4081. JAY TREATY, House of representatives and.—[further continued].
The British treaty has
been formally, at length, laid before Congress.
All America is on tiptoe to see what the
House of Representatives will decide on it.
We conceive the constitutional doctrine to be,
that though the President and Senate have
the general power of making treaties, yet,
whenever, they include in a treaty matters
confided by the Constitution to the three
branches of the Legislature, an act of legislation
will be requisite to confirm these articles,
and that the House of Representatives,
as one branch of the Legislature, are perfectly
free to pass the act or to refuse it, governing
themselves by their own judgment whether
it is for the good of their constituents to let
the treaty go into effect or not. On the
precedent now to be set will depend the
future construction of our Constitution, and
whether the powers of legislation shall be
transferred from the President, Senate, and
House of Representatives, to the President
and Senate, and Piamingo or any other Indian,
Algerine, or other chief. It is fortunate that the
first decision is to be in a case so palpably
atrocious, as to have been predetermined by
all America.—
To James Monroe. Washington ed. iv, 134.
Ford ed., vii, 67.
(M.
March. 1796)
