It was very different with the question as to the federal executive. Upon this point the discussions were guided rather by general speculations as to what would be most likely to work well, and accordingly they wandered far and wide. Some of the delegates seemed to think we should sooner or later come to adopt a hereditary monarchy, and that the chief thing to be done was to postpone the event as long as possible. Many wild ideas were broached: such, for example, as a triple-headed executive, to represent the eastern, middle, and southern states, somewhat as associated Roman emperors at times administered affairs in the different portions of an undivided empire. The Virginia plan had not stated whether its proposed executive was to be single or plural, because the Virginia delegates could not agree. Madison wished it to be single, to insure greater efficiency, but to Randolph and Mason a tyranny seemed to lurk in such an arrangement. When James Wilson and Charles Pinckney suggested that the executive power should be intrusted into the hands of one man, a profound silence fell upon the convention. No one spoke for several minutes, until Washington, from the chair, asked if he should put the question. Franklin then got up, and said it was an interesting subject, and he should like to hear what the members had to say; and so the ball was set rolling. Rutledge said there was no need of their being so shy. A man might frankly express his opinions, and afterwards change them if he saw good reason for so doing. For his part, he was in favour of vesting the executive power in a single person, to secure efficiency of administration and concentration of responsibility; but he would not give him the power to declare war and make peace. Sherman then made the far-reaching suggestion, that the executive magistracy was really "nothing more than an institution for carrying the will of the legislature into effect; that the person or persons ought to be appointed by and accountable to the legislature only, which was the depository of the supreme will of the society. As they were the best judges of the business which ought to be done by the executive department, ... he wished the number might not be fixed, but that the legislature should be at liberty to appoint one or more, as experience might dictate." It would greatly have astonished the convention had they been told that this suggestion of Sherman's was a move in the very same line of development which the British government had been following for more than half a century; yet such, as we shall presently see, was the case. Had this point been understood then as we understand it now, the proceedings of the convention could not have failed to be profoundly affected by it. As it was, the suggestion did not receive due attention, and the stream of discussion was turned into a very different channel. Wilson argued powerfully in favour of a single chief magistrate, and this view finally prevailed.