Treaty of 1783.-Treaty of Ghent.-Our Contention.— Treaty of 1818.-Difficulties, Complaints, and Seiz- ures. Diplomatic Correspondence.-Treaty of 1854. -Its Abrogation.-New Difficulties.-Treaty of 1871. -The Halifax Award.-Abrogation of Treaty.-Tem- General Commercial Treaties.-The Most Favored Na- tion. - Special Commercial Treaties. Changes in Commerce.-Our Earliest Treaties.-Commercial Re- lations and Negotiations with Great Britain.-Treat- ies of 1794, 1806, and 1815.-Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. Mr. Wheaton's Negotiations with the German Zollverein.-Advantageous Treaty Rejected by the Senate. The Mexican Treaty of 1859.-That of 1883. UNIVERSITY: I. THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE. Constitutional Theory and Practice.—The Secretary of State. -His Duties.-Assistant Secretaries.-Bureaux.-Law Officer. Ceremonial.-Knowledge of French.-Secrecy.— Efficiency.-Economy.-Salaries.-Social Duties of the Secretary. The Senate.-Treaty-making Power.-Questions about Rights of Lower House.-Powers of Committees.-Appropriations.-How passed.-Evil System.Change of Rules.-Relations of the Secretary to Congress.-Publications.—Consular Reports.-Diplomatic De spatches-Archives. If we were to put ourselves in the place of an intelligent foreign diplomatist, anxious to discover for his own purposes who were the real depositaries of power in the United States; if we could lay aside for a while the "literary theory" of our Constitution and of its working, which has been taught to us from childhood, and look only at the practice of our representative institutions, as they have been modified, and, as it were, solidified during the last twenty-five years; if we should study the facts alone, as if there were no written Constitution, we should find that, in the last analysis, the Government of the United States, in ordinary peaceful and uneventful times, is a nearly irresponsible despotism, composed of five or six men, working under and through constitutional forms, and subject only to the penalty which is always exacted for very grave mistakes. These six men are the President of the United States, who is, it is true, elected by the people, but only from two or three candidates proposed by partisan conventions as the result of intrigue or of the failure of intrigue; the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury, named by the President as his colleagues and associates, rather than his advisers and servants, confirmed by the Senate, which never refuses its approval except for cause of the most scandalous nature, or for reasons of extreme partisan feeling; the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who is elected as such by his fellow-Congressmen at the dictation of a clique or as the result of a compromise between the factions and the personal ambitions of the dominant party; the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Appropriations, and the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Ways and Means in the House of Representatives, both appointed by the Speaker, leading men in Congress, and generally his rivals for the Speakership. In time of war or internal disorder additions would necessarily be made to this list, both from the Cabinet officers and the chairmen of committees, for other branches of the service would necessarily rise to |