On January 18, 1798, Mr. Harper, who led the business of the House, moved the appropriation for foreign intercourse. This was seized upon by the opposition to advance still further their line of attack by a limitation of the constitutional prerogative of the President. In addition to the usual salaries of the envoys to Great Britain and France, appropriations were asked for the posts at Madrid, Lisbon, and Berlin, which last Mr. Adams had designated as a first-class mission. The discussion on the powers of the President, and the extent to which they might be controlled by paring down the appropriations, lifted the debate from the narrow ground of economy in administration to the higher plane of constitutional powers. Nicholas opened on the Republican side by announcing that it was seasonable to bring back the establishment of the diplomatic corps to the footing it had been on until the year 1796. In all governments like our own he declared that there was a tendency to a union and consolidation of all its parts into the executive, and the limitation and annexion of the parts with each other as settled by the Constitution would be destroyed by this influence unless there were a constant attention on the part of the legislature to resist it. The appointment of a minister plenipotentiary to Prussia, with which we had little or no commercial intercourse, offered an opportunity to determine this limitation. Harper said that this was a renewal of the old charge that foreign intercourse was unnecessary, and the old suggestion that our commerce ought to be given up or left to shift for itself. Mr. Gallatin laid down extreme theories which have never yet found practical application. He took the question at once from party or personal ground by admitting that the government was essentially pure, its patronage not extensive, or its effect upon the legislative or any other branch of the government as yet material. The Constitution had placed the patronage in the executive. There he thought it was wisely placed. The legislature would be more corrupt than the executive were it placed with them. While not willing at once to give up political foreign intercourse, he thought that it should by degrees be altogether declined. To it he ascribed the critical situation of the country. Commercial intercourse could be protected by the consular system. He then argued that the power to provide for expenses was the check intended by the Constitution. To this Griswold answered that this doctrine of checks contained more mischief than Pandora's box; Bayard, that the checks were all directed to the executive, and that they would check and counter-check until they _stopped the wheels of government_.[6] When the President was manacled and at the mercy of the House they would be satisfied. He held the executive to be the weakest branch of the government, because its powers are defined; but the limits of the House are undefined.