Representation in the national legislature, whether proportionate to people or equal for all states, was the signature issue of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The resulting Great Compromise was the signature achievement. This article argues that the nationalists' loss on proportional representation cannot be explained simply as a pragmatic accommodation in the face of obdurate opposition by small-state delegations. Such obduracy existed, and it mattered. But it was met by obduracy in kind and in defense of a position that was inherently stronger. Why then did the nationalist coalition fail? It failed, the article contends, because, in addition to the opposition it encountered and the tactical mistakes it made, the three-part argument it mounted logically required that the states be abolished and the regime founded be a democracy. The large-state nationalists yielded in the end because they were not consolidationists and not democrats. One great anomaly of the American political system is that the principle of one person, one vote applies only to half of the legislative branch. In the Senate each state is equally represented no matter its size. Thus Wyoming, with a population under 600,000, has the same senatorial representation as California, with a population over 38,000,000. Sixty-five times more populous is California than Wyoming, and yet they both send two senators to Washington. The story of the Constitutional Convention and of the Great Compromise that made representation in the lower house proportional and in the upper house equal has been told many times before. What is intended here is not a retelling

On the eve of the Constitutional Convention, James Madison developed a new theory of republicanism, one that would allow union on a scale previously thought impossible. The extended republic, buttressed by constitutional safeguards republican in nature, would, he argued, protect the rights of minorities without compromising the majority's right to rule. But Convention delegates, unimpressed with Madison's new theory, gravitated toward constitutional safeguards more mixed-regime in nature and so produced a constitution incompletely republican. This article examines the three minority interests that most occupied the delegates' attention: small states, all states, and southern states; further, it employs three criteria for determining the presence of republican or mixedregime protections: strength of constitutional barrier, cohesion of defenders, and duration of defense. The article's conclusion reflects on the consequences of a constitution partly republican and partly mixed-regime. James Madison in Federalist 10 provides a searching analysis of the problem besetting popular governments, past and present. According to Madison, a known principle of law-that parties to a cause not at the same time be judges of that cause-is violated in the case of democratic lawmaking, since legislators are little different from advocates for, and parties to, the causes they determine; as such, they are liable to corruption by passion and interest, no less than are individuals when placed in like circumstances. Popular governments empower the majority, and the majority operates as an unjust faction when it

While generally a steady ally of James Madison and the nationalists, Gouverneur Morris, delegate from Pennsylvania, worked from a different conception of republican politics. Morris's republicanism was more old than new, relying on the divided sovereignty of a mixed regime to protect the rights of citizens and minorities. This conception, it is argued here, bears the stamp of Machiavelli, especially regarding the relationship of the classes and the role of the executive. Like Machiavelli—but unlike Madison—Morris wanted to underscore society's class divisions, organizing the representatives of rich and poor into two distinct, and hostile, chambers of the legislature. And like Machiavelli, whose “civil prince” was the champion of the people, Morris's executive was to be the “guardian of the people” and the “guardian of liberty.”

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