Mr. President, the honorable gentleman appears to be extremely apprehensive of vesting the powers delegated by the bill, now on its passage, in the President, and wishes to retain it in the Legislature. Is this a Legislative or an Executive business? Assuredly, in my mind, of the latter nature. The President gave instructions for, and, with our consent, ratified the treaty. We have given him the power to take possession, which his officers are at this moment doing; and surely, as the ostensible party, the representative of the sovereignty to whom France will alone look, he ought to possess the power of fulfilling our part of the contract. Gentlemen, indeed, had doubted, on a former occasion, the propriety of giving the President the power of taking possession and organizing a temporary government, which every inferior officer, in case of conquest or cession, from the general to the subaltern, if commanding, has a right to do; but I little expected these doubts after we had gone so far. For my part, sir, I have none of those fears. I believe the President will be as cautious as ourselves, and the bill is as carefully worded as possible; for the money is not to be paid until after Louisiana shall be placed in our possession.
Mr. WRIGHT.--Mr. President, I presumed from the observations of the honorable gentleman from Delaware, (Mr. WELLS,) that he had not minutely attended to the provisions of this bill, on which the transfer of this stock is made expressly to depend. The treaty has in the most guarded manner secured us in the possession of the ceded territory, as a condition precedent to the payment of the purchase money, and this bill has expressly provided that no part of the stock shall be transferred till the possession stipulated by the treaty shall have been obtained. Not such a possession as the gentleman has said the President may be satisfied with--“the delivery of a twig and turf, or the knocker of a door.” The treaty has defined the possession intended: it is the possession of Louisiana, the island and city of New Orleans, with the forts and arsenals, the troops having been withdrawn from thence. But, sir, from his remarks, it would seem that his objections to this bill had been predicated on his want of confidence in the Executive, as he has expressed his fears that the stock would be transferred, before the prerequisite conditions had been performed. He says, we ought to be satisfied that the possession stipulated by the treaty shall have been delivered up before we pass this bill. Has he forgot that, by the constitution, the President is to superintend the execution of the law? Or has he forgot that treaties are the supreme law of the land? Or why, while he professes to respect this constitution, does he oppose the commission of the execution of this law to that organ of the Government to which it has been assigned by the constitution? Why, I ask, does he distrust the President? Has he not been, throughout the whole of this business, very much alive to the peaceful acquisition of this immense territory, and the invaluable waters of the Mississippi? a property which, but the other day, we were told was all-important, and so necessary to our political existence that if it was not obtained the Western people would sever themselves from the Union. This property, for which countless millions were then proposed to be expended, and the best blood of our citizens to be shed, and which then was to be had at all hazards, _per fas aut per nefas_, seems now to have lost its worth, and it would seem as if some gentlemen could not be satisfied with the purchase, because our title was not recorded in the blood of its inhabitants. But that this is not the wish of the American people, has been unequivocally declared by their immediate representatives in Congress, as well as by this House, who had each expressed their approbation of the peaceful title we had acquired, by majorities I thought not to be misunderstood. And the gentleman, although he voted for the ratification of the treaty, now again calls on us to investigate the title. It is certainly too late.