Propriety, therefore, requires that we attentively examine the constitution itself, not only to obtain correct ideas upon these observations, so repeatedly urged, but to place in the proper light the operations and effects of the resolution in debate. If we attend to the constitution, we shall immediately find evident marks of concession and compromise, and that the parties to these concessions were the great and small States. And the members of the convention who formed the instrument have, in private information and public communications, united in the declaration, that the constitution was the result of concession and compromise between the great and small States. In this examination of the constitution it will be impossible to keep out of view our political relations under the first confederation. We primarily united upon the footing of complete State equality--each State had one, and no State had more than one vote in the Federal Council or Congress. With such a confederation we successfully waged war, and became an independent nation. When we were relieved from the pressure of war, that confederation, both in structure and power, was found inadequate to the purposes for which it was established. Under these circumstances, the States, by their convention, entered into a new agreement, upon principles better adapted to promote their mutual security and happiness. But this last agreement, or constitution, under which we are now united, was manifestly carved out of the first confederation. The small States adhered tenaciously to the principles of State equality; and gave up only a part of that federative principle, complete State equality, and that with evident caution and reluctance. To this federative principle they were attached by habit; and their attachment was sanctioned and corroborated by the example of most if not all the ancient and the modern confederacies. And when the great States claimed a weight in the councils of the nation proportionate to their numbers and wealth, the novelty of the claim, as well as its obvious tendency to reduce the sovereignty of the small States, must have produced serious obstacles to its admission. Hence it is, that we find in the constitution but one entire departure from the federal principle. The House of Representatives is established upon the popular principle, and given to numbers and wealth, or to the great States, which, in this view of the subject, are synonymous. It was thought, by the convention, that a consolidation of the States into one simple Republic would be improper. And the local feelings and jealousies of all, but more especially of the small States, rendered a consolidation impracticable. The Senate, who have the power of a legislative check upon the House of Representatives, and many other extensive and important powers, is preserved as an entire federative feature of Government as it was enjoyed by the small States, under the first confederacy.