True, very true.
The fact is that the other states choose to compromise. I wonder if it was primarily in the notion of brotherhood to keep all the states together, or if they realized that all the States would have taken an economic loss in order to change such a long-established institution?
I think the former. The general condition of the economy then was bad pretty much everywhere and the substraction of two small states at the fringe of the country that mostly grew rice at the time would not have changed the economy much. But the people then did put a premium on Unity in those days especially considering that the Europenas expected the states to splinter and fail.