it, and would let them into a participation of the power of making treaties, which the constitution had given exclusively to the President and Senate.  They said, too, that if the particular sum was noted by the Representatives, it would not be a secret.  The President had no confidence in the secrecy of the Senate, and did not choose to take money from the treasury or to borrow.  But he agreed he would enter into provisional treaties with the Algerines, not to be binding on us till ratified here.  I prepared questions for consultation with the Senate, and added, that the Senate were to be apprized, that on the return of the provisional treaty, and after they should advise the ratification, he would not have the seal put to it till the two Houses should vote the money.  He asked me, if the treaty stipulating a sum and ratified by him, with the advice of the Senate, would not be good under the constitution, and obligatory on the Representatives to furnish the money.  I answered, it certainly would, and that it would be the duty of the Representatives to raise the money; but that they might decline to do what was their duty, and I thought it might be incautious to commit himself by a ratification with a foreign nation, where he might be left in the lurch in the execution:  it was possible too, to conceive a treaty, which it would not be their duty to provide for.  He said that he did not like throwing too much into democratic hands, that if they would not do what the constitution called on them to do, the government would be at an end, and must then assume another form.  He stopped here; and I kept silence to see whether he would say any thing more in the same line, or add any qualifying expression to soften what he had said:  but he did neither.  I had observed, that wherever the agency of either, or both Houses would be requisite subsequent to a treaty, to carry it into effect, it would be prudent to consult them previously, if the occasion admitted.  That thus it was, we were in the habit of consulting the Senate previously, when the occasion permitted, because their subsequent ratification would be necessary.  That there was the same reason for consulting the lower House previously, where they were to be called on afterwards, and especially in the case of money, as they held the purse-strings, and would be jealous of them.  However, he desired me to strike out the intimation that the seal would not be put till both Houses should have voted the money.

April the 6th.  The President called on me before breakfast, and first introduced some other matter, then fell on the representation bill, which he had now in his possession for the tenth day.  I had before given him my opinion in writing, that the method of apportionment was contrary to the constitution.  He agreed that it was contrary to the common understanding of that instrument, and to what was understood at the time by the makers of it:  that, yet it would bear the construction which the bill put, and he observed