The resolution of this apparent contradiction rests upon precedent, accumulated practice and legal distinctions. Like many executive interpretations of the Constitution, the initial precedent was set by George Washington. When he became President we had no representative at the Court of St. James's; John Adams, our minister, had come home after being treated with studied incivility. There was no British minister here. It was essential to establish working relations without further impairing our prestige. In these circumstances, Washington sent Gouverneur Morris as a "private agent." He bore no commission, only a letter on "the authority and credit" of which he was to converse with the British officials with a view to establishing normal diplomatic relations. This appointment, made in October 1789, was not reported to the Congress until a presidential message on February 14,1791. There was no vocal protest, though the sour journal of William Maclay indicated storms that were to follow. Referring to Morris, Maclay noted: "He has acted in a strange kind of capacity, half pimp, half envoy, or perhaps more properly a kind of political eavesdropper about the British Court for sometime past."
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