444 WRIGHT— CONTROL OF FOREIGN RELATIONS. 



262. Need of Popular Control in Foreign Relations. 



Two things seem to be needed in an institution designed to con- 

 duct foreign relations with success — concentration, or the abihty to 

 act rapidly and finally in an emergency, and popular control giving 

 assurance that permanent obligations will accord with the interests 

 of the nation. The subordination of national interests tO' dynastic 

 and personal ends, prominent in sixteenth and seventeenth century 

 diplomacy, showed the vice of an irresponsible concentration of 

 power. The natural remedy seems to be parliamentary participa- 

 tion in treaty-making and war-making and this has in part been 

 provided for in most continental European Constitutions during the 

 nineteenth and twentieth centuries.^ In England alone, the Crown 

 preserves its ancient prerogative in these matters and although in 

 practice Parliament is sometimes consulted before ratification of 

 important treaties. Lord Bryce and others have urged a more certain 

 method of popular control, suggesting study of the American proc- 

 ess of Senate participation.^ But why labor the point ! Democracy 

 is convinced of the merits of democratic diplomacy. There is 

 greater need to emphasize the importance of concentration. 



263. Need of Concentration of Authority. 



This need of concentration of power for the successful conduct 

 of foreign afifairs was dwelt upon in the works of John Locke,^° 

 Montesquieu,^^ and Blackstone,^- the political Bibles of the consti- 



8 See Myers, Legislatures and Foreign Relations, Am. Pol. Sci. Rev., 

 11: 643 et seq. (Nov., 1917), and British report on Treatment of Inter- 

 national Questions in Foreign Governments, Pari. Pap., Misc. No. 5 (1912), 

 Cd. 6102, printed in Appdx. II, Ponsonby, Democracy and Diplomacy, p. 

 128 et seq., and Heatley, Diplomacy and the Study of Foreign Relations, 

 1919, p. 270 ct seq. See also Methods and Procedure in Foreign Countries 

 Relative to the Ratification of Treaties, 66th Cong., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. 26. 



^ Supra, notes 6, 7. For relations of Crown and Parliament in treaty- 

 making in England, see Anson, Law and Custom of the Constitution, 3d ed., 

 II, pt. 2, p. 103 et seq. 



10 Supra, sec. 83. 



11 " By the (executive power, the prince or magistrate) makes peace or 

 war, sends or receives embassies, establishes the public security, and pro- 

 vides against invasions. . . . The Executive power ought to be in the 

 hands of a monarch ; because this branch of government which has always 



