■912.] OF THE UNITED STATES. 335 



used in the Sixth Article of the Constitution. That was a thing 

 admitted. Accompanying the transmission of the Constitution to 

 Congress was a letter unanimously approved by the Convention, and 

 signed by George Washington, as its President. In that letter it 

 is said: 



" The friends of our country have long seen and desired, that the power 

 of making war, peace, and treaties, that of levying money and regulating 

 commerce, and the correspondent executive and judicial authorities should be 

 fully and eflfectually vested in the general government of the Union.""" 



In the essay already quoted, Professor Mikell, after urging that 

 the treaty-making power of the United States cannot operate to 

 affect State law upon any subject not expressly committed to Con- 

 gress, continues : 



" The issue has been much obscured by the specious plea that it is intol- 

 erable that a State should enact laws in conflict with a treaty and by taking 

 away rights guaranteed to foreigners, under such treaty, give just cause of 

 offense to a foreign nation, and even possibly imperil the peace of the 

 whole Union.'"^^ 



It is interesting to note that, in this view, Washington, Madison, 

 Randolph, Pendleton, Ellsworth, Hamilton, Adams, by the quota- 

 tions above made, and all who under their guidance voted for the 

 Constitution, made use of this "specious plea." It is just possible 

 that a student of those four years of American history from the 

 Treaty of peace in 1783 to the creation of the Constitution in 1787, 

 might conclude that the condition of affairs then existing because of 

 State disregard of treaties, was superior to the conditions wrought 

 by the Constitution. But it is very clear that none of the statesmen 

 who had suffered through those days shared this conclusion. Yet, 

 consideration as to whether Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Ran- 

 dolph, Adams, and the others were right or wrong, does not reach 

 the precise issue. And that issue is: What do the treaty clauses 

 in the Constitution mean? It cannot be gainsaid that treaties were 

 not effective law supreme over State enactments under the Con- 

 federation; it cannot be gainsaid that Washington and the con- 

 temporary statesmen who created the Constitution thought (how- 



^^Ibid., p. 666. 



'^^^ American Lazv Register, Vol. 57, p. 554. 



