else, entirely in the dark.  No one knows who furnished advice as to the treaty, nor does any one know what is to be the law when it shall have been confirmed.  Neither can any one tell how the errors that may now be made will be corrected.  With a law regularly passed through both Houses of Congress, these difficulties could not arise.  They are a natural consequence of this attempt to substitute the will of the Executive for that of the people, as expressed by the House of Representatives, and should, as I think, weigh strongly on the minds of Senators when called to vote upon the treaty.  Their constituents have a right to see, and to discuss, the laws that are proposed before those laws are finally made, and whenever it is attempted, as in the present case, to stifle discussion, we may reasonably infer that wrong is about to be done.  This is, I believe, the first case in which, on account of the unpopularity of the law proposed, it has been attempted to deprive the popular branch of Congress of its constitutional share in legislation, and if this be sanctioned it is difficult to see what other interests may not be subjected to similar action on the part of the Executive.  In all such cases, it is the first step that is most difficult, and before making the one now proposed, you should, as I think, weigh well the importance of the precedent about to be established.  No one can hold in greater respect than I do, the honorable gentleman who negotiated this treaty; but in thus attempting to substitute the executive will for legislative action, he seems to me to have made a grave mistake.

In the claim now made in behalf of English authors, there is great apparent justice; but that which is not true, often puts on the appearance of truth.  For thousands of years, it seemed so obviously true that the sun revolved around the earth that the fact was not disputed, and yet it came finally to be proved that the earth revolved around the sun.  Ricardo’s theory of the occupation of the earth, the foundation-stone of his system, had so much apparent truth to recommend it, that it was almost universally adopted, and is now the basis of the whole British politico-economical system; and yet the facts are directly the reverse of what Ricardo had supposed them to be.  Such being the case, it might be that, upon a full examination of the subject, we should find that, in admitting the claim of foreign authors, we should be doing injustice and not justice.  The English press has, it is true, for many years been engaged in teaching us that we were little better than thieves or pirates; but that press has been so uniformly and unsparingly abusive of us, whenever we have failed to grant all that it has claimed, that its views are entitled to little weight.  At home, many of our authors have taken the same side of the question; and the only answer that has ever, to my knowledge, been made, has been, that if we admitted the claims of foreign authors, the prices of books would be raised, and the people