nly; whereas the preamble agreed to in the
appropriation of money for the purchase of Alaska contained the assent
of both branches.

Though the Constitutional principle involved may not be considered as
one settled beyond a fair difference of opinion, there has
undoubtedly been a great advance, since the controversy between the
two branches in 1794, in favor of the rights of the House when an
appropriation of money is asked to carry out a treaty. The change
has been so great indeed that the House would not now in any case
consider itself under a Constitutional obligation to appropriate money
in support of a treaty, the provisions of which it did not approve. It
is therefore practically true that all such treaties must pass under
the judgment of the House as well as under that of the Senate and the
President. Judge McLean of the Supreme Court delivered an opinion
which is often referred to as embodying the doctrine upon which the
House rests its claim of power.* "A treaty," said the learned Justice,
"is the supreme law of the land only when the treaty-making power can
carry it into effect. A treaty which stipulates for the payment of
money undertakes to do that _which the treaty-making power cannot do;
therefore the treaty is not the supreme law of the land_. To give it
effect the action of Congress is necessary, and in this action the
representatives and senators act on their own judgment and
responsibility and not on the judgment and responsibility of the
treaty-making power. _A foreign government may be presumed to know
that the power of appropriating money belongs to Congress_. No act of
any part of the Government can be held to be a law which has not all
the sanctions to make it law."(2)

The territory which we thus acquired is of vast extent, exceeding in
its entire area a half million square miles. Its extreme length is
about eleven hundred miles; its extreme width about eight hundred.
It stretches nearly to the seventy-second degree of north latitude,
three hundred and fifty miles beyond Behring's Straits; and borders
upon the Arctic Ocean for more than a thousand miles. The adjacent
islands of the Aleutian group are included in the transfer, and reach
two-thirds of the way across the North Pacific in the latitude of
60 degrees,--the westernmost island being within six hundred miles of
the coast of Kamtchatka. The resources of the forests of Alaska are
very great,--the trees growing to a good height