Our Founding Fathers understood that Democracies, like cancer, always metastasize and lead to the death or destruction of the host. The Constitution was written to protect the people from the tyranny of the majority in a democracy.
They understood that having a House to represent the people and another House to represent the states, would guarantee that both the large states and the small states would have a voice. If the Virginia Plan which would have created two houses representing the people and no house to represent the states had been accepted, the large states would then dominate the small states.
Before 1965 the state legislatures had a House to represent the people and a second House to represent the counties. This arrangement prevented the large counties from dominating the small counties in much the same way as the states were protected by all of them having the same number of Senators, no matter their size. With the majority in the state assemblies, the large counties could pass virtually any legislation they wanted, but without the support of the rural counties their legislation would be blocked. This was one of the fundamental checks and balances that prevented the tyranny of the majority.
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Comments
The Supreme Court issued a ruling in 1965 that based on the principle of one man one vote court ruled the apportionment in the state legislatures violated the provisions in the 14th Amendment. Up until that time the counties in the states were represented in the states's senate.