ifty years from that time,
whereat Gorham of Massachusetts laughed to scorn the idea that any
system of government they could devise in that room could possibly last
a hundred and fifty years. The difficulty has been surmounted by
enlarging from time to time the basis of representation. It now seemed
inadvisable that the senators should be chosen by the lower house out of
persons nominated by the state legislatures; and it was accordingly
decided that they should be not merely nominated, but elected, by the
state legislatures. Thus the Senate was made quite independent of the
lower house. At the same time, the senators were to vote as individuals,
and thus the old practice of voting by states, except in certain
peculiar emergencies, was finally done away with.

[Sidenote: It was a decisive victory for Madison's scheme.]

[Sidenote: Irreconcilables go home.]

It is seldom, if ever, that a political compromise leaves things evenly
balanced. Almost every such arrangement, when once set working, weighs
down the scales decidedly to the one side or the other. The Connecticut
compromise was really a decisive victory for Madison and his party,
although it modified the Virginia plan so considerably. They could well
afford to defer to the fears and prejudices of the smaller states in the
structure of the Senate, for by securing a lower house, which
represented the American people, and not the American states, they won
the whole battle in so far as the question of radically reforming the
government was concerned. As soon as the foundation was thus laid for a
government which should act directly upon individuals, it obviously
became necessary to abandon the articles of confederation, and work out
a new constitution in all its details. The plan, as now reported,
omitted the obnoxious adjective "national," and spoke of the _federal_
legislature and _federal_ courts. But to the men who were still blindly
wedded to the old confederation this soothing change of phraseology did
not conceal their defeat. On the very day that the compromise was
favourably reported by the committee, Yates and Lansing quit the
convention in disgust, and went home to New York. After the departure of
these uncongenial colleagues, Hamilton might have acted with power, had
he not known too well that the sentiment of his state did not support
him. As a mere individual he could do but little, and accordingly he
went home for a while to attend to pressing busines