The question thus presented is, we think, of great importance, but not of much difficulty. The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual states. Each state established a constitution for itself, and in that constitution provided such limitations and restrictions on the powers of its particular government as its judgment dictated. The people of the United States framed such a government for the United States as they supposed best adapted to their situation, and best calculated to promote their interests. The powers they conferred on this government were to be exercised by itself; and the limitations on power, if expressed in general terms, are naturally, and, we think, necessarily, applicable to the government created by the instrument. They are limitations of _power granted in the instrument itself_; not of distinct governments, framed by different persons and for different purposes. It would have been impossible for Marshall to have stated more plainly that the “instrument,” the Constitution (which contains the Fifth Article), _grants no powers whatever to the state governments_. On that fact, the fact being the simple answer to the question “of great importance but not of much difficulty,” Marshall decided that the general restrictions (applying only to powers _granted_ in the Constitution) did not apply at all to the state governments, to whom the Constitution granted no power whatever. And so we Americans, trying to find the “when” and “how” (between, 1907 and 1917) we became subjects, cannot find the supposed answer anywhere in the briefs against validity. All that we do find of interest to us, in those briefs, is that the briefers, either with or without knowledge of the fact, are meeting a claim that there never was an American citizen and that the American people became “subjects” when they made the Fifth Article on June 21st, 1788. By reason of our education in the making of the Fifth Article, we know the answer to the absurd claim. The answer is one that cannot be denied unless there are facts which we have not learned in our education. Therefore, we go quickly to the briefs of those who make the claim, those who upheld the existence of the Eighteenth Amendment, to ascertain what are the _new_ facts on which they base their claim that there never was an American citizen and that the Fifth Article made the American people “subjects.” These opponents were led by Hughes. In this litigation, _he_ should not have forgotten that there are limits to the powers of every government in America. In the following January, he appeared in the same Court, to prove that there is limit to the power of the _supreme_ legislature in America, the Congress.