The Virginia Plan Essay

The Virginia Plan The purpose of this paper is to defend the argument that the Virginia Plan gave too much power to the national government. On May 29, 1787, Virginia delegate Edmund Randolph proposed what became known as "The Virginia Plan Written primarily by James Madison, the plan outlines of what would eventually become the United States Constitution: a national government consisting of three branches with checks and balances to prevent the abuse of power. It describes 2 houses: one with members elected by the people for 3-year terms and the other composed of older leaders elected by the state legislatures for 7-year terms. Both houses would use the population as a basis for dividing seats amongst the states. Each of the states would

The problem that most states had was that they wanted to keep their individual power they had had; the states didn’t want to give too much power to one national government to prevent tyranny like they had with the king. Every state had only one vote in the congress regardless of their size, each law had to be approved by 9 out of the 13 states to pass. The federal government would have had forced states to “contribute” since they couldn’t regulate trade between states and foreign countries. The central government was weak and the states had too many conflicts during this time.

The Virginia Plan had too much focus on putting power within the central government and tried to rebuild a modified version of what was left the British monarchy, that they might as well have stayed a territory of England. This was the main reason the colonies wanted to break from the empire since it gave the little guys no power at all. Thus, the Virginia Plan gave too much power to the national