tending the post-roads to every part of the Union. He thought the house had better wait for the report of the committee, to which business relative to the post-office had been referred, which was preparing to be laid before the house.
Mr. MADISON explained the nature and object of the resolution. He said it was the commencement of an important work. He wished not to extend it at present. The expenses of the survey would be great. The post-office, he believed, would have no objection to the intended regulation.
After some observations from Mr. THACHER, on the obtaining of the shortest distance from one place to another, and the comparing old with new roads, so as to come at the shortest and best, the resolution was agreed to, and referred to a committee of five, to prepare and bring in a bill.
Treaty-Making Power.—[Jay's Treaty.]
House of Representatives, March 23, 1796.
Mr. MURRAY said, in construing our Constitution, in ascertaining the metes and bounds of its various grants of power, nothing, at the present day, is left for expedience or sophistry to new-model or to mistake. The explicitness of the instrument itself; the contemporaneous opinions, still fresh from the recency of its adoption; the journals of that Convention which formed it, still existing, though not public,—all tend to put this question, in particular, beyond the reach of mistake. Many who are now present were in the Convention; and on this question, he learned a vote was actually taken.
That the paper upon the table, issued by the President's proclamation, as a treaty, was a treaty in the eye of the Constitution, and the law of nations; that, as a treaty, it is the supreme law of the land, agreeably to the Constitution; that, if it is a treaty, nothing that we can rightfully do, or refuse to do, will add or diminish its validity, under the Constitution and law of nations.
March 24, 1796.
Mr. GALLATIN said, the only contemporaneous opinions which could have any weight in favor of the omnipotence of the treaty-making power, were those of gentlemen who had advocated the adoption of the Constitution; and recourse had been had to the debates of the state conventions in order to show that such gentlemen had conceded that doctrine. The debates of Virginia had first been partially quoted for that purpose; yet when the whole was read and examined, it had clearly appeared that, on the contrary, the general sense of the advocates of the Constitution there was similar to that now contended for by the supporters of the motion. The debates of the North Carolina Convention had also been partially quoted; and it was not a little remarkable that, whilst gentlemen from that state had declared, on that floor, during the present debate, that they were members of the Convention which ratified and adopted the Constitution, that they had voted for it, and that their own and the general impression of that Convention was, that the treaty-making power was limited by the other parts of the Constitution, in the manner now mentioned,—it was not a little remarkable, that, in opposition to those declarations, a gentleman from Rhode Island had quoted partial extracts of the debates of a Convention in North Carolina which rejected the Constitution.
