The friends of the mission at last won the day by a vote of twenty-four to nineteen. Fifteen Northern Senators voted to send representatives to the congress, and seven voted against doing so. Nine Southern Senators voted to send representatives, and twelve voted against doing so. This {151} vote hardly sustains the claim of certain of the historians, that the slavery interest was the primal cause of the opposition to the Panama mission. One of the most eminent among these says that the historical significance of the contest over the question was that slavery threw aside its municipal character, its character as a Commonwealth institution, and demanded to prescribe both the internal and external policies of the nation. This sounds dramatic, but if it means, as it appears to mean, that when, in a federal system of government, any interest or institution regulated by Commonwealth law asks protection from the general Government against foreign influence and interference it thereby asserts command over the nation, it is a proposition which also sounds decidedly _outré_ to an American lawyer. The Constitution of the United States imposed the international protection of all such interests and institutions upon the general Government when it reserved such interests and institutions to the jurisdiction of the Commonwealths and gave the general Government alone international standing. When, then, such interests and institutions claim that protection, they are only asking for a right guaranteed to them by the Constitution, and are by no means asserting an authority over the Constitution and the country. [Sidenote: The Haytian question at the congress.]