The situation had become dangerous. "The convention," said Martin, "was on the verge of dissolution, scarce held together by the strength of a hair." When things were looking darkest, Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman suggested a compromise. "Yes," said Franklin, "when a joiner wishes to fit two boards, he sometimes pares off a bit from both." The famous Connecticut compromise led the way to the arrangement which was ultimately adopted, according to which the national principle was to prevail in the House of Representatives, and the federal principle in the Senate. But at first the compromise met with little favour. Neither party was willing to give way. "No compromise for us," said Luther Martin. "You must give each state an equal suffrage, or our business is at an end." "Then we are come to a full stop," said Roger Sherman. "I suppose it was never meant that we should break up without doing something." When the question as to allowing equality of suffrage to the states in the Federal Senate was put to vote, the result was a tie. Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland--five states--voted in the affirmative; Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina--five states--voted in the negative; the vote of Georgia was divided and lost. It was Abraham Baldwin, a native of Connecticut and lately a tutor in Yale College, a recent emigrant to Georgia, who thus divided the vote of that state, and prevented a decision which would in all probability have broken up the convention. His state was the last to vote, and the house was hushed in anxious expectation, when this brave and wise young man yielded his private conviction to what he saw to be the paramount necessity of keeping the convention together. All honour to his memory!