Note (return) — Chapter VIII

Benjamin Franklin advocated equality of suffrage in the Senate as a means of securing "the sovereignties of the individual States."66 James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, said sovereignty "is in the people before they make a Constitution, and remains in them," and described the people as being "thirteen independent sovereignties."67 Gouverneur Morris, who was, as well as Wilson, one of the warmest advocates in the Convention of a strong central government, spoke of the Constitution as "a compact," and of the parties to it as "each enjoying sovereign power."68 Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, declared that the Government "was instituted by a number of sovereign States."69 Oliver Ellsworth, of the same State, spoke of the States as "sovereign bodies."70 These were all eminent members of the Convention which formed the Constitution.