As the States were now exactly divided on the question whether there should be an equality of votes in the second branch of the legislature, some compromise seemed to be necessary, or the effort to make a constitution must be abandoned. A conversation as to what was expedient to be done, resulted in the appointment of a committee of one member from each State, to devise and report some mode of adjusting the whole system of representation.[86] According to the Virginia plan, as it then stood before the Convention, the right of suffrage in both branches was to be upon some equitable ratio, in proportion to the whole number of free inhabitants in each State, to which three fifths of all other persons, except Indians not paying taxes, were to be added. Nothing had been done, to fix the ratio of representation; and although the principle of popular representation had been affirmed by a majority of the Convention as to the first branch, it had been rejected as to the second by an equally divided vote of the States. The whole subject, therefore, was now sent to a committee of compromise, who held it under consideration for three days.[87] The same struggle which had been carried on in the Convention was renewed in the committee; the one side contending for an inequality of suffrage in both branches, the other for an equality in both. Dr. Franklin at length gave way, and proposed that the representation in the first branch should be according to a fixed ratio of the inhabitants of each State, computed according to the rule already agreed upon, and that in the second branch each State should have an equal vote. The members of the larger States reluctantly acquiesced in this arrangement; the members of the smaller States, with one or two exceptions, considered their point gained. When the report came to be made, it was found that the committee had not only agreed upon this as a compromise, but that they had made a distinction of some importance between the powers of the two branches, by confining to the first branch the power of originating all bills for raising or appropriating money and for fixing the salaries of officers of the government, and by providing that such bills should not be altered or amended in the second branch. This was intended for a concession by the smaller States to the larger.[88] The ratio of representation in the House was fixed by the committee at one member for every forty thousand inhabitants, in which three fifths of the slaves were to be computed; each State not possessing that number of inhabitants to be allowed one member. The number of senators was not designated.