The Ordinance of 1784 is most significant historically because it embodied the principle t

hat new states should be formed from the western region and admitted to the Union on an equal basis with the original commonwealths. This principle, which underlay the whole later development of the continental United States, was generally accepted by this time and cannot be properly credited to any single man. Thomas Jefferson had presented precisely this idea to his own state of Virginia before the Declaration of Independence, however, and if he did not originate it he was certainly one of those who held it first. It had been basic in his own thinking about the future of the Republic throughout the struggle for independence. He had no desire to break from the British Empire simply to establish an American one--in which the newer region should be subsidiary and tributary to the old. What he dreamed of was an expanding union of self-governing commonwealths, joined as a group of peers.

Which of the following proposals did the Ordinance of 1784 incorporate？

A．New states should be admitted to the Union in numbers equal to the older states.

B．The Union should make the western region into tributary states.

C．New states should share the same rights in the Union as the original states.

D．The great western region should be divided into twelve states.