Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/429

 thus putting it in the power of a minority of the Senators, or States to control the President and a majority of the Senate: a check on the Executive power to be found in no other case.

To make a treaty includes all the proceedings by which it is made; and the advice and consent of the Senate being necessary in the making of treaties, must necessarily be so, touching the measures employed in making the same. The Constitution does not say that treaties shall be concluded, but that they shall be made, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate: none therefore can be made without such advice and consent; and the objections against the agency of the Senate in making treaties, or in advising the President to make the same, cannot be sustained, but by giving to the Constitution an interpretation different from its obvious and most salutary meaning.

To support the objection, this gloss must be given to the Constitution, “that the President shall make treaties, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate ratify the same.” That this is, or could have been intended to be the interpretation of the Constitution, one observation will disprove. If the President alone has power to make a treaty, and the same be made pursuant to the powers and instructions given to his Minister, its ratification follows as a matter of course, and to refuse the same would be a violation of good faith; to call in the Senate to deliberate, to advise, and to consent to an act which it would be binding on them to approve and ratify, will, it is presumed, be deemed too trivial to satisfy the extraordinary provision of the Constitution, that has been cited.

ⅭⅭⅭⅩⅩⅢ.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That the journal of the convention which formed the present constitution of the United States, now remaining in the office of the Secretary of State, and all acts and proceedings of that convention, which are in the possession of the government of the United States, be published under the direction of the President of the United States, … And that one thousand copies thereof be printed, of which one copy shall be furnished to each member of the present Congress, and the residue shall remain subject to the future disposition of Congress.

, March 27, 1818.