It was intended that the national
legislature, in imitation of the state legislatures, should have an
upper house or senate; and at first the advocates of a strong national
government proposed that the senate also should represent population,
thus differing from the lower house only in the way in which we have
seen that it generally differed in the several states. But it happened
that in the state of Connecticut the custom was peculiar. There it
had always been the custom to elect the governor and upper house by a
majority vote of the whole people, while for each township there was
an equality of representation In the lower house. The Connecticut
delegates in the Convention, therefore, being familiar with a
legislature in which the two houses were composed on different
principles, suggested a compromise. Let the House of Representatives,
they said, represent the people, and let the Senate represent the
states; let all the states, great and small, be represented equally
in the federal Senate. Such was the famous "Connecticut Compromise."
Without it the Convention would probably have broken up without
accomplishing anything. When it was adopted, half the work of making
the new government was done, for the small states, having had their
fears thus allayed by the assurance that they were to be equally
represented in the Senate, no longer opposed the work but cooperated
in it most zealously.
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