No. LXXV.
By Alexander Hamilton.
The same view continued, in relation to the power of making treaties.
The president is to have power, "by and with the advice and consent of the senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the senators present concur."
Though this provision has been assailed on different grounds, with no small degree of vehemence, I scruple not to declare my firm persuasion, that it is one of the best digested and most unexceptionable parts of the plan. One ground of objection is, the trite topic of the intermixture of powers; some contending, that the president ought alone to possess the prerogative of making treaties; others, that it ought to have been exclusively deposited in the senate. Another source of objection, is derived from the small number of persons by whom a treaty may be made. Of those who espouse this objection, a part are of opinion, that the house of representatives ought to have been associated in the business, while another part seem to think that nothing more was necessary than to have substituted two-thirds of all the members of the senate, to two-thirds of the members present. As I flatter myself the observations made in a preceding number, upon this part of the plan, must have sufficed to place it, to a discerning eye, in a very favourable light, I shall here content myself with offering only some supplementary remarks, principally with a view to the objections which have been just stated.
With regard to the intermixture of powers, I shall rely upon the explanations heretofore given, of the true sense of the rule upon which that objection is founded; and shall take it for granted, as an inference from them, that the union of the executive with the senate, in the article of treaties, is no infringement of that rule. I venture to add, that the particular nature of the power of making treaties, indicates a peculiar propriety in that union. Though several writers on the subject of go-
