man and myself do not agree. The committee of details recommend an equality in the Senate. In addition to this, it was proposed that every forty thousand should send one representative to the general legislature. Sir, if it was a system of accommodation, and to remain untouched, how came that number afterwards to be reduced to thirty thousand?
Mr. Hamilton. I recollect well the alteration which the gentleman alludes to; but it by no means militates against my idea of the principles on which the Convention acted, at the time the report of the committee was under deliberation. This alteration did not take place till the Convention was near rising, and the business completed; when his excellency, the president, expressing a wish that the number should be reduced to thirty thousand, it was agreed to without opposition.
ⅭⅭⅩⅨ. Debate in the New York Convention.[1]
Hon. Mr. Lansing … I believe it was undoubtedly the intention of the framers of this Constitution to make the lower house the proper, peculiar representative of the interests of the people; the Senate, of the sovereignty of the states. … Now, if it was the design of the plan to make the Senate a kind of bulwark to the independence of the states, and a check to the encroachments of the general government, certainly the members of this body ought to be peculiarly under the control, and in strict subordination to the state who delegated them. … The idea of rotation has been taken from the articles of the old Confederation. …
Hon. Mr. Hamilton … Sir, the main design of the Convention, in forming the Senate, was to prevent fluctuations and cabals. With this view, they made that body small, and to exist for a considerable period.
ⅭⅭⅩⅩ. Edmund Randolph in the Virginia Convention.[2]
Governor Randolph.—Mr. Chairman—One parting word I humbly supplicate.
The suffrage which I shall give in favor of the constitution, will be ascribed by malice to motives unknown to my breast, But although for every other act of my life, I shall seek refuge in the mercy
