“I admit there may be extreme cases, in which this House would be justified in withholding such an appropriation. ‘The safety of the people is the supreme law.’ If, therefore, we should believe any mission to be dangerous, either to the existence or to the liberties of this country, necessity would justify us in breaking the letter to preserve the spirit of the Constitution. The same necessity would equally justify us in refusing to grant to the President his salary, in certain extreme cases, which might easily be imagined. “But how far would your utmost power extend? Can you re-judge the determination of the President and Senate, and destroy the officers which they have created? Might not the President immediately send these Ministers to Panama; and, if he did, would not their acts be valid? It is certain, if they should go, they run the risk of never receiving a salary; but still they might act as Plenipotentiaries. By withholding the salary of the President, you cannot withhold from him the power; neither can you, by refusing to appropriate for this mission, deprive the Ministers of their authority. It is beyond your control to make them cease to be Ministers. “The constitutional obligation to provide for a Minister, is equally strong as that to carry into effect a treaty. It is true, the evils which may flow from your refusal may be greater in the one case than the other. If you refuse to appropriate for a treaty, you violate the faith of the country to a foreign nation. You do no more, however, than omit to provide for the execution of an instrument which is declared by the Constitution to be the supreme law of the land. In the case which will be presented to you by the appropriation bill, is the nature of your obligation different? I think not. The power to create the Minister is contained in the same clause of the Constitution with that to make the treaty. They are powers of the same nature. The one is absolutely necessary to carry the other into effect. You cannot negotiate treaties without Ministers. They are the means by which the treaty-making power is brought into action. You are, therefore, under the same moral obligation to appropriate money to discharge the salary of a Minister, that you would be to carry a treaty into effect. “If you ask me for authority to establish these principles, I can refer you to the opinion of the first President of the United States—the immortal Father of his Country—who, in my humble judgment, possessed more practical wisdom, more political foresight, and more useful constitutional knowledge, than all his successors. “I have thus, I think, established the position, that gentlemen who vote for the amendments now before the committee, even if they should not prevail, may, without inconsistency, give their support to the appropriation bill.”