yed to
very important purposes.

The President is to have power, with the advice and consent of the
Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the senators
present concur. The king of Great Britain is the sole and absolute
representative of the nation in all foreign transactions. He can of
his own accord make treaties of peace, commerce, alliance, and of every
other description. It has been insinuated, that his authority in this
respect is not conclusive, and that his conventions with foreign powers
are subject to the revision, and stand in need of the ratification, of
Parliament. But I believe this doctrine was never heard of, until it was
broached upon the present occasion. Every jurist(2) of that kingdom,
and every other man acquainted with its Constitution, knows, as an
established fact, that the prerogative of making treaties exists in the
crown in its utmost plentitude; and that the compacts entered into
by the royal authority have the most complete legal validity and
perfection, independent of any other sanction. The Parliament, it is
true, is sometimes seen employing itself in altering the existing laws
to conform them to the stipulations in a new treaty; and this may have
possibly given birth to the imagination, that its co-operation
was necessary to the obligatory efficacy of the treaty. But this
parliamentary interposition proceeds from a different cause: from the
necessity of adjusting a most artificial and intricate system of revenue
and commercial laws, to the changes made in them by the operation of the
treaty; and of adapting new provisions and precautions to the new state
of things, to keep the machine from running into disorder. In this
respect, therefore, there is no comparison between the intended power of
the President and the actual power of the British sovereign. The one
can perform alone what the other can do only with the concurrence of a
branch of the legislature. It must be admitted, that, in this instance,
the power of the federal Executive would exceed that of any State
Executive. But this arises naturally from the sovereign power which
relates to treaties. If the Confederacy were to be dissolved, it would
become a question, whether the Executives of the several States were not
solely invested with that delicate and important prerogative.

The President is also to be authorized to receive ambassadors and other
public ministers. This, though it has been a rich theme of declamation,
is