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Updated: June 8, 2025
I considered at the time that the declaration and agreement contained in these treaties in favor of arbitration were just as strong, just as broad, and just as obligatory with the proposed amendment as without it. It was an agreement on the part of the President and Senate that the President and Senate, the treaty-making power, would submit differences to arbitration.
This was striking at once, and that boldly, too, at the fundamental principles of the Constitution; and, if it were established, would render the treaty-making power not only a nullity, but such an absolute absurdity as to reflect disgrace on the framers of it. Every unbiased mind will answer in the negative.
On the whole, we did not have much trouble with the Indians in 1852. The great numbers of the emigrants, coupled with the superiority of their arms, made them comparatively safe. It must be remembered, also, that this was before the treaty-making period, and the Indians of the Plains were not yet incensed against white men in general. Herds of buffalo were more often seen than bands of Indians.
The cities, as they grew in strength, never claimed the right to make the laws or to share in the government. As a matter of fact, they did make the laws, and shared, beside, in most important functions of sovereignty, in the treaty-making power, especially. Sometimes by bargains; sometimes by blood, by gold, threats, promises, or good hard blows they extorted their charters.
Rhode Island approved of the action of the senate and the chief magistrate; and in New York, as well as in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, a proposition made by resolutions in the Virginia legislature, that the constitution of the United States should be so amended as to admit the house of representatives to a share in the treaty-making power, and otherwise abridging the powers of the government, was rejected or laid on the table.
"In settling up the disastrous strife of the century, the treaty-making powers had given several of the Belgian fortresses to Holland, in order to check the ambition of France, and the Dutch closed the Scheldt.
Diplomatic relations, questions of peace and war, the treaty-making power, were not entrusted to the Council, without the knowledge and consent of the States General, which body was to be convoked twice a year by the State Council.
Jefferson remarked in the same letter, "I see no harm in rendering their sanction necessary, and not much harm in annihilating the whole treaty-making power, except as to making peace. I wish that his honesty and his political errors may not furnish a second occasion to exclaim 'curse on his virtues, they have undone his country."
Although this declaration was called forth by the statement that the legal advisers of the American Commission had been, at my request, preparing an outline of a treaty, a "skeleton treaty" in fact, the President's sweeping disapproval of members of the legal profession participating in the treaty-making seemed to be, and I believe was, intended to be notice to me that my counsel was unwelcome.
But the separation of the Customs systems for the purpose of enabling Ireland to impose tariffs in her own interests would necessarily be followed by a demand for treaty-making powers such as have been successfully claimed and are now enjoyed by British Dominions overseas.
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