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 with the interests of man. But it is bound, as it 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,[6] came into it at a late period, and did not send a delegation until a fortnight after the time appointed for its session.[7] It had always been the inclination of that State to retain in her 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 reluctant to enlarge the powers of the Union. Her delegation appeared on the 28th of May. That of New Hampshire was not appointed until the latter part of June,[8] and did not appear until the 23d of July.[9]