At an early period in the deliberations, when the outline of the Constitution was prepared in a committee of the whole, a proposition was brought forward to restrain the Senate from originating money bills, upon the ground that the House would be the body in which the people would be the most directly represented, and in order to give effect to the maxim which declares that the people should hold the purse-strings. The suggestion was immediately encountered by a general denial of all analogy between the English House of Lords and the body proposed to be established as the American Senate. In truth, as the construction of the Senate then stood in the resolutions agreed to in the committee of the whole, the supposed reason for the restriction in England would have been inapplicable; for it had been voted that the representation in the Senate should be upon the same proportionate rule as that of the House, although the members of the former were to be chosen by the legislatures, and the members of the latter by the people, of the States. It was rightly said, therefore, at this time, that the Senate would represent the people as well as the House; and that if the reason in England for confining the power to originate money bills to the House of Commons was that they were the immediate representatives of the people, the reason had no application to the two branches proposed for the Congress of the United States.[146] It was however admitted, that, if the representation in the Senate should not finally be made a proportionate representation of the people of the several States, there might be a cause for introducing this restriction.[147] This intimation referred to a reason that subsequently became very prominent. But when first proposed, the restriction was rejected in the committee by a vote of seven States against three; there being nothing involved in the question at that time excepting the theoretical merits of such a distinction between the powers of the two houses.[148]