Tuesday, May 29. [in convention] On May 29, the aristocratic thirty-five-year-old governor of Virginia, Edmund Randolph, took the floor to attack the Articles of Confederation and introduce a series of resolutions for a new Constitution. The mandate of the Convention was only to revise and amend the Articles, but Randolph’s resolutions, known collectively as the Virginia Plan (see Appendix A), would scrap them and substitute a strong national government with final authority over what had been semi- independent states. The government would consist of a national legislature, judiciary, and executive—each with the ability to check the others’ power. The legislature would have two houses, or “branches,” with the larger one (the “first branch”) elected by the people and the smaller one (the “second branch”) elected by the larger one. The national legislature could veto state laws it deemed to violate the national Constitution, and it would choose the chief executive, who could veto the legislature’s laws with the aid of a Council of Revision. Mr. Randolph then opened the main business. . . . He expressed his regret that it should fall to him, rather than those who were of longer standing in life and political experience, to open the great subject of their mission. But as the Convention had originated from Virginia and his colleagues supposed that some proposition was expected from them, they had imposed this task on him.