Is any aid required from acts of Congress, or other municipal laws, in order to give it efficacy? Certainly not. These two kinds of laws, the law of nations and the municipal law, are each supreme in their respective spheres. They operate, indeed, upon different objects, and are executed in different modes; but each is complete in its operation. From hence it results, that an office existing by the law of nations has an existence as completely legal, as one which exists by act of Congress: that the office of foreign minister is as much a legal office, exists as much by the laws of this country, as the office of chief justice, or secretary of state: and that, when one of these offices is filled by the appointment of the President and senate, the House is under as complete a legal obligation to provide an adequate salary for it, as for the other. This House can no more say, this, that, or the other minister plenipotentiary is unnecessary, and we will not provide for him, than it can say, a chief justice or a secretary of state is unnecessary, and we will not provide for him. It would as much be guilty of a violation of law in one case, as in the other.

But, Mr. Chairman, if these conclusions, and the premises on which they are founded, should be erroneous, if the doctrines of the gentleman from Pennsylvania should be correct, still this amendment cannot be supported. It is in direct contradiction with the principles on which its supporters rely, and is refuted by the very arguments adduced to defend it.

What is the doctrine of the gentleman from Pennsylvania? That the office of foreign minister originates with the appointment of the President, and becomes completely established when this House has sanctioned it by an appropriation. I state this to be his doctrine, though he did not lay it down in these express words. This is the substance; for otherwise he must admit, in direct contradiction to his whole argument, that the office not only originates as he says, but also becomes complete, by the appointment of the

President and senate: in other words, that the President and senate can create offices. When the gentleman from Pennsylvania, therefore, told us, that although the office of foreign minister originates with the appointment of the President and senate, yet the House is not bound to appropriate a proper salary, as he admits it to be bound in case of an office erected by law; the office of chief justice; for instance, he told us in substance that this office, though originating with the appointment of the President and senate, remained inchoate, did not become a complete and legal office, till sanctioned by an appropriation in this House. This, Mr. Chairman, is the true doctrine of the gentleman from Pennsylvania; and it is precisely analogous to his doctrine of inchoate treaties, about which we heard so much on a former occasion. His doctrine about treaties was this; that a treaty, though made by the President and senate, is but an inchoate act, till completed by the assent and sanction of this House. The House, he said, was in nowise bound to give this assent; but when it should be given, the treaty would then become complete. Accordingly, after this House had assented to the British treaty, by passing an appropriation for carrying it into effect, that gentleman told us that the treaty was complete, and had become as much the act of this House as of the President and senate. This position he has repeated more than once; and in the debates on the President's speech, during the summer session, he laid it down in the most emphatic manner. I presume, Mr. Chairman, that an inchoate office is like an inchoate treaty, and may become perfect in the same manner. gentleman admits, nay, contends, that what he calls an inchoate treaty becomes perfect and binding, to all intents and purposes, on this House and every body else, as soon as the House gives its sanction by an appropriation. Hence it irresistibly follows, that this inchoate office of foreign minister, this office originating, according to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, in the ap

The

pointment of the President and senate, but not binding on the House, and therefore not complete, must become complete and binding, from the moment when it receives the sanction of the House. If not, it never can be complete and binding; must always remain an inchoate thing, which would be a most manifest absurdity.

If, therefore, the sanction of the House can legalize and complete that office of foreign minister, which originates in the appointment of the President, this sanction has already been given, and these offices of minister plenipotentiary to Lisbon and Berlin, which it is the object of this amendment to destroy, have already been legalized and completed by the assent of this House. They are consequently, at this time, according to the principles of gentlemen themselves, completely legal offices; as much so as those of President, chief justice, or secretary of state; and these gentlemen, in attempting to destroy them, by withholding an appropriation, are guilty of as direct and as great an infraction of the law and the constitution, as if they were to attempt to drive the President of the United States from his office, by refusing the annual appropriation for payment of his salary. An office must either be legal or not legal. If legal, it is equally binding, in whatever mode it became so, whether by the law of nations, an act of Congress, or the appointment of the President and senate, sanctioned by this House; and there exists the same obligation on the House to provide an adequate salary, in one case as in the other.

Will gentlemen ask when these offices of minister plenipotentiary to Lisbon and Berlin, received the sanction of this House? Lest they should have forgotten, I will tell them. The first received it in May, 1796, and the second from this present Congress, in June, 1797. It will appear by a reference to the files of the House, that on the 28th of May, 1796, the President of the United States sent a message to the House.

informing it that he had appointed ministers plenipotentiary to Madrid and Lisbon, instead of ministers resident; and that this augmentation of the grade would require an additional appropriation. In consequence of this message, a bill was passed on the fifth of June following, by which the necessary appropriation was made. Thus the office of minister plenipotentiary to Lisbon received the express sanction of this House.

Surely we cannot have forgotten what passed in this House last June, during the first session of this Congress. We were informed by the estimates from the department of state, that thirteen thousand, five hundred dollars would be wanted, for the salary and outfit of a minister plenipotentiary to Berlin. A bill was brought in, containing this appropriation. The appropriation was opposed; but after full discussion it was carried by a great majority, and the bill passed. Thus the office of minister plenipotentiary to Berlin received the express sanction of this present House of Representatives.

If these offices, therefore, were inchoate before, according to the doctrine of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, they became complete, on his own principles, as soon as these appropriations were consented to by this House; for he has told us over and over that an inchoate treaty becomes complete, as soon as this House gives its assent by an act of appropriation; and, by the whole tenor and the very terms of his argument, he places an inchoate treaty and an inchoate office on the same footing. Consequently, he is now bound to appropriate for this office, as much as he admits himself to be bound to appropriate any sums which may still be wanted, for carrying into effect a treaty once sanctioned by this House. And yet that gentleman, and those who agree with him on the present occasion, are content, for the sake of effecting their favorite object, the establishment of a control over executive appointments, to act in direct opposition 6

VOL. II.

to their own principles, in manifest inconsistency with those very doctrines, for which on former occasions they have so strenuously contended! The truth is, that they shape their doctrines to the purposes of the moment, and abandon them without difficulty, when those purposes require it. When they had resolved to defeat the British treaty in this House, they introduced the doctrine of inchoate. They alleged that the House was under no obligation to carry a treaty into effect, because it was only an inchoate act, till sanctioned by this House; but they admitted, in the most explicit manner, and made it a part of their doctrine of inchoate, that when this House had given its sanction, the treaty became complete and obligatory. Now that their object is to turn certain ministers plenipotentiary out of office, and to establish a precedent of the control of this House over the executive, in the exercise of its constitutional functions, they discard their favorite doctrine of inchoate, which is no longer adequate to the purpose. They go further, and contend that the House, by its power over appropriations, has a right to control all the acts, to stop all the movements of the other departments: that it may withhold appropriations, in all cases, according to its own good pleasure or caprice, which the gentlemen dignify with the name of discretion. There cannot be a doubt that the doctrine now contended for, would enable this House to drive the secretaries, the judges, and even the President from office, by withholding the appropriation for their salaries, if ever they should become personally obnoxious to a majority of this House. The step from the present doctrines to that point would be far shorter, than from inchoate to the present doctrines: and the right of encroachment being once established, there will be nothing to set bounds to it, but the good pleasure of the House. I have heard it avowed, Mr. Chairman, that the affairs of this country can never prosper, until all the present heads of departments shall be driven from office; and I have no doubt that the means of