8545. TREATIES, Power to make.—[further continued] .
President Washington
wished to redeem our captives at Algiers and
to make peace with them on paying an annual
tribute. The Senate were willing to approve
this, but unwilling to have the lower
house applied to previously to furnish the
money; they wished the President to take the
money from the treasury, or open a loan for
it. They thought that to consult the Representatives
on one occasion would give them
a handle always to claim it, and would let
them into a participation of the power of
making treaties, which the Constitution had
given exclusively to the President and Senate.
They said, too, that if the particular
sum was voted by the Representatives, it
would not be a secret. The President had
no confidence in the secrecy of the Senate,
and did not choose to take money from the
treasury or to borrow. But he agreed he
would enter into the provisional treaties with
the Algerines, not to be binding on us till
ratified here. I prepared questions for consultation
with the Senate, and added, that the
Senate were to be apprized, that on the return
of the provisional treaty, and after they
should advise the ratification, he would not
have the seal put to it till the two Houses
should vote the money. He asked me, if the
treaty stipulating a sum and ratified by him,
with the advice of the Senate, would not be
good under the Constitution, and obligatory
on the Representatives to furnish the money?
I answered it certainly would, and that it
would be the duty of the Representatives to
raise the money; but that they might decline
to do what was their duty, and I thought it
might be incautious to commit himself by a
ratification with a foreign nation, where he
might be left in the lurch in the execution; it
was possible, too, to conceive a treaty, which
it would not be their duty to provide for. He
said he did not like throwing too much into
democratic hands, that if they would not do
what the Constitution called them to do, the
government would be at an end, and must
then assume another form.—
The Anas. Washington ed. ix, 114.
Ford ed., i, 190.
(April. 1792)
