“When the gentleman has proved that these are questions of law, and that they must have been decided by the President, he has not advanced a single step towards proving that they were improper for executive decision. The question whether vessels captured within three miles of the American coast, or by privateers fitted out in the American ports, were legally captured or not, and whether the American government is bound to restore them, if in its power, were questions of law, but they were questions of political law, proper to be decided, and they were decided by the executive, and not by the courts. The _casus fœderis_ of the guaranty was a question of law, but no man could have hazarded the opinion that such a question must be carried into court, and can only be there decided. So the _casus fœderis_, under the twenty-seventh article of the treaty with Britain, is a question of law, but of political law. The question to be decided is, whether the particular case proposed be one in which the nation has bound itself to act, and this is a question depending on principles never submitted to courts. If murder should be committed within the United States, and the murderer should seek an asylum in Britain, the question whether the _casus fœderis_, of the twenty-seventh article had occurred, so that his delivery ought to be demanded, would be a question of law, but no man would say it was a question which ought to be decided in the courts. “When, therefore, the gentleman from Pennsylvania has established that, in delivering up Thomas Nash, points of law were decided by the President, he has established a position which in no degree whatever aids his argument. The case is in its nature a national demand, made upon the nation. The parties are the two nations. They cannot come into court to litigate their claims, nor can a court decide on them. Of consequence, the demand is not a case for judicial cognizance. The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations. Of consequence, the demand of a foreign nation can only be made on him.... “The treaty, which is a law, enjoins the performance of a particular object. The person who is to perform this object is marked out by the Constitution, since the person is named who conducts the foreign intercourse and is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. The means by which it is to be performed, the force of the nation, are in the hands of this person. Ought not this person to perform the object, although the particular mode of using the means has not been prescribed? Congress, unquestionably, may prescribe the mode, and Congress may devolve on others the whole execution of the contract; but, till this is done, it seems the duty of the executive department to execute the contract by any means it possesses.