If forbearance were the sole rule for conduct, if conscience permitted us to ignore the great danger to our own _individual_ freedom in _every_ matter, we would be absolutely silent as to the contents of all those briefs. But, that the _supposed_ presence of the new _national_ Article in the _national_ Constitution of a free people may never be a precedent for other _government_ making of _national_ Articles, it is our duty to learn and state what those briefs all disclose. Not one of them recognizes the identity of the “conventions” of the Fifth Article with the “conventions” of the Seventh. And all ignore the identity of the Fifth Article “conventions” with “We, the people” of America, in the Preamble, and with the most important reservee of the Tenth Amendment, “the people” of America. Every argument, whether for or against the new _national_ article, is based upon the sheer and absurd assumption that the “conventions” in their Fifth Article _did_ make a _grant_ to themselves, the “conventions,” and to the state governments. The advocates of the new Article assume that the “conventions” _granted_ to themselves and to the state governments _all_ the inalienable omnipotence of the American people themselves, in their aggregate capacity as the citizens of America, the very omnipotence the supposed grantors were exercising when they made the Fifth Article. The opponents of the new _national_ Article assert the absurd assumption of a “_grant_,” but contend for diverse reasons--remarkable by reason of the fallacy of a “_grant_” on which each rests--that the “conventions” grant to themselves _only a part_ of the omnipotence which they already had and were exercising when they made the supposed “grant.” On which theory, they urge that the supposed “grant” to the state governments, being identical with the supposed “grant” to the grantors themselves, is _only part_ of the omnipotence which the grantors already had and does not include ability to make Articles like the Eighteenth Amendment. Not one of these briefs recognizes or urges that the Fifth Article is not a “grant” of ability _to make_ Articles whether _federal_ or _national_. No brief knows the Fifth Article to be simply the ratification, by the whole American people, of a hitherto revolutionary mode of procedure as the future CONSTITUTIONAL mode in which may be exercised either the existing and limited ability of state legislatures to make _federal_ Articles or the existing and unlimited ability of the “people” (the “conventions”) to make _any_ Articles. No brief either recognizes or urges the absurdity of the thought that the “conventions” intended to grant or did grant to themselves, the “conventions,” any part of the omnipotence which the supposed grantors were actually exercising when making the supposed grant.