be
checked; and what then would prevent you from exercising it to our
destruction?... Sooner than be ruined, _there are foreign powers who
will take us by the hand_. I say this not to threaten or intimidate, but
that we should reflect seriously before we act." This language called
forth a rebuke from Rufus King. "I am concerned," said he, "for what
fell from the gentleman from Delaware,--_take a foreign power by the
hand!_ I am sorry he mentioned it, and I hope he is able to excuse it to
himself on the score of passion."

[Sidenote: The Connecticut compromise.]

The situation had become dangerous. "The convention," said Martin, "was
on the verge of dissolution, scarce held together by the strength of a
hair." When things were looking darkest, Oliver Ellsworth and Roger
Sherman suggested a compromise. "Yes," said Franklin, "when a joiner
wishes to fit two boards, he sometimes pares off a bit from both." The
famous Connecticut compromise led the way to the arrangement which was
ultimately adopted, according to which the national principle was to
prevail in the House of Representatives, and the federal principle in
the Senate. But at first the compromise met with little favour. Neither
party was willing to give way. "No compromise for us," said Luther
Martin. "You must give each state an equal suffrage, or our business is
at an end." "Then we are come to a full stop," said Roger Sherman. "I
suppose it was never meant that we should break up without doing
something." When the question as to allowing equality of suffrage to the
states in the Federal Senate was put to vote, the result was a tie.
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland--five
states--voted in the affirmative; Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
North Carolina, and South Carolina--five states--voted in the negative;
the vote of Georgia was divided and lost. It was Abraham Baldwin, a
native of Connecticut and lately a tutor in Yale College, a recent
emigrant to Georgia, who thus divided the vote of that state, and
prevented a decision which would in all probability have broken up the
convention. His state was the last to vote, and the house was hushed in
anxious expectation, when this brave and wise young man yielded his
private conviction to what he saw to be the paramount necessity of
keeping the convention together. All honour to his memory!

The moral effect of the tie vote was in favour of the Connecticut
compromise; for no one could