We have been with them when the Americans in _each_ former colony constituted for themselves a government and gave it limited ability to interfere with their individual freedom. Living with them at that time, we have realized how accurately they then grasped the vital fact that the granting of such _national_ ability _is_ the constitution of government and that no people ever are free or self-governing unless every grant _of that kind_ is made directly by the citizens of the nation themselves. We have realized that, in constituting their respective national governments, the citizens of each of those nations withheld from its government many possible national powers, such, for example, as those mentioned in the various Bills of Rights or Declarations of human liberty in the different written constitutions of those nations. We have realized--a vital legal fact never to be forgotten--how accurately those Americans _and their governments_ knew that not all of those sovereign legislatures of those independent nations could, even together, exercise or grant a single one of those possible national powers reserved by the people to themselves. We have also realized--again a legal fact which should have sunk deep into our souls--that the very national powers, which the citizens of each of those nations _had_ granted to _its_ legislative government, were to be exercised only by _that_ legislative government and could not be delegated by it to any other government or governments. “The powers delegated to the state sovereignties were to be exercised by themselves, not by a distinct and independent sovereignty created by themselves.” (Marshall, M’Culloch v. Maryland, 4 _Wheat._ 316.)