What, however, are we to think of the Tory education of so many of _our_ leaders and “constitutional” lawyers, who have calmly accepted and acted upon the amazing assumption that state governments in America can exercise and can grant to other governments any or all _general_ national powers to interfere with the human freedom of American citizens, including even the national powers expressly reserved by those citizens to _themselves_ in the Tenth Amendment? If they adopt their familiar mental attitude that all these statements were made more than a hundred years ago and have no meaning or weight now, we refer them to the Supreme Court, in 1907, when it stated: 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.) For ourselves, we average Americans turn now to examine in detail how clearly the Americans at Philadelphia in 1787 _did_ know and obey the basic law of America that all _national_ powers to interfere with individual freedom are the powers of the people themselves and can be exercised only by them or upon direct grant from them. We find their knowledge, in that respect, evidenced by an examination of the reasoning by which they reached the correct legal conclusion that their proposed grants of general national powers, in their First Article, could only be made by the citizens of America themselves, assembled in their “conventions”--that grants of _such_ powers could not be made even by all the legislatures of the then independent states. CHAPTER VII PEOPLE OR GOVERNMENT?--CONVENTIONS OR LEGISLATURES? It is no longer open to question that by the Constitution a nation was brought into being, and that that instrument was not merely operative to establish a closer union or league of states. (Justice Brewer, in Supreme Court, Kansas v. Colorado, 206 _U. S._ 46 at page 80.) Instructed by living through the education of the earlier Americans to their making of that Constitution, we accurately know that they themselves, _by their own direct action_, brought that new nation into being. Through _our_ course in _their_ education, we have _their_ knowledge that only the men, who are to be its first members, can create a new political society of men, which is exactly what any American nation is. “Individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest.” So said the letter which went from Philadelphia with the proposed Articles whose later adoption created the new nation and vested the delegated and enumerated national powers of its government to interfere with the liberty of its citizens, (1 _Ell. Deb._ 17.)