, considering the delegates' credentials, and adopting rules of
procedure; and when these necessary preliminaries had been accomplished
the main business was opened with the presentation by the Virginia
delegation of a series of resolutions providing for radical changes
in the machinery of the Confederation. The principal features were the
organization of a legislature of two houses proportional to population
and with increased powers, the establishment of a separate executive,
and the creation of an independent judiciary. This was in reality
providing for a new government and was probably quite beyond the ideas
of most of the members of the Convention, who had come there under
instructions and with the expectation of revising the Articles of
Confederation. But after the Virginia Plan had been the subject of
discussion for two weeks so that the members had become a little more
accustomed to its proposals, and after minor modifications had been made
in the wording of the resolutions, the Convention was won over to its
support. To check this drift toward radical change the opposition headed
by New Jersey and Connecticut presented the so-called New Jersey
Plan, which was in sharp contrast to the Virginia Resolutions, for it
contemplated only a revision of the Articles of Confederation, but after
a relatively short discussion, the Virginia Plan was adopted by a vote
of seven States against four, with one State divided.

The dividing line between the two parties or groups in the Convention
had quickly manifested itself. It proved to be the same line that had
divided the Congress of the Confederation, the cleavage between the
large States and the small States. The large States were in favor
of representation in both houses of the legislature according to
population, while the small States were opposed to any change which
would deprive them of their equal vote in Congress, and though outvoted,
they were not ready to yield. The Virginia Plan, and subsequently the
New Jersey Plan, had first been considered in committee of the whole,
and the question of "proportional representation," as it was then
called, would accordingly come up again in formal session. Several weeks
had been occupied by the proceedings, so that it was now near the end of
June, and in general the discussions had been conducted with remarkably
good temper. But it was evidently the calm before the storm. And the
issue was finally joined when the question of repre