eal put to it
till the two Houses should vote the money. He asked me, if the treaty
stipulating a sum and ratified by him, with the advice of the Senate,
would not be good under the constitution, and obligatory on the
Representatives to furnish the money. I answered, it certainly would,
and that it would be the duty of the Representatives to raise the money;
but that they might decline to do what was their duty, and I thought it
might be incautious to commit himself by a ratification with a foreign
nation, where he might be left in the lurch in the execution: it was
possible too, to conceive a treaty, which it would not be their duty
to provide for. He said that he did not like throwing too much into
democratic hands, that if they would not do what the constitution called
on them to do, the government would be at an end, and must then assume
another form. He stopped here; and I kept silence to see whether
he would say any thing more in the same line, or add any qualifying
expression to soften what he had said: but he did neither. I had
observed, that wherever the agency of either, or both Houses would be
requisite subsequent to a treaty, to carry it into effect, it would be
prudent to consult them previously, if the occasion admitted. That thus
it was, we were in the habit of consulting the Senate previously, when
the occasion permitted, because their subsequent ratification would be
necessary. That there was the same reason for consulting the lower House
previously, where they were to be called on afterwards, and especially
in the case of money, as they held the purse-strings, and would be
jealous of them. However, he desired me to strike out the intimation
that the seal would not be put till both Houses should have voted the
money.

April the 6th. The President called on me before breakfast, and first
introduced some other matter, then fell on the representation bill,
which he had now in his possession for the tenth day. I had before given
him my opinion in writing, that the method of apportionment was contrary
to the constitution. He agreed that it was contrary to the common
understanding of that instrument, and to what was understood at the time
by the makers of it: that, yet it would bear the construction which the
bill put, and he observed that the vote for and against the bill was
perfectly geographical, a northern against a southern vote, and he
feared he should be thought to be taking side with a southern par