“RESOLVED, That the preceding Constitution be laid before the United States in Congress assembled; and that it is the opinion of this Convention, that it should afterwards be submitted to a convention of delegates chosen in each state by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its legislature, for their assent and ratification; and that each convention, assenting to and ratifying the same, should give notice thereof to the United States in Congress assembled. “RESOLVED, That it is the opinion of this Convention, that, as soon as the conventions of nine states shall have ratified this Constitution, the United States in Congress assembled should fix a day, etc.” (5 _Ell. Deb._ 541.) This Resolution is the most authoritative statement of the legal conclusion reached by these leaders of a people _then_ “better acquainted with the science of government than any other people in the world.” The conclusion _itself_ was compelled by accurate knowledge that the government of “citizens” can validly obtain only from the citizens themselves, by their direct grant, any power to interfere with their individual freedom. The expression of that knowledge, in the Resolution, is, in many respects, one of the most important recorded legal decisions ever made in America. We average Americans, educated with those Americans at Philadelphia through their experience of the years between 1775 and 1787, cannot misunderstand the meaning and importance of that decision. Instructed by our review of their actions and their reasoning at Philadelphia in reaching that conclusion and making that legal decision, we know, with an accurate certainty, that it was their declaration to the world and to us that no proposal from Philadelphia suggested that Americans again resume the relation of “subjects” to any government or governments. Our minds impressed with this accurate knowledge that such was not their purpose, we now prepare to complete our education as American citizens, not subjects, by reading the Philadelphia story and language of their Fifth Article, their only other Article which even _partly_ concerned the future grant of new government power to interfere with individual American freedom. By reason of _our_ education, we will then come to the reading of the language of this Article, as the Americans read it and understood it when they made it in their “conventions” that followed the proposing convention of Philadelphia.