On the other hand, there were other members of the Convention who came with a disposition to adhere to the more literal meaning of their instructions, and who did not concur in the alleged necessity for a radical change of the principle of the government. Fearing that the power and consequence of their own States would be diminished by the introduction of numbers as a basis of representation, they adhered to the system of representation by States, and insisted that nothing was needed to cure the evils that pressed upon the country, but to enlarge the jurisdiction of the Congress under that system. They were naturally, therefore, the first to suggest and the last to surrender the objection, that the Convention had received no authority, either from the States or from the Congress, to do anything more than revise the Articles of Confederation, and recommend such further powers as might be engrafted upon the present system of the Union. That the construction of their powers by the latter class of the members of the Convention comported with the mere terms of the acts of the States, and with the general expectation, I have more than once intimated; but we shall see, as the experiment of framing the new system proceeded, that the views of the other class were equally correct; that the addition of further powers to the existing system of the Union would have left it as weak and inefficient as it had been before; and that what were universally regarded as the "exigencies of the Union"--which was but another name for the wants of the States--could only be provided for by the creation of a different basis for the government. Another fact which we are to remember is the presence, in five of the States represented in the Convention, of large numbers of a distinct race, held in the condition of slaves. Whatever mode of constituting a national system might be adopted, if it was to be a representative government, the existence of these persons must be recognized and provided for in some way. Whatever ratio of representation might be established,--whether the States were to be represented according to the numbers of their inhabitants, or according to their wealth,--this part 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.