As Sir Henry Maine rightly says, the framers of our Constitution, consciously or unconsciously, made the President’s office like the King’s office under the English constitution of their time,--the constitution, namely, of George III., who chose his advisers with or without the assent of Parliament. They took care, however, to pare down the model where it seemed out of measure with the exercise of the people’s liberty. They allowed the President to choose his ministers freely, as George then seemed to have established his right to do; but they made the confirmation of the Senate a necessary condition to his appointments. They vested in him the right of negotiating treaties with foreign governments; but he was not to sign and ratify treaties until he had obtained the sanction of the Senate. That oversight of executive action which Parliament had not yet had the spirit or the inclination to exert, and which it had forfeited its independence by not exerting, was forever secured to our federal upper chamber by the fundamental law. The conditions of mutual confidence and co-operation between executive and legislature now existing in England had not then been developed, and consequently could not be reproduced in this country. The posture and disposition of mutual wariness which were found existing there were made constitutional here by express written provision. In short, the transitional relations of the Crown and Parliament of that day were crystallized in our Constitution, such guarantees of executive good faith and legislative participation in the weightier determinations of government as were lacking in the model being sedulously added in the copy.