When the common proposition of all those lawyers, that the Fifth Article “grants” power to those two grantees, _is_ stated in this frank way, its patent absurdity is manifest. Every one of those lawyers knows that a grantor never can or does grant to himself either _all_ or _part of_ what he already has. Moreover, all those lawyers ought to know that the Tenth Amendment expressly declares that the entire Constitution, in which is the Fifth Article, grants no power of any kind except to the American government at Washington. Alone and unaided, this simple declaration makes it impossible that the Fifth Article grants any power to the state governments. Thus, even without the certain knowledge we bring from the conventions of 1788, the state governments disappear from the scene as attorneys in fact for the citizens of America in any matter. Each of those state governments is left with no power it did not have before the Fifth Article was made. Not one of them even keeps all of the power which it had before 1788. The citizens of America, the “conventions” in which they assembled, commanded otherwise. “When the American people created a national legislature, with certain enumerated powers, it was neither necessary nor proper to define the powers retained by the States. These powers proceed, _not from the people of America_, [the “conventions” named in the Seventh _and the Fifth_ Articles] _but from the people of the several states_; and remain, after the adoption of the Constitution, what they were before, except so far as they may be abridged by that instrument.” So spoke Marshall from the Supreme Court Bench, in 1819, after he had come from one of those “conventions” in which he himself had stated: “It could not be said that the states derived any powers from that system, [the new Constitution then before the convention in Virginia] but retained them, though not acknowledged in any part of it.” (3 _Ell. Deb._ 421.) Yet every brief of those fifty-seven lawyers bases its every argument on the sheer assumption, asserted by all, that the Fifth Article is a “grant” to the state legislatures which makes them attorneys in fact for the citizens of America. No brief can offer and no brief does offer the slightest proof in support of the assumption. But no brief _asks_ for proof of the assumption or challenges the assumption. On the contrary, every brief makes the assumption and asserts it and on it rests every argument. Because of this monumental error, every brief _for_ the Amendment insists that the state legislatures, as attorneys in fact for the citizens of America with _every_ power of the citizens of America, validly made the Eighteenth Amendment.