To put at rest these widespread fears of excessive centralism, the ratifying States demanded a series of explicit amendments to the Constitution, intended to place further express prohibitions upon the Congress. These amendments became, of course, the Bill of Rights; and important as the first eight amendments are, the forgotten Ninth and Tenth speak with telling eloquence of the nature of our political institutions. The Ninth asserts that “the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” And the Tenth, once insisted upon by New York as positively as by Virginia, declares in words too clear possibly to be misunderstood that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” There in the Tenth Amendment is the key that should unlock all mysteries of construction, wherever the State and Federal relationship is at issue. It does not treat of “rights.” Rights belong to people, and are retained by them in the Ninth. The Tenth deals with powers, and its careful wording spells out the essence of our Union. The Congress has no powers whatever, save those the States have delegated to it “by the Constitution.” If authority for some congressional act cannot be found in the Constitution, the authority does not exist, for the Congress has no implied or inherent powers; its powers begin and end with the powers enumerated in the written instrument itself--including, to be sure, the power to adopt “necessary and proper” laws to put the powers to work. All other powers, not prohibited to the States _by the Constitution_, are expressly reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.