Great inequalities existed, as they still exist, between the different members of the confederacy, not only in the actual numbers of their inhabitants, and their present wealth, but in their capacity and opportunity of growth. Virginia, with a population fourteen times as large, had a territorial extent of thirty times the size of Delaware. Pennsylvania had nearly seven times as many people as Rhode Island, and nearly forty times as much territory. The State of Georgia numbered a little more than a third as many people, but her territory was nearly twelve times as large as the territory of Connecticut. The four leading States, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Massachusetts, had an obvious motive for seeking the establishment of a government founded on a proportionate representation of their respective populations. The States of South Carolina and Georgia had generally acted with them in the formation of the Virginia plan; and these six States thus constituted the majority by which the principle of what was called a "national," in distinction from a "federal" government, had been steadily pressed to the conclusions arrived at in the committee of the whole, and now embraced in its report.[64] All but two of them were certain to remain slaveholding States; but in the adoption of numbers as the basis of representative influence in the government, they all had a common interest, which led them for the present to act together.[65] At the head of the minority, or the States which desired a government of federal equality, stood the State of New York, then the fifth State in the Union. She was represented by Alexander Hamilton, Robert Yates, and John Lansing, Junior. The two latter uniformly acted together, and of course controlled the vote of the State. Hamilton's vote being thus neutralized, his influence on the action of the Convention extended no farther than the weight and importance attached to his arguments by those who listened to them.