1787] Randolph and Paterson resolutions. 247 resolved itself into a committee of the whole House, to consider the state of the American Union, and referred the resolutions to that committee. On the same day Charles Pinckney laid before the Con- vention a draft, in specific form and detail, of a Federal Constitution, founded upon the same principles. This too was referred to the committee; but no further official action was taken in regard to it. The committee now proceeded to take up and consider, one by one, clause by clause, step by step, the Randolph resolutions, until they were all disposed of. On June 13 the committee rose and reported the result, in nineteen resolutions substantially founded upon those offered by Randolph. The resolutions originally drawn, and those now reported, were directed, not merely to amending defects in the Articles of Confederation, but to the formation of a new government radically different, and designated in the report as a " national government." Opportunity was now given for presenting other plans; and on June 15 what were known as the Paterson or New Jersey resolutions were read. The resolutions reported were now recommitted, that they might be considered again along with those brought before the com- mittee by Paterson. Paterson's resolutions, which, instead of providing for a new form of government, proposed no more than certain amend- ments to the Articles of Confederation, were set up against those which the committee had reported. The first resolution contained the key- note, as indeed did, in intent if not in terms, the first of the resolutions of the report. The "national government " of the report was under- stood by all to mean a government unlike the Confederation, a government indeed such as actually came to pass. In contrast with that idea, the Paterson plan, in its first resolution, declared "that the Articles of Confederation ought to be so revised, corrected, and enlarged, as to render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union." The resolutions of the committee, calling for a "national govern- ment," had been supported by the larger States, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, with the help of States further south which were expecting to take higher rank in population in the near future. The Paterson resolutions, proposing what was called a "purely federal " plan, were the work of the smaller States, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and to some extent Maryland, uniting however upon different grounds. Connecticut and New York were opposed to any radical departure from the Confederation; while New Jersey and Delaware opposed a " national government " chiefly because proportional representation was likely to go with it, whereby they would lose rank at any rate. The general difference between the two plans may be shortly stated thus. By the first plan there were to be two branches of the legislature ; by the second, there was to be only one. By the first, there was to be CH. VIII.
