Having now reached that stage in the process of framing the Constitution at which certain principles were confided to a committee of detail, the reader will now have an opportunity to observe the farther development and application of those principles, the mode in which certain chasms in the system were supplied, and the final arrangements which produced the complete instrument that was submitted to the people of the United States for their adoption. Great power was necessarily confided to a committee, to whom was intrusted the first choice of means and of terms that were to give practical effect to the principles embraced in the resolutions of the Convention. There might be a substantial compliance with the intentions previously indicated by the debates and votes of the Convention, and at the same time the mode in which those intentions should be carried out by the committee might require a new consideration of the subjects involved. Hence it is important to pursue the growth of the Constitution through the entire proceedings. The committee of detail presented their report on the 6th of August, in the shape of a Constitution divided into three-and-twenty Articles. It is not my purpose to examine this instrument in the precise order of its various provisions, or to describe all the discussions which took place upon its minute details. It is more consonant with the general purpose of this history, to group together the different features of the Constitution which relate to the structure and powers of the different departments and to the fundamental purposes of the new government.[130] In accordance with the previous decisions of the Convention, the committee of detail had provided that the legislative power of the United States should be vested in a Congress, to consist of two branches, a House of Representatives and a Senate, each of which should have a negative on the other. But as to the persons by whom the members of the national legislature were to be appointed, no decision had been made in the Convention, excepting that the members of the House were to be chosen by the people of the States, and the members of the Senate by their legislatures. Nothing had been settled respecting the qualifications of the electors of representatives; nor had the qualifications of the members of either branch been determined.[131] Two great questions, therefore, remained open; first, with what class of persons was the election of members of the popular branch of the legislature to be lodged; secondly, what persons were to be eligible to that and to the other branch. In substance, these questions resolved themselves into the inquiry, in whom was the power of governing America to be vested; for it is to be remembered that, according to a decision of the Convention not yet reversed, the national executive was to be chosen by the national legislature.