“No candid man in the least degree acquainted with the progress of this business will believe for a moment that the ostensible dispute was about papers, or whether the British treaty was a good one or a bad one, but whether there should be a treaty at all without the concurrence of the House of Representatives.  This was striking at once, and that boldly, too, at the fundamental principles of the Constitution; and, if it were established, would render the treaty-making power not only a nullity, but such an absolute absurdity as to reflect disgrace on the framers of it.  For will any one suppose that they who framed, or those who adopted, that instrument ever intended to give the power to the President and Senate to make treaties, and, declaring that when made and ratified they should be the supreme law of the land, would in the same breath place it in the power of the House of Representatives to fix their vote on them, unless apparent marks of fraud or corruption (which in equity would set aside any contract) accompanied the measure, or such striking evidence of national injury attended their adoption as to make a war or any other evil preferable?  Every unbiased mind will answer in the negative.

“What the source and what the object of all this struggle is, I submit to my fellow-citizens.  Charity would lead me to hope that the motives to it would be pure.  Suspicions, however, speak a different language, and my tongue for the present shall be silent.”

No man who has ever held high office in this country had a more real deference for the popular will than Washington.  But he also had always a keen sensitiveness to the dignity and the prerogatives of the office which he happened to hold, whether it was that of president or general of the armies.  This arose from no personal feeling, for he was too great a man ever to worry about his own dignity; but he esteemed the great offices to which he was called to be trusts, which were to suffer no injury while in his hands.  He regarded the attempt of the House of Representatives to demand the papers as a matter of right as an encroachment on the rights of the Executive Department, and he therefore resisted it at once, and after his usual fashion left no one in any doubt as to his views.  So far as the President was concerned, the struggle ended here; but it was continued for some time longer in the House, where the debate went on for a fortnight, with the hostile majority surely and steadily declining.  The current out-doors ran more and more strongly every day in favor of the administration, until at last the contest ended with Ames’s great speech, and then the resolution to carry out the treaty prevailed.  Washington’s policy had triumphed, and was accepted by the country.