The power of the General Court--this jumble of legislative, executive, and judicial--worked well so long as the community consisted of a few hundred or a few thousand souls with little diversity of sentiment or industrial interest. It was not until the last quarter of the eighteenth century that the inefficiency of the "first written constitution" began to be felt. Then there arose the need of a new constitution to modify the body of laws and customs that had grown up; to destroy much of the erroneous legislation that in effect perverted or nullified their original intent; and to furnish a constitutional basis for the government of a larger and less homogeneous people. Here and there a few thoughtful men, irrespective of their church or party, were beginning to apprehend the difficulty of piloting a democratic state under the old royal charter. The more prominent among them belonged to the Anti-Federal party, and naturally they sought to expose the constitutional difficulties which they believed impeded progress. [b] One of the earliest party tilts grew out of the increase of new towns and the unequal development of some of the older ones. Then as now, though on a much smaller scale, the unit of town representation threatened rotten boroughs and a fictitious representation of the will of the majority as represented by the delegates to the Lower House. The state in 1786 had not recovered from the exhaustion due to the Revolutionary War, and the support of the many new deputies, due to the increase of the towns, was a burden which the October legislation of that year attempted to lighten. With the object of cutting down state expenses a bill was introduced into the House to refer to the freemen some proposition for reducing the number of their delegates and for equalizing representation. Mr. James Davenport of Stamford moved to substitute for the bill [c] another in which this reduction should be made by the legislature without submitting the proposed change to the freemen. This was objected to on the ground that a reduction of delegates was a constitutional question, "the Assembly having no right to alter the representation without authority given by their constituents." The supporters of the bill contended with Mr. Davenport that-- _we have no Constitution_ but the laws of the State. The _Charter is not the Constitution_. By the Revolution _that_ was abrogated. A law of the State gave a subsequent sanction to that which was before of no force; if that law be valid, any alteration made by a later act will also be valid; if not, we have no Constitution, so defined, as to preclude the Legislature from exercising _any_ power necessary for the good of the people.