In addition to the usual salaries of the envoys to Great Britain and France, appropriations were asked for the posts at Madrid, Lisbon, and Berlin, which last Mr.Adams had designated as a first-class mission.
The discussion on the powers of the President, and the extent to which they might be controlled by paring down the appropriations, lifted the debate from the narrow ground of economy in administration to the higher plane of constitutional powers.

Nicholas opened on the Republican side by announcing that it was seasonable to bring back the establishment of the diplomatic corps to the footing it had been on until the year 1796.

In all governments like our own he declared that there was a tendency to a union and consolidation of all its parts into the executive, and the limitation and annexion of the parts with each other as settled by the Constitution would be destroyed by this influence unless there were a constant attention on the part of the legislature to resist it.

The appointment of a minister plenipotentiary to Prussia, with which we had little or no commercial intercourse, offered an opportunity to determine this limitation.

Harper said that this was a renewal of the old charge that foreign intercourse was unnecessary, and the old suggestion that our commerce ought to be given up or left to shift for itself.