As the Supreme Court has definitely settled, the Tenth Amendment merely declares what was in that original proposed Constitution. Therefore the Constitution gave no new government ability anywhere except to the government at Washington. It gave to that government only specific ability to govern human beings, in certain matters. It merely _reserved_ to _each_ state government some of its former ability to govern its own citizens. It gave neither to any state government nor to all state governments collectively any new ability to govern. And it reserved to the American people themselves all ability to exercise or to grant any _national_ power to interfere with the freedom of American citizens except those enumerated powers in the First Article. The Supreme Court has definitely settled that this reservation of such power exclusively to themselves, by the makers of the Fifth Article, is the most important factor in our constitutional distribution of that kind of power among our American government, our state governments and, most important of all, ourselves, the citizens of America. For which reason, until this generation, it has always been axiomatic that the mention of that exclusive ability of our own, “conventions” of _Americans_ in their respective states, is the most important factor in the Fifth Article. In strict conformity with the Statute of ’76 and without usurping the reserved powers of the most important factor in both the Tenth Amendment and the Fifth Article, seventeen _federal_ changes were made, between 1789 and 1917, in the _federal_ part of our Constitution, which is both a _federal_ and a _national_ Constitution. The situation in 1917 was exactly the same as it had been since July 4, 1776, when it was known even to the humble townsmen of Concord that governments could not make _national_ Articles in American constitutions. Or rather, the situation in 1917 was the same _unless_, somewhere prior to 1917, the Statute of ’76 had been repealed and the most important factor in both Articles had been eliminated from the Fifth Article and Tenth Amendment of the American Constitution, which is the security of the American citizen against usurpation of power even by governments in America. We know that Gerry moved to strike that important factor from the Fifth Article in September, 1789, and that he failed in his effort. We know that Webb and the legislative advocates of the new Eighteenth Amendment had a Fifth Article in which that most important factor was not present. Apparently they based their government proposal and government ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment upon a Fifth Article which did not contain that most important factor, the reference of the makers of the Fifth Article to themselves as the makers of all future Articles of a _national_ kind, the reference of those makers to themselves in the words “conventions” of the American people, assembled in their respective states.