Still, the resolution under consideration contained a feature which wisely provided for the assent of the existing Congress to the changes that were to be made by the establishment of the new system. It proposed that the plan of the new Constitution should be first submitted to Congress for its approbation, and that the legislatures of the States should then recommend to the people to institute assemblies to consider and decide on its adoption. These steps were to be taken, in pursuance of the course marked out when the Convention was called. The resolution of Congress, which recommended the Convention, required that the alterations which it might propose should be "agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States"; and such was the tenor of the instructions given to the delegates of most of the States. This direction would be substantially complied with, if the legislatures, on receiving and considering the system, should recommend to the people to appoint representative bodies to consider and decide on its adoption, and the people should so adopt and ratify it.[121] The topics covered by the report of the committee of the whole had thus been passed upon in the Convention, and the outline of the Constitution had been framed. There remained only three subjects on which it would be necessary to act in order to provide for a complete scheme of government. It was necessary to determine the number of senators to which each State should be entitled; to ascertain the qualifications of members of the government; and to determine at what place the government should be seated. The number of senators was not agreed upon at the time when the principle of an equal representation of the States in the Senate was adopted; and it had not been determined in what method they were to vote. It was now settled that the Senate should consist of two members from each branch, and that they should vote _per capita_. To this arrangement one State only dissented. The vote of Maryland was given against it, through the influence of Luther Martin, who considered this method of voting a departure from the idea of the States being represented in the Senate. But this objection was obviously unsound; for although, by this method of voting, the influence of a State _may_ be divided, its members have the _power_ to concur, and to make the vote of the State more effectual than it would be if it had only a single suffrage.