Page:Debates in the Several State Conventions, v3.djvu/525

.] Will any gentleman say that they may not make a treaty, whereby the subjects of France, England, and other powers, may buy what lands they please in this country? This would violate those principles which we have received from the mother country. The indiscriminate admission of all foreigners to the first rights of citizenship, without any permanent security for their attachment to the country, is repugnant to every principle of prudence and good policy. The President and Senate can make any treaty whatsoever. We wish not to refuse, but to guard, this power, as it is done in England. The empire there cannot be dismembered without the consent of the national Parliament. We wish an express and explicit declaration, in that paper, that the power which can make other treaties cannot, without the consent of the national Parliament—the national legislature—dismember the empire. The Senate alone ought not to have this power; much less ought a few states to have it. No treaty to dismember the empire ought to be made without the consent of three fourths of the legislature in all its branches. Nor ought such a treaty to be made but in case of the most urgent and unavoidable necessity. When such necessity exists, there is no doubt but there will be a general and uniform vote of the Continental Parliament.

Mr. CORBIN largely expatiated on the propriety of vesting this power in the general government, in the manner proposed by the plan of the Convention. He also contended that the empire could not be dismembered without the consent of the part dismembered. To obviate the force of the observations made by an honorable gentleman respecting the relinquishment of the Scheldt, he adduced the late complaints and efforts of the emperor of Germany respecting that river. He insisted that no part of the Constitution was less exceptionable than this. If, says he, there be any sound part in this Constitution, it is in this clause. The representatives are excluded from interposing in making treaties, because large popular assemblies are very improper to transact such business, from the impossibility of their acting with sufficient secrecy, despatch, and decision, which can only be found in small bodies, and because such numerous bodies are ever subject to factions and party animosities. It would be dangerous to give this power to the President alone, as the concession of such power to one individual is repugnant to