The origin of the number of senators and of the method of voting forms an interesting and important topic, to which our inquiries should now be directed. We have already seen that, in the formation of the Virginia plan of government, as it was digested in the committee of the whole, the purpose was entertained, and was once sanctioned by a bare majority of the States, of giving to both branches of the legislature a proportional representation of the respective populations of the States; and that the sole difference between the two chambers then contemplated was to be in the mode of election. But in the actual situation of the different members of the confederacy, it was a necessary consequence of such a representation, that the Senate would be made by it inconveniently large, whether the members were to be elected by the legislatures, the executives, or the people of the States. It would, in fact, have made the first Senate to consist of eighty or a hundred persons, in order to have entitled the State of Delaware to a single member. This inconvenience was pointed out at an early period, by Rufus King;[160] but it did not prevent the adoption of this mode of representation. On the one side of that long contested question were those who desired to found the whole system of representation, as between the States, upon their relative numbers of inhabitants. On the other side were those who insisted upon an absolute equality between the States. But among the former there was a great difference of opinion as to the best mode of choosing the senators,--whether they should be elected by the people in districts, by the legislatures or the executives of the States, or by the other branch of the national legislature. So strongly, however, were some of the members even from the most populous States impressed with the necessity of preserving the State governments in some connection with the national system, that, while they insisted on a proportional representation in the Senate, they were ready to concede to the State legislatures the choice of its members, leaving the difficulty arising from the magnitude of the body to be encountered as it might be.[161] The delegates of the smaller States accepted this concession, in the belief that the impracticability of constructing a convenient Senate in this mode would compel an abandonment of the principle of unequal representation, and would require the substitution of the equality for which they contended.