An application for extradition was made to the federal authorities in Charleston, but at their suggestion this was transferred to the President, through the Secretary of State. The Secretary informed Bee, the United States District Judge, of the President’s “advice and request” that Nash should be delivered up, at the same time referring to the clause in the treaty as to the necessary evidence of criminality.[18] The judge on July 1, 1799, informed the Secretary that he had notified the British consul that on the production of such evidence, the prisoner would be delivered up when the consul was ready to receive him. The delivery was made; and on September 9 of the same year, the British admiral was able to inform the British Minister that Nash “has been tried at a court martial, and sentenced to suffer death, and afterwards hung in chains; which sentence has been put into execution.” These events were used with great effect by the political opponents of the administration. When Congress met, the President was called upon by the House of Representatives for the papers relating to them; and when they were sent in, Edward Livingston, of New York, submitted resolutions condemning the action of the executive, on the ground that the determination of the questions involved in the case “are all matters exclusively for judicial inquiry;” that the acts of the President “are a dangerous interference of the executive with judicial decisions;” and that the compliance of the district judge “is a sacrifice of the constitutional independence of the judicial power.” After a full debate, these resolutions were negatived by a decided vote. Marshall’s very able argument vindicated the action taken, and laid down principles which have ever since governed the course of the government in such cases. The following passages will afford a specimen of the style and method of this address, a style and method which were characteristic of all Marshall’s work:-- “The same argument applies to the observations on the seventh article of the amendment to the Constitution. That article relates only to trials in the courts of the United States, and not to the performance of a contract for the delivery of a murderer not triable in those courts. “In this part of the argument, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Livingston] has presented a dilemma, of a very wonderful structure indeed. He says that the offense of Thomas Nash was either a crime or not a crime. If it was a crime, the constitutional mode of punishment ought to have been observed; if it was not a crime, he ought not to have been delivered up to a foreign government, where his punishment was inevitable.