An Essay On The Virginia Plan

The New Jersey plan, which favored the small states, stated that each state should be represented equally in the legislature. In other words, population doesn’t matter. A compromise was put forth that attempted to appease the small and big states.

The Virginia plan suggested that there should be two branches in the national government:

How the Virginia Plan and New Jersey Plan Effected Representation The idea of equal representation has been debated many times throughout the history of mankind. But equal representation is often not feasible without compromise which is exactly what happened in Philadelphia in the year 1787. The representation that was being questioned was how the small and large states could both be represented equally, and it is not shocked that both the small and large states had a plan of how the representation should work. “The one plan was federal, the other national,” (105)

The Virginia Plan was a huge part in forming the constitution we have today. Without it, we may not even have our government. Many others did not like the Virginia Plan because it would provide a too weak of a government. The Virginia Plan was brought in to the convention to revise and edit to form the basis of our government. It stated that there would be three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.

The authors of the Constitution created a balance between federal and state government by creating federalism or a division of powers with checks and balances while maintaining the separation of powers. That being said, the Virginia Plan of having every state hold a two-house legislature was debated against the New Jersey Plan that entailed a single house Congress (Foner, 2014). The end result was a two-house Congress in which each state could then have two senate members that are required to serve for one term of six years and a House of Representatives in which member were elected directly by the people every two years. This system made sure that each population was represented equally despite one state being larger than the other (Foner,

These men being known as the founding fathers The Virginia plan was to create a government consisted of what Edmond Randolph proposed that the national government be compiled of a supreme, legislative, executive and judiciary. It was also consisted of 2 houses. The lower house would represent states with the largest population. The members of the upper house would be elected by the lower house making the smaller states have little or no representation in the upper house at all.

In May 25, 1787, a convention was called in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to express the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation. However, the intention from many delegates was to draft a new constitution; create a new government rather than fix the existing one. Rhode Island was the only one of the 13 original states to refuse to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention. At the Convention, the first issues they had to address was the representation in Congress.

At the of general laws of government Convention 1, there were 2 main proposals to answer the question. one proposal, called the Virginia map called for a stronger of the nation government because the people did not see beforehand the many problems they would have under the a, an, the of group united by agreement (medical man 4). Small states feared this map because they thought that the of the nation government and greatly sized states would have too much power. Another statement called the New Jersey map called for an of the nation government that would only have a few more powers than it did under the a, an, the of group united by agreement. This statement was immediately put back (not desired) because the delegates were meeting because they wanted a stronger of the nation government.

It included a Bicameral Legislature and according to Document 2, “Gave representation based on population in the lower chamber and gave states equal representation in the upper chamber”. It also combined both of the Virginia Plan’s interests and New Jersey Plan’s

The plan proposed by Virginia otherwise known as the “large-state plan.” Which proposed “a bicameral legislature, in which the lower house would be elected proportionately and the upper house would be selected from a list of nominees sent from the state legislatures on the basis of equal representation for the states. ”(add footnote) As the smaller states feared that this plan would lose a voice in the federal government if they continued with the Virginia plan, they opposed this plan and came up with one for themselves which would be known as the “small-state plan.” The small-state plan would propose “a unicameral Congress, with equal representation for each state, with all the powers of the Confederation Congress.

The New Jersey Plan was one option in the matter of how the United States would be spoken to. The Plan required each state to have one vote in Congress as opposed to the amount of votes being established on people. This was to secure the equalization of the states paying little regard to people size. The New Jersey Plan was familiar with the Constitutional Convention by William Paterson, a New Jersey delegate, on June 15, 1787. The Constitutional Convention was met to change the Articles of Confederation, yet it got the chance to be apparent that another governing body would ought to be made.

Claim A: Under the Virginia Plan, the population would determine representation in each of the two houses of Congress. Claim B: Delegates from less-populous states wanted to amend the Articles of Confederation to protect their equal standing, which would preserve each

Obviously, smaller states were not pleased with that plan. They thought that larger states could easily overrule them in congress. So William Paterson created a plan called the New Jersey Plan. It as well had the same three branches but, the plan provided legislators to have only one house. Each state would only one vote in the legislator, regardless of the population.

In the creating of the US Constitution, the creators hit many roadblocks. It was difficult for the state delegates to decide on much, especially because they were biased and in favor of their own states. The New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan were two examples of the disagreement of representation within the states in the legislative branch. The New Jersey Plan was in favor of equal representation throughout the states. The Virginia Plan was in favor of population representation, meaning the larger states would have more representation than the smaller states.

There were many divisions during the constitutional convention. One of the most important divisions was the debate between The Virginia plan or The New Jersey Plan. The Virginia Plan, also known as the large states plan, would want to discard of the articles of confederations, create two houses within congress, and determine who gets these seats in congress by population. This plan heavily favors large states and low populations states disagreed and created an alternative. The New Jersey Plan was the alternative to the Virginia Plan.