- this

part

inhabitants, or according to their wealth, of the population of the slave-holding States presented one of the great difficulties to be encountered. A change of their condition was not now, and never had been, one of the powers which those States proposed to confide to the Union. In no previous form of the confederacy had any State proposed to surrender its own control over the condition of persons within its limits, or its power to determine what persons should share in the political rights of that community; and no State that now took part in the new effort to amend the present system of the Union proposed to surrender this control over its own inhabitants, or sought to acquire any control over the condition of persons within any of the other States.

The deliberations of the Convention were therefore begun with the necessary concession of the fact, that slavery existed in some of the States, and that the existence and continuance of that condition of large masses of its population was a matter exclusively belonging to the authority of each State in which they were found. Not only was this concession implied in the terms upon which the States had met for the revision of the national system, but the further concession of the right to have the slave populations included in the ratio of representation became equally unavoidable. They must be regarded either as persons or as chattels. If they were persons, and the basis of the new government was to be a representation of the inhabitants of the

States according to their numbers, the only mode of representation consistent with republican government, - their precise condition, their possession or want of political rights, could not affect the propriety of including them in some form in the census, unless the basis of the government should be composed exclusively of those inhabitants of the States who were acknowledged by the laws of the States as free. The large numbers of the slaves in some of the States would have made a government so constructed entirely unequal in its operation, and would have placed those States, if they had been willing to enter it, -as they never could have been, -in a position of inferiority which their wealth and importance would have rendered unjustifiable. On the other hand, if the wealth of the States was to be the measure of their representation in the new government, the slaves must be included in that wealth, or they must be treated simply as persons. The slaves might or might not be persons, in the view of the law, where they were found; but they were certainly in one sense property under that law, and as such they were a very important part of the wealth of the State. The Confederation had already been obliged to regard them, in considering a rule by which the States should contribute to the national expenses. They had found it to be just, that a State should be required to include its slaves among its population, in a certain ratio, when it was called upon to sustain the national burdens in proportion to its numbers; and they had recommended

the adoption of this fundamental rule as an amendment of the federal Articles.1 Either in one capacity, therefore, or in the other, or in both, - either as persons or as property, or as both, the Union had already found it to be necessary to consider the slaves. In framing the new Union, it was equally necessary, as soon as the equality of representation by States should give place to a proportional and unequal representation, to regard these inhabitants in one or the other capacity, or in both capacities, or to leave the States in which they were found, and to which their position was a matter of grave importance, out of the Union.

This difficulty should be rightly appreciated and fairly stated by the historian who attempts to describe its adjustment, and it should be carefully regarded by the reader. What reflections may arise upon the facts that we have to consider, what should be the judgment of an enlightened benevolence upon the whole matter of slavery, as it was dealt with or affected by the Constitution of the United States, may perhaps find an appropriate place in some future discussion.

Here, however, the reader must approach the threshold of the subject with the expectation of finding it surrounded by many and complex relations. History should undoubtedly concern itself

1 See the Resolve of Congress, passed April 18, 1783, proposing to amend the Articles of Confederation. This Resolve was the ori

gin of the proportion of three fifths, in counting the slaves. See post, Chapter II. p. 48; ante, Vol. I. p. 213, note 2.

But it is bound, as it

with the interests of man. makes up the record of events which involve the destinies and welfare of different races, to look at the aggregate of human happiness. It is not to rest, for its final conclusions, in seeming or in real inconsistencies; in real or apparent conflicts between opposite principles; or in the mere letter of those adjustments by which such conflicts have been avoided, or reconciled, or acknowledged. It is to arrive at results. It is to draw the wide deduction which will show whether human nature has lost or gained by the conditions and forms of national existence which it undertakes to describe. As the question should always be, in such inquiries, whether any different and better result was attainable under all the circumstances of the case, a question to which a calm and dispassionate examination will generally find an answer, the amount of positive good that has been gained for all, or of positive evil that has been averted from all, is the true justification of existing institutions.

The Convention, when fully organized, embraced a representation from all the States, with the single exception of Rhode Island.

Connecticut, which had steadily opposed the measure of a Convention,1 came into it at a late period, and did not send a delegation until a fortnight after the time appointed for its session. It had always been the inclination of that State to retain in her

1 Madison, Elliot, V. 96.

2

2 Ibid. 124.

own hands the regulation of commerce; she had taxed imports from some of her neighbors, and this advantage, as it was considered, had made her reluc tant to enlarge the powers of the Union. delegation appeared on the 28th of May.

Her

That of New Hampshire was not appointed until the latter part of June,1 and did not appear until the 23d of July.2

Rhode Island, small in territory and in numbers, but favorably situated for the pursuits of commerce, had strenuously resisted every effort to enlarge the powers of the Union. Ever since the Declaration of Independence, the people of that State had clung to the opportunity, afforded by their situation, of taxing the contiguous States, through their consumption of commodities brought into its numerous and convenient ports. For this object they had refused their assent to the revenue system of 1783; and as the failure of that system had prevented an exhibition of some of the benefits to be derived from uniform fiscal regulations, the local government of Rhode Island adhered, in 1786-7, to what they had always regarded as the true interest of their State. They did, it is true, appoint delegates to the commercial convention at Annapolis, but the persons appointed did not attend ; and when the resolve which sanctioned the Convention of 1787 was adopted in Congress, Rhode Island was not represented in that body.

1 Elliot, I. 126.

2 Ibid. 351.