PUBLIUS
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FEDERALIST No. 75
The Treaty-Making Power of the Executive
For the Independent Journal.
Wednesday, March 26, 1788
HAMILTON
To the People of the State of New York:
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 power 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.
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