238 WRIGHT— POSITION OF FOREIGN RELATIONS 



85. A Fourth Department. Opinion of Constitutional Fathers. 



When the presidency was first considered in the federal conven- 

 tion it was undoubtedly conceived as analogous to the colonial 

 and state governors who exercised at that time neither foreign 

 relations powers nor administrative powers but merely political 

 powers in domestic affairs. ^^ 



The Senate was thought of as the repository of power in for- 

 eign relations.^" As discussion advanced, however, the analogy of the 

 Presidency to the British Crown was pressed upon the convention 

 by such men as Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris,^^ while Madi- 

 son referred to Montesquieu's conception of " executive power " 

 as a definition of the President's powers.^* The view of these men 

 which vested the President with political powers regarding foreign 

 relations was, in the main, accepted, but to curb possible autocratic 

 exercises of power by the President, the Senate was given a veto 

 on treaties, while the power to declare war was left with Congress. 

 The powers finally delegated to the President, and included in 

 Article II of the Constitution as finally drafted by Gouverneur 

 Morris, are mostly in the diplomatic fields. 



The powers of domestic administration which we now regard 

 as the essential executive powers were not within the power of 

 either the colonial governor or the British monarch in the eighteenth 

 century and it was not intended that they should be within the 

 President's discretionary control. The fathers intended that these 



31 James Wilson, Farrand, op. cit., 1: 65, 153. 



32 Ibid., 1 : 426. 



33 Hamilton, Farrand. i: 288; G. Morris, Ibid., i: 513; 2: 104; Mercer, 

 Ibid., I : 297 ; Sherman, Ibid., 1 : 97. 



3* " A dependence of the Executive on the Legislature would render it 

 the executor as well as the maker of laws; and according to the observation 

 of Montesquieu, tyrannical laws may be made that they may be executed in 

 a tyrannical manner. There was an analogy between the Executive and Ju- 

 diciary departments in several respects. The latter executed the laws in cer- 

 tain cases as the former did in others. The former expounded and applied 

 them for certain purposes as the latter did for others. The difference be- 

 ween them seemed to consist chiefly in two circumstances — i. The collective 

 interest and security were much more in the power belonging to the Execu- 

 tive than to the Judiciary department. 2. In the administration of the former 

 much greater latitude is left to opinion and discretion than in the adminis- 

 tration of the latter." Madison, Farrand, op. cit., 2: 34. 



