tution, in a domestic as well as in a foreign
sense; but they were not strong enough to resist the temptation to
compromise their profoundest convictions on a question as broad and
far-reaching as the Union that they were met to launch anew. Thus by
an understanding, or, as Gouverneur Morris called it, "a bargain,"
between the commercial representatives of the Northern States and the
delegates of South Carolina and Georgia, and in spite of the
opposition of Maryland and Virginia, the unrestricted power of
Congress to enact navigation-laws was conceded to the Northern
merchants; and to the Carolina rice-planters, as an equivalent, twenty
years' continuance of the African slave-trade. This was the third
great "compromise" of the Constitution. The other two were the
concession to the smaller States of an equal representation in the
Senate; and, to the slaveholders, the counting three-fifths of the
slaves in determining the ratio of representation. If this third
compromise differed from the other two by involving not merely a
political but a moral sacrifice, there was this partial compensation
about it, that it was not permanent like the others, but expired, by
limitation, at the end of twenty years.[633]

The Constitution was adopted by the Convention, and signed, on the
17th of September, 1787. It was then forwarded to Congress, then in
session in New-York City, with the recommendation that that body
submit it to the State conventions for ratification; which was
accordingly done. Delaware adopted it on the 7th of December, 1787;
Pennsylvania, Dec. 12; New Jersey, Dec. 18; Georgia, Jan. 2, 1788;
Connecticut, Jan. 9; Massachusetts, Feb. 7; Maryland, April 28; South
Carolina, May 23; New Hampshire, June 21 (and, being the ninth
ratifying, gave effect to the Constitution); Virginia ratified June
27; New York, July 26. North Carolina gave a conditional ratification
on the 7th of August, but Congress did not receive it until January,
1790; nor that of Rhode Island, until June of the same year.

At the conclusion of the deliberations of the convention that framed
the Constitution, it was voted that its journal be intrusted to the
custody of George Washington. He finally deposited it in the State
Department, and it was printed in 1818 by order of Congress.

The first session of Congress, under the new Constitution, was held
in the city of New York, in 1789. A quorum was obtained on the 6th of
April; and the first measure broug