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.

Here, again, the theory of the Constitution was necessarily somewhat
modified in practical administration, for under the power of nominating
diplomatic representatives, negotiating treaties, and in general, of
executing the laws of the nation, the principle was soon evolved that
the conduct of foreign affairs was primarily the function of the
President, with the limitation that the Senate must concur in diplomatic
appointments and in the validity of treaties, and that only both Houses
of Congress could jointly declare war. This cumbrous system necessarily
required that the President in conducting the foreign relations of the
Government should keep in touch with the Senate, and such was the
accepted procedure throughout the history of the nation until President
Wilson saw fit to ignore the Senate, even when the Senate had indicated
its dissent in advance to some of his p