The just and candid voice of History has also to thank the Southern statesmen who consented to this arrangement, for having clothed a majority of the two houses of Congress with a full commercial power. They felt, and truly felt, that this was a great concession. But they looked at what they had gained. They had gained the exemption of their staple productions from taxation as objects of foreign commerce; the enumeration of their slaves in the basis of Congressional representation; and the settlement of the slave-trade upon terms not offensive to State pride. They had also gained the Union, with its power to maintain an army and a navy,--with its power and duty to protect them against foreign invasion and domestic insurrection, and to secure their republican constitutions. They looked, therefore, upon the grant of the power to regulate commerce by the ordinary modes of legislation, in its relations to the interests of a great empire, whose foundations ought to be laid broadly and deeply on the national welfare.[229] They saw that the Revolution had cost the Eastern States enormous sacrifices of commercial wealth, and that the weakness of the Confederation had destroyed the little remnant of their trade.[230] They saw and admitted the necessity for an unrestrained control over the foreign commerce of the country, if it was ever to rise from the prostrate condition in which it had been placed by foreign powers. They acted accordingly; and by their action, they enabled the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia to enter the new Union without humiliation and without loss.[231] Thus was accomplished, so far as depended on the action of this Convention, that memorable compromise, which gave to the Union its control over the commercial relations of the States with foreign nations and with each other. An event so fraught with consequences of the utmost importance cannot be dismissed without some of the reflections appropriate to its consideration.