As chairman of the committee on the ratification of the peace treaties, as plenipotentiary entrusted with the negotiations of the treaties of commerce, Jefferson had more than once felt how insufficient were the Articles of Confederation. He had repeatedly proclaimed that to all intents and purposes the United States were to be regarded as one nation; but as long as treaties with foreign powers had to be ratified not only by Congress but by the different States, as long as delegates had to refer constantly to the particular States they represented, the Federal organization remained a very clumsy, inefficient piece of machinery, and business could not be transacted. He never thought for an instant that it was possible or desirable for the former colonies to remain completely independent; they had at least to form a society of nations in order to insure their very existence and their development. His first months in Europe could only confirm him in these views, and he wrote to Madison at the end of 1786: "To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in domestic ones, gives the outlines of the proper division of powers between the general and particular governments. But to enable the federal head to exercise the powers given it to best advantage, it should be organized as the particular ones are, into legislative, executive and judiciary." At that date, however, he had not admitted the desirability of appointing a single executive and came back to all his proposals of vesting the executive powers in a committee of the States, leaving to Congress the legislative authority.