782 APPENDIX TO BEITISH CASE. 



VI. THE PRESIDENT HAS ONLY PERFORMED A PLAIN DUTY, IN THE INTER- 

 ESTS OF ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, AND TO THE SENATE 

 IS LEFT THE RESPONSIBILITY. 



The undersigned do not find it necessary to answer in detail the 

 various objections urged in committee by the Senators opposed to the 

 ratification of this treaty, because no amendment was offered to indi- 

 cate that the treaty could be so improved as to gain the support of 

 any member of the majority of the committee. 



The undersigned understand that the dissent from this negotiation 

 is directed to it as an entirety. This dissent is based, in part, upon 

 the opinion of some members of the majority that the Prwident should 

 not have entered upon any negotiation, in view of the resolution 

 adopted by the Senate on the 3d day of February, 1886, and the 

 opinion of Congress as it was expressed in the non-intercourse act 

 approved March 3, 1887. That resolution is as follows: 



Resolved, That in the opinion of the Senate the appointment of a commission, 

 in which the Governments of the United States and Great Britain shall be 

 represented, charged with the consideration and settlement of the fishing rights 

 of the two Governments on the coasts of the United States and British North 

 America, ought not to be provided for by Congress. 



This resolution related, as we understand it, solely to the question 

 whether such negotiation should be conducted by commissioners, 

 under an act of Congress, or by the President, under his constitu- 

 tional power to make treaties. 



The Senate adhered to its constitutional power to ratify or reject 

 a treaty, and insisted that the President should make any negotiation 

 he might see fit to conduct in such form and under such conditions 

 that the power of the Senate over such subjects should not be inter- 

 fered with. 



The retaliatory act of Congress above mentioned was not intended, 

 and could not have been intended, to instruct the President as to the 

 will of the legislature in a matter over which Congress has no author- 

 ity the negotiation, ratification, or promulgation of a treaty. 



Congress has the right to declare that in some or all of the hun- 

 dreds of cases that have occurred in which the treaty of 1818 has 

 been in question, it has been violated, and that retaliation, reprisals, 

 or war shall follow such abuses until they are compensated, and they 

 shall cease. Such a declaration as to the violation of the treaty was 

 distinctly made in the report of the Senate Committee on Foreign 

 Relations, on the 19th of January, 1887. We quote from that report 

 as follows: 



It will be seen, from the correspondence and papers submitted by the 

 President in his message on the subject, of the 8th of December last (Ex. Doc. 

 No. 19, Forty-ninth Congress, second session), and from the testimony taken 

 by the committee, that some of these instances of seizure or detention, or of 

 driving vessels away by threats, etc., were in clear violation of the treaty of 

 1818, and that others were on such slender and technical grounds, either as ap- 

 plied to fishing rights or commercial rights, as to make it impossible to be- 

 lieve that they were made with the large and just object of protecting sub- 

 stantial rights against real and substantial invasion, but must have been 

 made either under the stimulus of the cupidity of the seizing officer, sharpened 

 and made safe by the extraordinary legislation to which the committee has 

 referred, whereby the seizing officer, no matter how unjust or illegal his pro- 

 cedure may have been, is made practically secure from the necessity of making 

 substantial redress to the party wronged, or of punishment, or else they must 

 have arisen from a systematic disposition on the part of the Dominion author!- 



