The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (137 page)

The "change" proposed in the Virginia Plan implied that the Articles of Confederation should be discarded even though the first resolution offered by Randolph simply declared that they were to be "corrected and enlarged." This resolution was followed by fourteen more which laid out the framework for a powerful central government. The major branch of this government was to be a "national legislature" composed of two houses, the first popularly elected and the second chosen by the first from nominations of the state legislatures. This national legislature would choose the executive and the judiciary. Its legislative authority would include all the powers of the Confederation Congress and in addition a general grant "to legislate in all cases to which the separate states are incompetent, or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation." Besides this general grant, it was empowered "to negative all laws passed by the several states, contravening in the opinion of the national legislature the articles of Union." The national legislature in effect would decide when the new constitution had been violated by state laws, and it would veto them. The national legislature would be a powerful body but not an unrestrained one: the Virginia Plan called for a check on it through the operation of a Council of Revision, composed of the executive and a "convenient number" of judges, who might veto statutes. The national legislature possessed the authority to play the final hand in the game, however, for it might re-enact legislation over the Council's veto.
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The tenth resolve of the Plan provided for the admission of new states, and the eleventh guaranteed a republican government to old and new states. The fourteenth resolve required state officials to take an oath to support the new constitution, and the final one provided for ratification in state conventions convened for the purpose.

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The day following the introduction of the Virginia Plan, May 30, the Convention resolved itself into a committee of the whole, in order to permit discussion and action unencumbered by the fairly rigid rules agreed upon earlier. During the next two weeks the delegates learned at first hand just how important careful preparation is in deliberative bodies. For the preparation of the Virginians and the thoughtfully conceived plan of government they offered their colleagues gave them the initiative. They had framed the terms of the discussion, and now in these two weeks they and their supporters in the large states forced the pace of deliberations and, for the most part, controlled the Convention. Their opponents from the small states found themselves on the defensive, forced always to deal with the questions raised by the large, and compelled to answer and refute rather than to propose.

Not that the large states had everything their own way in these early days of the meeting or even that they agreed upon everything among themselves. As soon as the committee of the whole began its review of the Virginia Plan, Gouverneur Morris suggested that the first resolve-that the Convention should correct and enlarge the Articles -- ought to be "postponed." Morris and everyone else recognized that Randolph had proposed much more than correction and enlargement, and Randolph now had to admit it. Instead of the first, he now offered three propositions which made clear that national sovereignty would replace state sovereignty if the Virginia Plan were accepted. The committee eased its way over these shoals by agreeing that a national government ought to be established consisting of a "supreme" legislature, executive, and judiciary. It then entered the really dangerous waters of representation in the legislature. The Virginia Plan proposed that representation should be allocated according to population. The actual formula used had been derived by Madison in 1783, reckoning five slaves as three freemen for purposes of establishing state financial contributions to the Congress. The committee had hardly begun to discuss representation when Delaware's George Read reminded everyone that his state's commission forbade its delegates to agree to any departure from state equality. If the Convention discarded equality, Read reminded, he and his colleagues might have to go home, a threat which doubtless irritated men who wanted to discuss the problem. But Read's ploy worked, and the Convention decided that representation was a matter that could wait for a few days.
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Virtually every other resolution Randolph offered made its way into the discussions of the next two weeks. How the first branch -- the lower house -- should be elected was taken up on May 31 and decided in favor of the people. Disagreement occurred immediately afterwards over the election of the upper house. The committee turned to the executive during the next two days with little luck. Should the executive be one or many? A single executive smacked of monarchy to Randolph, who pointed out that "the permanent temper of the people was adverse to the very semblance of monarchy." Two days later James Wilson punctured Randolph's arguments for a plural executive by pointing out that they dealt more with what people would say about a single executive than genuine objections to it. "All know," Wilson remarked, "that a single magistrate is not a king." Wilson's most telling rebuttal was his reminder that all the states had decided on a single executive for themselves in their recently drafted constitutions. The vote that followed Wilson's speech confirmed his judgment, seven to three in favor of a single executive.
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The provision for a judicial branch raised difficult questions, especially of the method of appointment, which the committee found easier to postpone than to answer. It agreed rather easily that a fair method of admitting new states should be included in the new constitution and then began discussion of ratification of whatever new arrangements the Convention might produce. Over the next few days the committee fleshed out agreement achieved in the previous week, decided on a transition from government under the old Articles to the new, resolved to guarantee a republican form of government to the states and to require state officials to support the new constitution. It also approved the ratification by special conventions, the method proposed under the Virginia Plan. By June 13 the committee had finished its work and reported the results to the Convention. The results were substantially the Virginia Plan without the Council of Revision, which most delegates recognized as a clumsy contrivance sure to make mischief. Madison's near-mad scheme to give the Congress a veto over state legislation remained in the Plan. The principle of equality of representation in the Congress did not survive these deliberations as the committee recommended allocation of representatives in both houses according to population with a slave counting as three-fifths of a man.
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Representation and the means of selecting representatives provided subjects which might have deadlocked the committee of the whole. The large states had their way as the small scrambled about trying to pull themselves together. The small did succeed in substituting election of the second house by state legislatures for the means recommended in the Virginia Plan -- election by the lower house.
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Although nothing appears in the notes of the debates, representation in Congress and election of its members must have been connected in the delegates' minds. If both houses were popularly elected, as James Wilson desired, the argument for apportioning representatives by population would be almost irresistible. Hence the debate over the selection of the lower house carried an extraordinary, though unspoken, meaning.

Roger Sherman of Connecticut almost made this meaning explicit in his opposition to popular election in the following sentence: "If it were in view to abolish the State Governments the elections ought to be by the people." In other words if the state governments were to be preserved they must elect the officers of the national government. Early in the Convention, Sherman also professed a strong animus against the people saying that they "should have as little to do as may be about the Government. They want information and are constantly liable to be misled." Later when the protection of state rights was not at stake, Sherman proved more sympathetic to popular control than these first statements suggest.
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Sherman's ally in opposing elections by the people, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, does not seem to have opposed such elections for Sherman's reasons. Gerry, who decried a leveling spirit, insisted simply that "The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy."
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The day after the committee of the whole reported its revision of the Virginia Plan, William Paterson of New Jersey stood up and asked for an adjournment of a day to allow several delegations time to offer a "purely federal" plan to the Convention. The Convention adjourned and the next day, June 15, when Paterson presented the New Jersey Plan, the meaning of "purely federal" became clear. Paterson's plan -the production of delegates from Delaware, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, as well as New Jersey -- included several provisions clearly borrowed from Virginia's proposals, but retained the essential structure

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of the old Confederation -- a Congress of one house in which the states were equally represented. The Congress would appoint a plural executive, and the executive would appoint a supreme court of rather limited jurisdiction. State equality remained the primary concern of New Jersey's delegation and of those from the other states that helped in composing the alternative to the Virginia Plan. These states did not object to a powerful central government -- the New Jersey Plan required that congressional statutes "and all Treaties made and ratified under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the respective states so far forth as those acts or treaties shall relate to the said states or their citizens." Should a state refuse to observe a statute or a treaty, the executive was empowered to compel its adherence. And the Congress would enjoy new powers, most notably to tax and to regulate commerce.
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The New Jersey Plan's first resolution described those that followed as measures which "revised, corrected and enlarged" the Articles of Confederation, a nice -- and wicked -- touch, lifted from Randolph's unamended plan. As an enlargement of the Articles, it would of course have to win the approval of the Congress and the state legislatures. There was nothing in the New Jersey Plan calculated to rouse democratic sympathies.

Paterson described his proposal in measured terms. It involved, be said, no violation of the people's trust; it "accorded with the powers of the Convention" and the "sentiments of the people." What Paterson meant in this part of his speech was that the Convention was approaching revolutionary action in approving the Virginia Plan with its fresh structure and its requirement that the new constitution receive popular ratification. His plan in contrast brought no threat to constitutionalism or public confidence.
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The committee of the whole listened and understood. In the next three days James Wilson compared the two plans and suggested that a legislature composed of only one house invited a "legislative despotism." "If the legislative authority be not restrained,"Wilson said, "there can be neither liberty nor stability; and it can only be restrained by dividing it within itself, into distinct and independent branches. In a single House there is no check, but the inadequate one, of the virtue and good sense of those who compose it." Wilson also took up Paterson's contention that the Virginia Plan exceeded the authority of the Convention by