people in Congress.  While this makes for stability in administration and keeps the ship of state on an even keel, yet it also leads to the fatalism of our democracy, and often the “native hue” of its resolution is thus “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”  Take a striking instance.  I am confident that after the sinking of the Lusitania, the United States would have entered the world war, if President Wilson’s tenure of power had then depended upon a vote of confidence.

6.

The sixth fundamental principle is the joint power of the Senate and the Executive over the foreign relations of the Government.

I need not dwell at length upon this unique feature of our constitutional system, for since the Versailles Treaty, the world has become well acquainted with our peculiar system under which treaties are made and war is declared or terminated.  Nothing, excepting the principle of local rule, was of deeper concern to the framers of the Constitution.  When it was framed, it was the accepted principle of all other nations that the control of the foreign relations of the Government was the exclusive prerogative of the Executive.  In your country the only limitation upon that power was the control of Parliament over the purse of the nation, and some of the great struggles in your history related to the attempt of the Crown to exact money to carry on the wars without a Parliament grant.

The framers were unwilling to lodge any such power in the Executive, however great his powers in other respects.  This was primarily due to the conception of the States that then prevailed.  While they had created a central government for certain specified purposes, they yet regarded themselves as sovereign nations, and their representatives in the Senate were, in a sense, their ambassadors.  They were as little inclined to permit the President of the United States to make treaties or declare war at will in their behalf as the European nations would be to-day to vest a similar authority in the League of Nations.  It was, therefore, first proposed that the power to make treaties and appoint diplomatic representatives should be vested exclusively in the Senate, but as that body was not always in session, this plan was so far modified as to give the President, who is always acting, the power to negotiate treaties “with the advice and consent of the Senate.”  As to making war, the framers were not willing to entrust the power even to the President and the Senators, and it was therefore expressly provided that only Congress could take this momentous step.