Nor is there any question with regard to the facts. Saying nothing of the lapse of the treaty on the 29th March, 1870, being the expiration of the period for the exchange of ratifications, I refer to its formal rejection by the Senate, June 30, 1870, which was not unknown to the President. In the order of business the rejection was communicated to him, while it became at once matter of universal notoriety. Then, by way of further fixing the President with this notice, I refer to his own admission in the Annual Message of December last, when he announces that “during the last session of Congress a treaty for the annexation of the Republic of San Domingo to the United States failed to receive the requisite two-thirds of the Senate,” and then, after denouncing the rejection as “folly,” he proceeds as follows:-- “My suggestion is, that by Joint Resolution of the two Houses of Congress the Executive be authorized to appoint a Commission _to negotiate a treaty with the authorities of San Domingo for the acquisition of that island_, and that an appropriation be made to defray the expenses of such Commission. The question may then be determined, either by the action of the Senate upon the treaty, or the joint action of the two Houses of Congress upon a resolution of annexation, as in the case of the acquisition of Texas.” Thus by the open declaration of the President was the treaty rejected, while six months after the rejection he asks for a Commission to negotiate a new treaty, and an appropriation to defray the expenses of the Commission; and not perceiving the inapplicability of the Texas precedent, he proposes to do the deed by Joint Resolution of Congress. And yet during this intermediate period, when there was no unratified treaty extant, the same belligerent intervention has been proceeding, the same war-ships have been girdling the island with their guns, and the same naval support has been continued to the usurper Baez,--all at great cost to the country and by the diversion of our naval forces from other places of duty, while the Constitution has been dismissed out of sight like a discharged soldier.