=The Work of the Convention of 1787.=--When the convention had been duly organized, "plans" of a proposed constitution were submitted by the delegations of several states, and these became the bases of the discussion which followed. _The Virginia Plan._--The plan submitted by the Virginia delegation represented the views of delegates from the larger and more populous states, and the Constitution as finally adopted embodied more largely the features of this plan than those of any other. The most important resolution of this plan was that a national government ought to be established consisting of a supreme legislative, judiciary, and executive. This resolution, adopted in committee of the whole, went directly to the root of the chief evil of the existing system, which contained no provision for an executive or a judicial department. It recognized also what has come to be a fundamental doctrine of American political science, namely, the separation of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions. _The New Jersey Plan._--The views of delegates from the small states were embodied in the New Jersey plan, which was laid before the convention by William Paterson. In general, the New Jersey plan provided for the retention of the principal features of the existing system, except that it proposed to enlarge the powers of Congress so as to make its authority more effective. This was all, in the judgment of the small states, that was necessary to remove the existing evils. _The Problem of Representation in Congress._--The convention without much discussion decided that Congress should consist of two chambers or houses instead of one as was the case under the Articles of Confederation. This done, the next problem was to determine the basis of representation in each. This proved to be one of the most difficult tasks of the convention. The delegates from the large states insisted that representation in both houses should be based on population, so that a state such as Virginia with sixteen times the population of Georgia should have sixteen times as many representatives in Congress. But to this system of proportional representation, the delegates from the small states objected. They maintained that the importance of a state was not to be measured by its population; that the states were sovereign political entities, and when it came to participation in the government of the nation they were all equal, large and small alike. There was no more reason, said a delegate from one of the small states, why a large state should have more representation in Congress than that a large man should have more votes than a small man. For a time the differences seemed irreconcilable, and more than once it looked as if the convention would be disrupted on this question. The spirit of compromise triumphed, however, and it was finally agreed that the states should be represented equally in the senate but in proportion to their population in the house of representatives.