s been formally, at length, laid before Congress.
All America is a tiptoe to see what the House of Representatives will
decide on it. We conceive the constitutional doctrine to be, that though
the President and Senate have the general power of making treaties, yet
wherever they include in a treaty matters confided by the constitution
to the three branches of legislature, an act of legislation will
be requisite to confirm these articles, and that the House of
Representatives, as one branch of the legislature, are perfectly free to
pass the act or to refuse it, governing themselves by their own judgment
whether it is for the good of their constituents to let the treaty
go into effect or not. On the precedent now to be set will depend the
future construction of our constitution, and whether the powers of
legislation shall be transferred from the President, Senate, and
House of Representatives, to the President and Senate, and Piamingo or
any-other Indian, Algerine, or other chief. It is fortunate that the
first decision is to be in a case so palpably atrocious, as to have been
predetermined by all America. The appointment of Elsworth Chief Justice,
and Chase one of the judges, is doubtless communicated to you. My
friendly respects to Mrs. Monroe. Adieu affectionately.

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXCII.--TO JAMES MADISON, March 27,1796

TO JAMES MADISON.

Monticello, March 27,1796.

Dear Sir,

I am much pleased with Mr. Gallatin's speech in Bache's paper of March
the 14th. It is worthy of being printed at the end of the Federalist, as
the only rational commentary on the part of the constitution to which
it relates. Not that there may not be objections, and difficult ones,
to it, and which I shall be glad to see his answers to; but if they are
never answered, they are more easily to be gulped down than those which
lie to the doctrines of his opponents, which do in fact annihilate
the whole of the powers given by the constitution to the legislature.
According to the rule established by usage and common sense, of
construing one part of the instrument by another, the objects on which
the President and Senate may exclusively act by treaty are much
reduced, but the field on which they may act with the sanction of the
legislature, is large enough: and I see no harm in rendering their
sanction necessary, and not much harm in annihilating the whole
treaty-making power, except as to making peace. If you decide in favor
of y