ance occur which requires the advice and
consent of the Senate, he may at any time convene them. Thus we see that
the Constitution provides that our negotiations for treaties shall
have every advantage which can be derived from talents, information,
integrity, and deliberate investigations, on the one hand, and from
secrecy and despatch on the other.

But to this plan, as to most others that have ever appeared, objections
are contrived and urged.

Some are displeased with it, not on account of any errors or defects in
it, but because, as the treaties, when made, are to have the force
of laws, they should be made only by men invested with legislative
authority. These gentlemen seem not to consider that the judgments of
our courts, and the commissions constitutionally given by our governor,
are as valid and as binding on all persons whom they concern, as the
laws passed by our legislature. All constitutional acts of power,
whether in the executive or in the judicial department, have as much
legal validity and obligation as if they proceeded from the legislature;
and therefore, whatever name be given to the power of making treaties,
or however obligatory they may be when made, certain it is, that the
people may, with much propriety, commit the power to a distinct body
from the legislature, the executive, or the judicial. It surely does
not follow, that because they have given the power of making laws to the
legislature, that therefore they should likewise give them the power to
do every other act of sovereignty by which the citizens are to be bound
and affected.

Others, though content that treaties should be made in the mode
proposed, are averse to their being the SUPREME laws of the land. They
insist, and profess to believe, that treaties like acts of assembly,
should be repealable at pleasure. This idea seems to be new and peculiar
to this country, but new errors, as well as new truths, often appear.
These gentlemen would do well to reflect that a treaty is only another
name for a bargain, and that it would be impossible to find a nation
who would make any bargain with us, which should be binding on them
ABSOLUTELY, but on us only so long and so far as we may think proper to
be bound by it. They who make laws may, without doubt, amend or repeal
them; and it will not be disputed that they who make treaties may alter
or cancel them; but still let us not forget that treaties are made, not
by only one of the contracting