tingent chance of petty political advantage are the only motives that cut any ice at present.' Numerous illustrations of strained relations between the Executive and the Legislature at Washington might be cited. Thus in "The Education," Henry Adams records the reply of a cabinet officer to his plea for patience and tact in dealing with Congress: "You can't use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout."

Going back even farther we find in John Quincy Adams's Diary comment on a very early incident:

4

"Mr. Crawford told twice over the story of President Washington's having at an early period of his administration gone to the Senate with a project of a treaty to be negotiated, and been present at their deliberations upon it. They debated it and proposed alterations so that when Washington left the Senate Chamber he said he would be damned if he ever went there again. And ever since that time treaties have been negotiated by the Executive before submitting them to the consideration of the Senate." Senator Maclay, who was present at the time, records the same incident in his journal on August 22, 1789.5

"I cannot now be mistaken. The President wishes to tread on the necks of the Senate. . . . He wishes us to see with the eyes and hear with the ears of his Secretary only. The Secretary to advance the premises, the President to draw the conclusions, and to bear down our deliberations with his personal authority and presence. Form only will be left to us."

261. Criticisms of the American System.

The prevalence of such incidents suggests that the difficulties which arose between President Wilson and the Senate in considering the Peace Treaty of Versailles were not wholly due to personalities. It suggests that institutions may have been partly to blame. Indeed, Viscount Grey, in his letter to the Times of January 31, 1920, said that the American Constitution "not only makes possible, but, under certain conditions, renders inevitable conflict between the Executive and the Legislature."

2 Ibid., 2: 274.

3 The Education of Henry Adams, 1918, p. 261. Memoirs, 6: 427.

Journal of William Maclay, N. Y., 1890, p. 132.

American commentators have often deplored this situation, Frequently they have urged reform, usually in the direction of the British cabinet system, but their attention has been centered upon domestic affairs. It is an extraordinary fact that, with respect to the control of foreign affairs, the reverse is true. British writers have looked hopefully to the United States as a model for reform. Thus, in his American Commonwealth, Lord Bryce says: "

"The day may come when in England the question of limiting the present all but unlimited discretion of the executive in foreign affairs will have to be dealt with, and the example of the American Senate will then deserve and receive careful study."

This opinion has been acted upon, and features of the American system have been endorsed by the British union for democratic control of foreign relations founded in 1914.7

262. Need of Popular Control in Foreign Relations.

Two things seem to be needed in an institution designed to conduct foreign relations with success-concentration, or the ability to act rapidly and finally in an emergency, and popular control giving assurance that permanent obligations will accord with the interests of the nation. The subordination of national interests to dynastic and personal ends, prominent in sixteenth and seventeenth century diplomacy, showed the vice of an irresponsible concentration of power. The natural remedy seems to be parliamentary participation in treaty-making and war-making and this has in part been provided for in most continental European Constitutions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In England alone, the Crown

• American Commonwealth, 2d ed., p. 104.

7" The Morrow of the War," first pamphlet issued by the Union of Democratic Control, 1914, printed in Ponsonby, Democracy and Diplomacy, London, 1915, p. 21.

8 See Myers, Legislatures and Foreign Relations, Am. Pol. Sci. Rev., 11: 643 et seq. (Nov., 1917), and British report on Treatment of International Questions in Foreign Governments, Parl. Pap., Misc. No. 5 (1912), Cd. 6102, printed in Appdx. II, Ponsonby, Democracy and Diplomacy, p. 128 et seq., and Heatley, Diplomacy and the Study of Foreign Relations, 1919, p. 270 et seq. See also Methods and Procedure in Foreign Countries Relative to the Ratification of Treaties, 66th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. 26.

preserves its ancient prerogative in these matters and although in practice Parliament is sometimes consulted before ratification of important treaties, Lord Bryce and others have urged a more certain method of popular control, suggesting study of the American process of Senate participation. But why labor the point! Democracy is convinced of the merits of democratic diplomacy. There is greater need to emphasize the importance of concentration.

263. Need of Concentration of Authority.

This need of concentration of power for the successful conduct of foreign affairs was dwelt upon in the works of John Locke,10 Montesquieu,11 and Blackstone,12 the political Bibles of the constitutional fathers. It was emphasized by many speakers in the federal

9 Supra, notes 6, 7. For relations of Crown and Parliament in treatymaking in England, see Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, 3d ed., II, pt. 2, p. 103 et seq.

10 Supra, sec. 83.

11" By the (executive power, the prince or magistrate) makes peace or war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and provides against invasions. . . . The Executive power ought to be in the hands of a monarch; because this branch of government which has always need of expedition is better administered by one than by many; whereas, whatever depends on the legislative power is oftentimes better regulated by many than by a single person. But if there was no monarch, and the executive power was committed to a certain number of persons selected from the legislative body, there would be an end of liberty; by reason the two powers would be united, as the same persons would actually sometimes have, and would moreover always be able to have, a share in both." (Montesquieu, L'Esprit des lois, 1. xi, c. 6, ed. Philadelphia, 1802, 1: 181, 186.)

12" With regard to foreign concerns, the king is the delegate or representative of his people. It is impossible that the individuals of a state, in their collective capacity, can transact the affairs of that state with another community equally numerous as themselves. Unanimity must be wanting to their measures, and strength to the execution of their counsels. In the king, therefore, as in a centre, all the rays of his people are united, and form by that union a consistency, splendor, and power that make him feared and respected by foreign potentates; who would scruple to enter into any engagement that must afterwards be revised and ratified by a popular assembly. What is done by the royal authority, with regard to foreign powers, is the act of the whole nation; what is done without the king's concurrence is the act only of private men." (Blackstone, Commentaries, 1: 252.)

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convention,13 by the authors of the Federalist, and by President Washington in his message on the Jay treaty.15 The same opinion

13 See remarks by Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris, Farrand, op. cit., I: 290, 513.

14" It seldom happens in the negotiation of treaties, of whatever nature, but that perfect secrecy and immediate dispatch are sometimes requisite. There are cases where the most useful intelligence may be obtained, if the persons possessing it can be relieved from apprehension of discovery. Those apprehensions will operate on those persons whether they are actuated by mercenary or friendly motives; and there doubtless are many of both descriptions who would rely on the secrecy of the President, but who would not confide in that of the Senate, and still less in that of a large popular assembly. The convention have done well, therefore, in so disposing of the power of making treaties that although the President must, in forming them, act by the advice and consent of the Senate, yet he will be able to manage the business of intelligence in such a manner as prudence may suggest.

"They who have turned their attention to the affairs of men must have perceived that there are tides in them; tides very irregular in their duration, strength and direction and seldom found to run twice exactly in the same manner or measure. To discern and to profit by these tides in national affairs is the business of those who preside over them; and they who have had much experience on this can inform us that there frequently are occasions when days, nay, even when hours, are precious. . . . So often and so essentially have we heretofore suffered from the want of secrecy and dispatch that the Constitution would have been inexcusably defective if no attention had been paid to those objects. Those matters which in negotiations usually require the most secrecy and the most dispatch are those preparatory and auxiliary measures which are not otherwise important in a national view than as they tend to facilitate the attainment of the objects of negotiation. For these the President will find no difficulty to provide; and should any circumstance occur which requires the advice and consent of the Senate, he may at any time convene them." (The Federalist, Jay, No. 64, Ford, ed., pp. 429-430.) See also Hamilton, No. 70, Ford, ed., p. 467.

15" The nature of foreign negotiations requires caution and their success must often depend on secrecy; and even when brought to a conclusion a full disclosure of all the measures, demands, or eventual concessions which may have been proposed or contemplated would be extremely impolitic; for this might have a pernicious influence on future negotiations, or produce immediate inconveniences, perhaps danger and mischief, in relation to other powers. The necessity of such caution and secrecy was one cogent reason for vesting the power of making treaties in the President, with the advice and consent of the Senate, the principle on which that body was formed confining it to a small number of members." (Washington's Message to the House of Representatives, March 30, 1796, Richardson, op. cit., p. 194.)

was restated by De Tocqueville, who, because he doubted the ability of democracy to achieve this concentration, doubted its capacity to cope with foreign affairs.

"As for myself," he said, "I have no hesitation in avowing my conviction, that it is more especially in the conduct of foreign relations that democratic governments appear to me to be decidedly inferior to governments carried on upon different principles. Foreign politics demand scarcely any of those qualities which a democracy possesses, and they require on the contrary the perfect use of almost all those faculties in which it is deficient. . . . Democracy is unable to regulate the details of an important undertaking, to persevere in a design, and to work out its execution in the presence of serious obstacles. It cannot combine its measures with secrecy and it will not await their consequences with patience. These are qualities which more especially belong to an individual or to an aristocracy and they are precisely the means by which an individual people attains to a predominant position." 16

But lest the apologist of the "Ancient Regime" be thought biased, let us hear a recent writer of a different school. Mr. Walter Lippmann thus discusses the uses of a king: 17

"The reason why we trust one man, rather than many, is because one man can negotiate and many men can't. Two masses of people have no way of dealing with each other. . . . The American people cannot all seize the same pen and indite a note to sixty-five million people living within the German Empire. . . . The very qualities which are needed for negotiation-quickness of mind, direct contact, adaptiveness, invention, the right proportion of give and take—are the very qualities which masses of people do not possess."

264. Practice in American History.

As practice is the best evidence of what Constitutions are, so history is the best evidence of what institutions must become, if

16 Democracy in America, N. Y., 1862, 1: 254.

17 The Stakes of Diplomacy, 2d ed., 1917, pp. 26, 29. See also remarks of Senator Spooner, of Wis., in Senate, January 23, 1906: "The conduct of our foreign relations is a function which requires quick initiative, and the Senate is often in vacation. It is a power that requires celerity. One course of action may be demanded tonight, another in the morning. It requires also secrecy; and that element is not omitted by the commentators on the Constitution as having been deemed by the framers of the most vital importance. It is too obvious to make elaboration pardonable." (Cong. Rec., 40: 1420; quoted Corwin, op. cit., p. 176.) See also Sen. Doc. No. 56, 54th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 6-18; Reinsch, World Politics, 1900, p. 334; Heatley, op. cit., p. 71.