These provisions were not only necessary in the actual situation of the States, but they were also in harmony with the great purpose of the representative system that had been agreed upon as the basis of one branch of the legislative power. In that branch the people of each State were to be represented; but they were to remain the people of a distinct community, whose modes of exercising the right of self-government would be peculiar to themselves; and that would obviously be the most successful representation of such a people in a national assembly, which most conformed itself to their habits and customs in the organization of their own legislative bodies. Accordingly, although very strenuous efforts were made to introduce into the Constitution of the United States particular theories with regard to popular suffrage,--some of the members being in favor of one restriction and some of another,--the rule which referred the right in each State to its domestic law was sustained by a large majority of the Convention. But the power that was given, by unanimous consent, over the subject of naturalization, shows the strong purpose that was entertained of vesting in the national authority an efficient practical control over the States in respect to the political rights to be conceded to persons not natives of the country.[133] As we have already seen, the committee of detail had been instructed to report qualifications of property and citizenship for the members of every department of the government. But they found the subject so embarrassing, that they contented themselves with providing that the legislature of the United States should have authority to establish such uniform qualifications for the members of each house, with regard to property, as they might deem expedient.[134] They introduced, however, into their draft of a Constitution, an express provision that every member of the House of Representatives should be of the age of twenty-five years at least, should have been a citizen of the United States for at least three years before his election, and should be, at the time of his election, a resident in the State in which he might be chosen.[135]