The Virginia Plan proposed a new government system at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, with three branches and proportional representation. Although not fully adopted, its ideas influenced the US Constitution. James Madison edited the plan.
The Virginia Plan was a proposal made at the Philadelphia Convention held in 1787 to improve the Articles of Confederation under which the United States had operated since gaining independence from Great Britain. Many of the plan’s ideas were incorporated into what later became the United States Constitution. There are many high-quality facsimiles of this document online for people who are interested in seeing it for themselves.
The Philadelphia Convention was originally intended to revise the Articles of Confederation to address perceived shortcomings with the United States government. Some participants intended from the outset to actually devise a new system of government, rather than trying to fix the existing one. The Virginia Plan was a reflection of the beliefs of Virginia delegates who wanted to develop an entirely new government. It was edited by James Madison.
One of the most important inclusions in the Virginia Plan was a suggestion that government be divided into judicial, executive, and legislative branches, with checks and balances to keep the distribution of power stable. Additionally, the plan proposed having two legislatures rather than one and advocated the use of proportional representation. This meant that instead of giving each state the same number of representatives, the representatives should be distributed by population or wealth in their home state. Later it was decided to have one house with a fixed number of legislators and one with numbers determined by proportional representation.
This proposal is also known as the Randolph Plan or the Large State Plan. The Virginia Plan incorporated many ideas from the larger states involved in the Convention, and the smaller states retaliated with the New Jersey Plan. The New Jersey Plan included proposals to rework the Articles of Confederation rather than develop a new framework for American government. Using many ideas from the Virginia Plan, the convention participants also made some compromises, including the infamous three-fifths compromise used to count the slave population.
Although the Virginia plan was not adopted in full, many of the ideas in it were integrated into the new US government and had a profound impact on the formation of the Constitution. James Madison is sometimes referred to as one of the “Fathers of the Constitution” because of his role in the Convention and his work on the Virginia Plan.
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