If we look further, and see how the Senatorial equality of States obtained recognition in the Constitution, we shall find new occasion to admire that facility which has accorded to this concession so powerful an influence; and here the record is explicit. The National Convention had hardly assembled, when the small States came forward with their pretensions. Not content with suffrage in the Senate, they insisted upon equal suffrage in the House of Representatives. They had in their favor the rule of the Continental Congress, and also of the Confederation, under which each State enjoyed one vote. Assuming to be independent sovereignties, they had likewise in their favor the rule of International Law. Against these pretensions the large States pleaded the simple rule of justice; and here the best minds concurred. On this head the debates of the Convention are interesting. At an early day we find Mr. Madison moving “that the equality of suffrage established by the Articles of Confederation ought not to prevail in the _National_ Legislature.”[222] This proposition, so consistent with reason, was seconded by Gouverneur Morris, and, according to the report, “being generally relished,” was about being adopted, when Delaware, by one of her voices on the floor, protested, saying, that, in case it were adopted, “it might become the duty of her deputies to retire from the Convention.”[223] Such was the earliest cry of Secession. Gouverneur Morris, while observing that the valuable assistance of those members could not be lost without real concern, gave his testimony, that “the change proposed was so fundamental an article in a _National_ Government that it could not be dispensed with.”[224] Mr. Madison followed, saying, very justly, that, “whatever reason might have existed for the equality of suffrage when the Union was a Federal one _among sovereign States_, it must cease when a _National_ government should be put into the place.”[225] Franklin, in similar spirit, reminded the Convention that the equal suffrage of the States “was submitted to originally by Congress under a conviction of its impropriety, inequality, and injustice.”[226] This is strong language from the wise old man, but very true. Elbridge Gerry, after depicting the States as “intoxicated with the idea of their sovereignty,” said that “the injustice of allowing each State an equal vote was long insisted on. He voted for it; but it was against his judgment, and under the pressure of public danger and the obstinacy of the lesser States.”[227] Against these overwhelming words of Madison, Morris, Franklin, and Gerry, the delegates from Delaware pleaded nothing more than that, without an equal suffrage, “Delaware would have about one ninetieth for its share in the general councils, whilst Pennsylvania and Virginia would possess one third of the whole”;[228] and New Jersey, by her delegates, pleaded also “that it would not be safe for Delaware to allow Virginia sixteen times as many votes” as