Sherman, in Committee
of the Whole, moved August 1, 1776, that the vote be taken
both ways, once according to numbers, and a second time, when
the States should vote as equals.

This was, in substance, so far as the arrangement of political
power was concerned, the plan of the Constitution. In the
Constitutional Convention, Mr. Sherman first moved this plan,
known as the Connecticut Compromise, and made the first argument
in its support, to which his colleague, Oliver Ellsworth,
afterward gave the weight of his powerful influence. The
Convention afterward, almost in despair of any settlement
of this vexed question, referred the matter to a grand committee,
on which Mr. Ellsworth was originally named. But he withdrew
from the committee, and Mr. Sherman took his place. Mr.
Sherman had the parliamentary charge of the matter from the
beginning, and at the close of the Convention, moved the provision
that no State should be deprived of its equal vote without
its consent.

When Mr. Sherman's known tenacity, and his influence over
the great men with whom he was associated, testified to by
so many of them, is borne in mind, it seems there can be no
doubt that he is entitled to the chief credit of carrying
out the scheme which he himself devised, and which, years
before the Convention met, he himself first moved in the
Continental Congress for which he made the first argument,
and which was reported from the committee of which he was
a member, representing the State which gave the name to the
Compromise. His motion, which was adopted, that no State
should be deprived of its equal vote in the Senate without
its consent, made the equality secure.*

[Footnote]
* See Boutell's "Life of Roger Sherman," Lodge's "Flying Frigate,
--Address on Ellsworth," Proceedings Am. Ant. Soc., October, 1902.
[End of Footnote]

_Second:_ In 1774, when Mr. Adams was on his way to the
Continental Congress in Philadelphia, he records in his diary
that he met Roger Sherman at New Haven, who, he says, "is
a solid and sensible man." Mr. Sherman said to him that he
thought the Massachusetts patriots, especially Mr. Otis,
in his argument for the Writs of Assistance, had given up
the whole case when they admitted that Parliament had the
power to legislate for the Colonies under any circumstances
whatever. He lived to join in the report from the committee,
and to sign the Declaration of Independence, which put the
case on his ground. The D