WRIGHT— POWER TO MAKE AGREEMENTS. 335 



has averaged more than four a year, and for the twentieth century, 

 fifteen a year, or a treaty ratified every three weeks.*'" And this, 

 in spite of the frequent dit^erences between the President and the 

 Senate often resulting in the failure to ratify.*'^ 



These treaties have been on a very wide variety of subjects. 

 The United States has ratified treaties politically organizing inter- 

 national society. Such have been alliances, as that with France in 

 1778; guarantees of territory or neutrality as in the French treaty 

 of 1778 (Art. XI), the treaty with New Granada or Colombia of 

 1846 (Art. XXXV), with Panama in 1903 (Art. I), and with Haiti 

 in 1916 (Art. XIV) ; limitations of the power to declare war by re- 

 quiring delay as in the twenty Bryan treaties of 1914 or by limiting 

 the objects for which force maybe used as in the II Hague Conven- 

 tion of 1907 ; and limitations of armament as in the Great Lakes agree- 

 ment of 181 7. The United States has also ratified many treaties 

 administratively organizing international society, such as postal, 

 telegraphic, cable, radio, sanitary, slave trade, fishery, migratory 

 bird and other conventions. It has become a party to treaties 

 legally organizing international society through the definition of 

 principles of international law as in the Geneva and Hague Conven- 

 tions, through the establishment of international courts and arbitra- 

 tion tribunals and through the agreement to submit certain types of 

 cases to arbitration. Finally there have been treaties of annexation 

 and boundary, treaties settling claims, treaties of commerce and navi- 

 gation, consular and extradition conventions, and conventions de- 

 fining the rights of aliens.*'- 



No treaty has ever been declared unconstitutional.*'^ By prac- 

 tice, by the terms in which the power is granted in the Constitution, 



60 By 25-year periods, treaties have been concluded as follows: I778-I799i 

 21; 1800-1824, 20; 1825-1849, 63: 1850-1874, 141; 1875-1899, 142; 1900-1914. 

 208. This is in accord with the official enumeration of treaties (excluding In- 

 dian treaties), begun by the Department of State on January 29, 1908, with 

 Treaty Series, No. 489. (See Check-list of U. S. Public Documents. 1911, 

 p. 978.) Including the protocols and modi viz'endi printed in Malloy and 

 Charles' Collections, the total for the period would be 633. 



61 Infra, sec. 177. 



62 See Foster, Practice of Diplomacy, pp. 243-244. 



63 Corwin, National Supremacy, p. 5; Anderson, Am. Jl. Int. Lazv, i: 

 647; Willoughby, op. cit., p. 493, supra, sec. 46. 



