Marshall was one of the Americans who had been at Valley Forge in 1778, and at other places whose sacrifices _made_ it the basic law of America that all power over American citizens _must_ be derived by direct grant from themselves. Later, he was prominent in the Virginia convention where all Americans in Virginia knew and acted upon this basic law. These facts qualified him to testify, from the Bench of the Supreme Court, that _all_ Americans _then_ knew and acknowledged the binding command of that basic law. Under such circumstances, it was impossible that the Americans at Philadelphia should not have known and obeyed that law in the drafting of their proposed Seventh _and Fifth_ Articles. Both of these Articles, the Seventh wholly, and the Fifth partly, deal with the _then_ future grant of national power over the people and its only _legal_ gift by direct grant from the people themselves, assembled in their “conventions.” Both Articles name the people of America, by the one word “conventions.” That Philadelphia should not have strayed from the legal road clearly marked by the Statute of ’76 was certain when we recall how large a part Madison played at Philadelphia, and particularly how he personally worded and introduced, in the closing hours at Philadelphia, what we know as its Fifth Article. As to his personal knowledge of this basic law, we recall his letter of April, 1787, where he said, “To give the new system its proper energy, it will be desirable to have it ratified by the authority of the people, and not merely by that of the legislatures.” And we recall his later words, when urging Americans to adopt the Constitution with its Fifth and Seventh Articles, he said of the Seventh, “This Article speaks for itself. The express authority of the people _alone_ could give due validity to the Constitution,” to its grants of power over the people in its First Article. (_Fed._ No. 43.) That we may fix firmly in our own minds the knowledge which all Americans _then_ had, which _our_ leaders never acquired or have entirely forgotten, let us briefly review what the earlier Americans did at Philadelphia in obedience to that knowledge of basic American law. On May 28, Randolph of Virginia “opened the main business” of the Convention. He proposed fifteen resolutions embodying the suggestion of what should be in the different Articles. Resolution Number 15 was that such Articles should be submitted to “_conventions_,” “to be expressly chosen by the people, to consider and decide thereon.” (5 _Ell. Deb._ 128.)