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expressly authorized by the constituting power. An agent cannot new-model his own commission-a treaty, for example, cannot transfer the legislative power to the executive department...
 ]Furthermore, he added:
 A treaty which should manifestly betray or sacrifice the private interests of the state, would be null. . Thus the power of treaty, though extending to the right of making alliances offensive and defensive, might not be exercised in mnaking an alliance, so injurious to the state as to justify the non-observance of the contract.
 But, he said, these are the oniy exceptions to the treaty power. It is therefore erroneous to statethat a treaty can establish nothing between the United States and a foreign nation, which is the province of the legislative authority to regulate in reference to the United States alone.
 The important distinction to keep in mind, Hamilton observed, is the difference between laws and treaties. They operate by different means and on different subjects:
 The power to make laws is "the power of pronouncing authoritatively the will of the nation as to all persons and things over which it has jurisdiction,"; or it may be defined to be "the power of prescribing rules binding upon all persons~ and things over which the nation has jurisdiction."
 In other words, he explained, the power to make laws is primarily an internal matter thatacts compulsively upon all persons, whether foreigners or citizens, and upon all things within the territory of such nation, and also upon its own citizens and their property without its territory in certain cases and under certain limitations.
 But the power to make lawscan have no obligatory action whatsoever upon a foreign nation, or upon any person or thing within the jurisdiction of a foreign nation.
 On the other hand, the power to make treaties, said Hamiltonis the power by agreement, convention, or compact to establish rules binding upon two or more nations, their respective citizens and property. The rule established derives its reciprocal obligation from promise, from the faith which the contracting parties pledge to each other-not f rom the power of either to prescribe a rule for the other.
 Thus it may be seen thatthe means which the power of legislation employs are laws which it enacts, or rules which it enjoins; the subject upon which it acts is the nation of whom it is, the persons and property within the jurisdiction of the nation. The means which the power of treaty employs are contracts with other nations and the subjects upon which it acts are the nations contracting and those persons or things of each to which the contract relates.
 -So on the one hand we are talking about legislating and on the other contracting. The difference between the two is further amplified by the fact observed Hamilton, thatthough a treaty may effect what a law can, yet a law cannot effect what a treaty does.
 The key to an understanding of the difference between laws and treaties, concludes Hamilton, is recognition of the fact that the purpose of treaties is to accomplish that which cannot be done by laws; or as Hamilton puts itIt is the province of the latter (treaties) to do what the former (laws) cannt