This plan proposed that the Articles of Confederation should be so revised and enlarged as to give to Congress certain additional powers, including a power to levy duties for purposes of revenue and the regulation of commerce. But it left the constitution of Congress as it was under the Confederation, and left also the old mode of discharging the national expenses, by means of requisitions on the States, changing only the rule of proportion from the basis of real property to that of free population. It contemplated an executive, to be elected by Congress, and a supreme judiciary to be appointed by the executive; leaving to the judiciaries of the States original cognizance of all cases arising under the laws of the Union, and confining the national judiciary to an appellate jurisdiction, except in the cases of impeachments of national officers. It proposed to secure obedience to the acts and regulations of Congress, by making them the supreme law of the States, and by authorizing the executive to employ the power of the confederated States against any State or body of men who might oppose or prevent their being carried into execution. The mover of this system[53] founded his opposition to the plan framed by the committee of the whole chiefly upon the want of power in the Convention to propose a change in the principle of the existing government. He argued, with much acuteness, that there was either a present confederacy of the States, or there was not; that if there was, it was one founded on the equal sovereignties of the States, and that it could be changed only by the consent of all; that as some of the States would not consent to the change proposed, it was necessary to adhere to the system of representation by States; and that a system of representation of the people of the States was inconsistent with the preservation of the State sovereignties. The answer made to this objection was, that although the States, in appointing their delegates to the Convention, had given them no express authority to change the principle of the existing constitution, yet that the Convention had been assembled at a great crisis in the affairs of the Union, as an experiment, to remedy the evils under which the country had long suffered from the defects of its general government; that whatever was necessary to the safety of the republic must, under such circumstances, be considered as within the implied powers of the Convention, especially as it was proposed to do nothing more than to recommend the changes which might be found necessary; and that although all might not assent to the changes that would be proposed, the dissentient States could not require the others to remain under a system that had completely failed, when they could form a new confederacy upon wiser and better principles.[54]