448 WRIGHT— CONTROL OF FOREIGN RELATIONS. 



availability, not for ability or experience, and the Senate's power 

 of vetoing treaties was strengthened by frequent exercise. In his 

 "Congressional Government," presented as a doctor's thesis in 1885, 

 Woodrow Wilson generalized the progress of this period as fol- 

 lows : ^° 



" In so far as the President is an executive officer he is the servant of 

 Congress ; and the members of the Cabinent, being confined to executive 

 functions, are altogether the servants of Congress. 



" Party government can exist only when the absolute control of ad- 

 ministration, the appointment of its officers as well as the direction of its 

 means and policy is given immediately into the hands of that branch of 

 the government whose power is paramount, the representative body. 



" No one, I take it for granted, is disposed to disallow the principle 

 that the representatives of the people are the proper ultimate authority in 

 all matters of government and that administration is merely the clerical part 

 of government. Legislation is the originating force. It determines what shall 

 be done ; and the President, if he cannot or will not stay legislation by 

 the use of his extraordinary power as a branch of the legislature, is plainly 

 bound in duty to render unquestioning obedience to Congress. . . . The 

 principle is without drawback and is inseparably of a piece with all Anglo- 

 Saxon usage ; the difficulty, if there be any, must lie in the choice of means 

 whereby to energize the principle. The natural means would seem to 

 be the right on the part of the representative body to have all the executive 

 servants of its will under its close and constant supervision, and to hold 

 them to a strict accountability; in other words, to have the privilege of 

 dismissing them whenever their service became unsatisfactory." 



The third period began with the Spanish War of 1898. Our 

 foreign relations have increased in complexity and with them the 

 President's power and influence; but because of the enlarged sense 

 of senatorial prerogative, developed through three-quarters of a 

 century of comparative diplomatic isolation, friction has been ex- 

 treme.^^ Woodrow Wilson, now professor of politics at Princeton 

 University, wrote a preface for the 15th edition of his book in 

 1900.^- 



" Much the most important change to be noticed is the result of the 

 war with Spain upon the lodgment and exercise of power within our federal 

 system ; the greatly increased power and opportunity for constructive states- 

 manship given the President, by the plunge into international politics and 



20 Congressional Government, 15th ed., pp. 266, 273-274. 



21 Reinsch, American Legislatures, p. 95; Willoughby, o{>. ctt., p. 460. 



22 Congressional Government, pp. xi-xiii. 



