The eighteenth resolution, requiring the legislative, executive, and judicial officers of the States to be bound by oath to support the Articles of Union, was then extended to include the officers of the national government. The next subject that occurred in the order of the resolutions was that of the proposed ratification of the new system by the people of the States, acting through representative bodies to be expressly chosen for this purpose, instead of referring it for adoption to the legislatures of the States. As this is a subject on which very different theories are maintained, arising partly from different views of the historical facts, and as there are very different degrees of importance attached to the mode in which the framers of the Constitution provided for its establishment, it will be convenient here to state the position in which they found themselves at this period in their deliberations, the purposes which they had in view, and the steps which they took to accomplish their objects. They were engaged in preparing a new system of government, and in providing for its introduction. When they were first called together, the general purpose of the States may seem to have been confined to a mode of introducing changes in the fundamental compact of the Union, such as was provided for by the Articles of Confederation. But the Convention had found itself obliged, from the sheer necessities of the country, to go far beyond the Confederation, and to make a total change in the principle of the government. It became, therefore, necessary for them to provide a mode of enacting or establishing this change, which would commend itself to the confidence of the people, by its conformity with their previous ideas of constitutional action, and be at the same time consonant with reason and truth.