“The gentleman from Pennsylvania contends that, although this should be properly an executive duty, yet it cannot be performed until Congress shall direct the mode of performance.... The treaty stipulating that a murderer shall be delivered up to justice is as obligatory as an act of Congress making the same declaration. If, then, there was an act of Congress in the words of the treaty, declaring that a person who had committed murder within the jurisdiction of Britain, and sought an asylum within the territory of the United States, should be delivered up by the United States, on the demand of his Britannic Majesty and such evidence of his criminality as would have justified his commitment for trial, had the offense been committed here; could the President, who is bound to execute the laws, have justified the refusal to deliver up the criminal by saying that the legislature had totally omitted to provide for the case? “The executive is not only the constitutional department, but seems to be the proper department to which the power in question may most wisely and most safely be confided.... If, at any time, policy may temper the strict execution of the contract, where may that political discretion be placed so safely as in the department whose duty it is to understand precisely the state of the political intercourse and connection between the United States and foreign nations, to understand the manner in which the particular stipulation is explained and performed by foreign nations, and to understand completely the state of the Union?” This clear, strong, convincing speech, of which I have quoted but a small portion, settled the question then in dispute, and the principles here laid down have controlled the action of the government ever since. * * * * * Very soon after entering upon his duties as Chief Justice, Marshall undertook to write the “Life of Washington.” This gave him a great deal of trouble and mortification. It proved to be an immense labor; the publishers were importunate, and he was driven into print before he was ready. The result was a work in five volumes, appearing from 1802 to 1804, full of the most valuable and authentic material, well repaying perusal, yet put together with singular lack of literary skill, and in many ways a great disappointment.[19] In the later years of his life, he revised it, corrected some errors, shortened it, and published it in three volumes: one of them, in 1824, as a separate preliminary history of the colonial period, and the other two, in 1834, as the “Life of Washington.” This work, in its original form, gave great offense to Jefferson, written, as it was, from the point of view of a constant admirer and supporter of the policy of Washington; a “five volume libel,” Jefferson called it.