not one of the opponents of the Constitution, not even from Henry, do we hear a single word of attack upon the Fifth Article except as to the weakness of the mode of procedure which it provides for _evoking_ the power of the “people” themselves, assembled in “conventions” of the very same kind, to withdraw from the one American legislature, the Congress, some enumerated power of the First Article which is found oppressive to individual liberty. On the contrary, we not only hear _no_ single word of complaint that the Fifth Article or any Article gives one iota of power to the state legislatures, but the whole complaint of all the opponents of the Constitution which we _do_ hear is that it practically destroys all existing ability and power of those state governments. Only a moment ago we have heard Henry ask: “If you adopt this Constitution, why continue the state legislatures at all?”