o Hamilton, "becomes more and more difficult. The legislature will not
pass laws in gross. Their appropriations are minute; Gallatin, to whom
they yield, is evidently intending to break down this department, by
charging it with an impracticable detail." "The heads of departments,"
Fisher Ames wrote despondently, two years after Hamilton left office,
"are chief clerks. Instead of being the ministry, the organs of the
executive power, and imparting a kind of momentum to the operation of
the laws, they are precluded even from communicating with the House by
reports." There was no room for a British ministry in the Republican
scheme of politics.

Meantime, Washington's foreign policy had widened the breach between the
political factions and had forced him into a partisan position. From the
Republican point of view, Jay's treaty threw the United States into the
arms of England and gave just cause of offense to France. Knowing the
popular temper, which was undoubtedly hostile to the treaty, the
Republican leaders endeavored to defeat the purposes of the
Administration by refusing to vote the necessary appropriations. Their
first demand was for the papers relating to the treaty, on the ground
that in matters upon which the action of the House was needed, that body
might properly call for information to guide its deliberations. The
President refused this demand, both because he deemed it imprudent to
make the papers public, and because he denied the right of the House to
participate in the treaty-making power.

The debate which followed is one of the most illuminating in the early
history of Congress. The trend of argument may be suggested by two
remarks of opposing partisans. Said Griswold for the Federalists, "The
House of Representatives have nothing to do with the treaty but provide
for its execution." Disclaiming that the House was bent upon impairing
the constitutional right of the President and Senate to make treaties,
Gallatin contended that the power claimed by the House was "only a
negative, a restraining power on those subjects over which Congress has
the right to legislate." In vigorous resolutions the House sustained
Gallatin's position; and the appropriation for the treaty was carried
only by the casting vote of the Speaker, on April 29, two months after
Washington by proclamation had declared the treaty to be the law of the
land.

The consequences of the _rapprochement_ between the United States and
Great Brit