Constitutional history -- Great Britain; Constitutional law -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Politics and government
But the administrative power itself is not left thus simple and
undivided. One most important part of administration is international
policy, and the supreme authority here is not in the President, still
less in the House of Representatives, but in the Senate. The President
can only make treaties, "provided two-thirds of Senators present"
concur. The sovereignty therefore for the greatest international
questions is in a different part of the State altogether from any
common administrative or legislative question. It is put in a place by
itself.
Again, the Congress declares war, but they would find it very
difficult, according to the recent construction of their laws, to
compel the President to make a peace. The authors of the Constitution
doubtless intended that Congress should be able to control the American
executive as our Parliament controls ours. They placed the granting of
supplies in the House of Representatives exclusively. But they forgot
to look after "paper money"; and now it has been held that the
President has power to emit such money without consulting Congress at
all. The first part of the late war was so carried on by Mr. Lincoln;
he relied not on the grants of Congress, but on the prerogative of
emission. It sounds a joke, but it is true nevertheless, that this
power to issue greenbacks is decided to belong to the President as
commander-in-chief of the army; it is part of what was called the "war
power". In truth money was wanted in the late war, and the
administration got it in the readiest way; and the nation, glad not to
be more taxed, wholly approved of it. But the fact remains that the
President has now, by precedent and decision, a mighty power to
continue a war without the consent of Congress, and perhaps against its
wish. Against the united will of the American PEOPLE a President would
of course be impotent; such is the genius of the place and nation that
he would never think of it. But when the nation was (as of late)
divided into two parties, one cleaving to the President, the other to
the Congress, the now unquestionable power of the President to issue
paper-money may give him the power to continue the war though
Parliament (as we should speak) may enjoin the war to cease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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