arbitrary disposition;
for if we attend carefully to its operation, it will be found to partake
more of the legislative than of the executive character, though it does
not seem strictly to fall within the definition of either of them. The
essence of the legislative authority is to enact laws, or, in other
words, to prescribe rules for the regulation of the society; while the
execution of the laws, and the employment of the common strength, either
for this purpose or for the common defense, seem to comprise all the
functions of the executive magistrate. The power of making treaties
is, plainly, neither the one nor the other. It relates neither to the
execution of the subsisting laws, nor to the enaction of new ones;
and still less to an exertion of the common strength. Its objects are
CONTRACTS with foreign nations, which have the force of law, but derive
it from the obligations of good faith. They are not rules prescribed
by the sovereign to the subject, but agreements between sovereign and
sovereign. The power in question seems therefore to form a distinct
department, and to belong, properly, neither to the legislative nor to
the executive. The qualities elsewhere detailed as indispensable in the
management of foreign negotiations, point out the Executive as the most
fit agent in those transactions; while the vast importance of the
trust, and the operation of treaties as laws, plead strongly for the
participation of the whole or a portion of the legislative body in the
office of making them.

However proper or safe it may be in governments where the executive
magistrate is an hereditary monarch, to commit to him the entire power
of making treaties, it would be utterly unsafe and improper to intrust
that power to an elective magistrate of four years' duration. It has
been remarked, upon another occasion, and the remark is unquestionably
just, that an hereditary monarch, though often the oppressor of his
people, has personally too much stake in the government to be in any
material danger of being corrupted by foreign powers. But a man raised
from the station of a private citizen to the rank of chief magistrate,
possessed of a moderate or slender fortune, and looking forward to a
period not very remote when he may probably be obliged to return to the
station from which he was taken, might sometimes be under temptations to
sacrifice his duty to his interest, which it would require superlative
virtue to withstand. An avaric