We have lived with those Americans in those Revolutionary days when the legislative governments of their thirteen nations created “a distinct and independent sovereignty” to govern a _federal_ union of those nations but not to govern, by the exercise of _national_ powers, the human beings who were the American people. We have seen those legislative governments then aware of their existing ability, each as the representative or attorney in fact of its own nation for all _federal_ purposes, to vest _federal_ powers in a _federal_ government. “To the formation of a league, such as was the Confederation, the state sovereignties were certainly competent.” (Marshall, M’Culloch v. Maryland, 4 _Wheat._ 316.) But those legislative governments knew that they could not delegate to any government even those limited _national_ powers “delegated to the state sovereignties” by their respective citizens. “The powers delegated to the state sovereignties were to be exercised by themselves, not by a distinct and independent sovereignty created by themselves.” (Marshall, _supra_.) As to the national powers not delegated but reserved by the people to themselves, the legislative governments of that day (as well as the American people) knew what the Supreme Court still knew in 1907 as to _national_ powers similarly withheld from the later _national_ government of America: The powers the people have given to the General Government are named in the Constitution, and all not there named, either expressly or by implication, are reserved _to the people_ and can be exercised only by _them_, or upon _further grant from them_. (Justice Brewer in Turner v. Williams, 194 _U. S._ 279.) We have been with those Americans in the few short years in which they learned that the maximum of protected enjoyment of individual freedom could never be obtained through a general government possessing naught but _federal_ powers, the only kind of power which any American government can ever obtain through grants made by governments or, in any way, except by direct grant from its citizens themselves.