“The establishment of a Constitution, in time of profound peace, by the voluntary consent of a whole people, is a prodigy.” (_Fed._ No. 85). Those were the words of Hamilton, in a final appeal to the people of America, as they were about to assemble in their “conventions.” As he thought it a prodigy that their voluntary consent should be secured to that constitution of government contained in the First Article, he frankly added that he looked forward “with trembling anxiety” to their own determination as to whether or not _they_ would give that _necessary_ consent to the enumerated grants in that First Article. We know how the patriotic efforts of himself and Madison and his other colleagues were later rewarded by the giving of that consent. We know _where_ those average Americans of that day gave that consent, _where_ they made that constitution of their _national_ government which is that First Article. “It is true, they assembled in their several states--and where else should they have assembled? No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the states, and of compounding the _American_ people into one common mass. Of consequence, when _they_ act, they act _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_.” In the many other Supreme Court decisions, telling the tale of the completion of the “prodigy” and all stating the same legal fact, is there a more apt and accurate expression of the knowledge of the American people, who were better acquainted “with the science of government than any other people in the world,” that the “conventions” in the respective states, assembled to constitute their American government by grants like those in the First Article and the Eighteenth Amendment, are the Americans themselves and that the state _governments_ never are the American people themselves and never represent _those_ people for _national_ purposes. It was natural that such apt and accurate expression of that concept should have been voiced by Marshall in the Supreme Court. He had been one of those people, fighting on the battle-field with them to wrest from all governments in the world any ability to constitute government by making grants like those in the First Article or the Eighteenth Amendment. He had been one of those people in one of those “conventions,” in their respective states, where _they_ made the only Article _of that kind_ which ever entered their and our _national_ American Constitution. Later it became his privilege and duty (_and our great good fortune_) to explain _who_ alone could make and did make that First Article and _who_ alone can ever validly make Articles like it or the Eighteenth Amendment, namely, the American people themselves, assembled in convention in their respective states.