The First Article, as we know it, starts with the explicit statement that all _national_ powers, which are granted by Americans in that Constitution, are granted _to_ the only _American_ legislature, Congress. It then provides how the members of each of the two bodies in that legislature shall be elected. It then enumerates the granted powers, confining them to specific subjects of interference with the human freedom of the American citizen. It then, for the particular security of that human freedom, imposes specific restraints upon that legislature even in the exercise of its granted national powers. Finally, it prohibits the further exercise of specific powers by any state government. No American, who reads the debates of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, can fail to realize that the grant of any _national_ power,--power to interfere with human freedom--_is_ the constitution of government. The First Article was the subject of almost all the discussion of those four months at Philadelphia. Seemingly invincible differences of desire and opinion, as to who should elect and the proportion (for citizens of the new nation and for states of the continuing federation) in which there should be elected the members of the legislature which was to exercise the granted _national_ powers, almost ended the effort of that Convention. This was in the early part of July. For exhausting days patriotic men had struggled to reconcile the conflict of desire and opinion in that respect. One element, mainly from the larger states, insisted that the members (from each state) of both branches of the new legislature should be proportioned to the number of Americans in that state. The other element, mainly from the smaller states, insisted that the Americans in each state should have an equal representation in each branch of the new legislature. Each element was further divided as to who should choose the members of that legislature. Some held that the people should choose every member. Others held that the state legislatures should choose every member. Still others held that each state should, by its legislature, choose the members of one branch, so that those members might speak for that state, and that the American people themselves, divided into districts, should choose the members of the other branch, so that those members might speak for the general citizens of America. Mason of Virginia, later one of the great opponents of the adoption of all the Articles, insisted that election by the people was “the only security for the rights of the people.” (5 _Ell. Deb._ 223.) Madison “considered an election of one branch, at least of the legislature by the people immediately, as a clear principle of free government.” (5 _Ell. Deb._ 161.)