The five larger States had a population that was nearly twice as great as the remaining eight States.  Thus Virginia’s population was nearly ten-fold as great as Georgia.  Moreover, the States differed greatly in their material wealth and power.  Nevertheless, all of them entered the convention as independent sovereign nations, and the smaller nations contended that the equality in suffrage and political power which prevailed in the convention (in which each State, large or small, voted as a unit), should and must be preserved in the future government.  To this the larger States were quite unwilling to yield, and when the committee rose they reported, in substance, the Virginia plan, with the proviso that representation in the proposed double-chambered Congress should be “according to some equitable ratio of representation.”

On June 15 the small States presented their draft, which was afterwards known as the New Jersey plan, because it was introduced by Mr. Patterson of that State.  It only contemplated an amendment to the existing Constitution and an amplification of the powers of the impotent Confederation.  Its chief advance over the existing government was that it provided for a federal executive and a federal judiciary, but otherwise the government remained a mere league of States, in which the central government could generally act only by the vote of nine States, and in which their power was exhausted when they requested the States to enforce the decrees.  Its chief advance over the Articles of Confederation, in addition to the creation of an executive, was an assertion that the acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the respective States ... and that the judiciary of the several States shall be bound thereby in their decisions,” and that “if any State or any body of men in any State shall oppose or prevent the carrying into execution of such acts or treaties the federal executive shall be authorized to call forth the power of the confederated States ... to enforce and compel obedience to such acts or an observance of such treaties.”

While this was some advance toward a truly national government, it yet left the national executive dependent upon the constituent States, for if they failed to respond to the call above stated the national government had no direct power over their citizens.

The New Jersey plan precipitated a crisis, and thereafter, and for many days, the argument proceeded, only to increase in bitterness.

On June 18 Alexander Hamilton, who agreed with no one else, addressed the convention for the first time.  He spoke for five hours and reviewed exhaustively the Virginia and New Jersey plans, and possibly the Pinckney draft.  Even the fragment of the speech, as taken in long-hand by Madison, shows that it was a masterly argument.  He stated his belief “that the British Government was the best in the world and that he doubted much whether anything short of it would do in America.”  He praised the British