“The authority of Constitutions over governments, and the sovereignty of the people over Constitutions, are truths which are at all times necessary to be kept in mind; _and at no time, perhaps, more necessary than at present_.” This impressive statement of the truth that the “governments,” state “legislatures,” never were placed by the Fifth Article above the Constitution in which it is, and above the sovereignty of the people, mentioned therein as “conventions,” and cannot be placed there by another government, the Congress, is not a statement made in the heat of the controversy about the Eighteenth Amendment. It is the statement of James Madison, author of the Fifth Article, made in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1799; It is becoming almost impossible for us, as we sit in these conventions and hear every word that is said, to understand the source of the modern thought, if we can dignify it by calling it “thought,” that the Fifth Article is a power of attorney from the citizens of America to the state governments, every member of which is elected by the citizens of the respective states and not by the citizens of America. It is beginning to grow upon us that any such “thought” is based on sheer assumption and that the entire record of the “conventions” is a closed book to those who hold the assumption. We know that they have the explicit statement of the Tenth Amendment, that the Constitution gives no power of any kind to any donee except the one new American government, the government with the enumerated powers of the First Article. As no power of attorney was ever written or can be conceived except one which grants the attorney in fact some power, the Tenth Amendment makes absolutely certain that neither the Fifth Article nor the entire Constitution gives to the state legislatures any power as attorneys in fact for the citizens of America.