After the vote was carried in favor of the legislative elections, GOVERNOR RANDOLPH moved to strike out the term of _seven years_, and make the senators go out in classes, as that body might possibly always sit, “perhaps, to aid the executive.” “The state governments will always attempt to counteract the general government.” Requiring that _body_, as a body, to act with _firmness_, does not imply the duty of a senator to resist his own state. The arrangement of _classes_ shows what is meant. That arrangement gave no facilities for disobedience to instructions, and hence could not contribute to their _firmness_ in that sense. But the arrangement in classes leaves the senate always ready to act—“it might possibly always sit”—“to aid the executive”—to act perhaps against a state which was attempting to counteract the general government, and the term of whose senators had expired, and which had refused to elect others. If all the senators had gone out at the same time there would have been none to act. GOVERNOR RANDOLPH had tried to make the _individual senators independent of their states_. Failing in this, he now tried to make the _body_ as firm and strongly permanent as he could, by not allowing all to go out at the same time. If his object had been thus to defeat the previous vote, and render the senators independent, his amendment would have been rejected. A similar struggle was again raised upon the question of paying the senators, the length of their term, and a power of recall, but the friends of the states, and federative principles yielded these minor points, believing themselves secure in the elections and instructions and equality of votes in the senate. The leaving the pay of senators to depend upon the states, was making the federal _government_ too degradingly dependent upon the states. Not to have power to pay its own officers, would have left it almost as powerless as the old confederation, and it was thought, too, that it would lead to federal corruption, and thus defeat its own object, by making senators look exclusively to the federal government for honor and emolument. This would have been an awkward and humiliating check upon the body, without giving much control over its members. The example of unpaid parliaments was quoted with effect. We learn, then, from the debates, that the convention meant the states to act _as states_ in the senate, in all respects as they had done under the confederation, except that the senator had power to make a law instead of a treaty, and his action was final without a subsequent ratification by his state. They never meant to change, in any degree, the state power of directing him.