Now that we have turned from the unsound teaching of those wrongly educated leaders and lawyers and have educated ourselves by living with the earlier Americans through their making of all our constitutions of government, we are ready to approach, with clear and understanding minds, a brief consideration of the great Constitution proposed at Philadelphia and made by the citizens of America. Only by such brief but accurate consideration can we ever realize the distribution of delegated _national_ powers between a supreme government--legislating for all American citizens--and lesser governments, each legislating only for its own citizens and without any power to legislate for American citizens. Only by such consideration can we realize the importance to us of the legal fact that the citizens of America, when making that distribution of granted national powers, reserved to themselves alone all other _national_ powers to legislate for _American_ citizens except those national powers granted and enumerated in Article I of our Constitution to the only national government of the citizens of America. CHAPTER VI THE CONVENTIONS GIVE THE CONSENT The proposal which came from Philadelphia in 1787 was absolutely without precedent in history. Simply stated it was that, outside of all written law save the Statute of ’76, the entire American people, who were not one nation or its citizens, should make themselves one nation and the supreme nation in America; that, simultaneously with the birth of this new nation, they should destroy the complete independence of each existing society or nation, in some one of which each American was a member or citizen, but keep alive each such society or former nation, subject to the supreme will of the citizens of the new nation; that they should keep alive the federation of those old nations also subject to the supreme will of the citizens of the new nation; that they should leave with each former nation (now to be a subordinate state) and to its citizens much of its own and their own national power to govern themselves on many matters without interference from any government or governments outside of that state; that they should leave with those continuing states and _their_ governments their existing and limited ability to give _federal_ power to government by making _federal_ Articles in the Constitution of _federal_ government; that they should, as the citizens of America, give to no state or states or _their_ respective governments any new power of any kind, leaving to the citizens of each state to determine (within the limits fixed by the Constitution of the American citizens) how much power its own national government should have to interfere with the individual freedom of its own citizens; that--most unique and marvelous conception of all--these citizens of America, simultaneously with the birth of the