Both must concur; and here is the triumph of Republican Institutions.

But this distinctive principle of our Constitution and new-found safeguard of popular rights has been set at nought by the President; or rather, in rushing to the goal of his desires, he has overleaped it, as if it were stubble.

We are reminded of the unratified treaty, with its futile promise “against foreign interposition,”--that is, with the promise of the War Powers of our Government set in motion by the President alone, without an Act of Congress.

Now nothing can be clearer than that this provision, introduced on the authority of the President alone, was beyond his powers, and therefore brutum fulmen, a mere wooden gun, until after the ratification of the treaty.

Otherwise the President alone might declare war, without an Act of Congress, doing indirectly what he cannot do directly, and thus overturning that special safeguard which places under the guardianship of Congress what Story justly calls…

As the power to declare war is lodged in Congress with the concurrence of the President, so is the power to make a treaty lodged in the President with the concurrence of two thirds of the Senate.

War is declared only by Congress and the President; a treaty is made only by the President and two thirds of the Senate.

The provision in our Constitution, requiring the participation of the Senate, was another limitation of the One-Man Power, and a new contribution to Republican Institutions.

There is no comparison between the intended power of the President and the actual power of the British sovereign.

Thus, on grounds of authority, as well as of reason, is it clear that the undertaking of the President to employ the War Powers without the authority of Congress was void, and every employment of these War Powers in pursuance thereof was a…

If the President were a king, with the kingly prerogative either to declare war or to make treaties, he might do what he has done; but being only President, with the limited powers established by the Constitution, he cannot do it.

What was done under the latter had the concurrence of Congress and the President; so that the inchoate title of the United States was created by Act of Congress, in plain contradiction to the present case, where the title, whatever it may…

If an engagement to fight Mexico for Texas, while we were at peace with Mexico, was nothing less than war with Mexico, so the present engagement to fight Hayti for Dominica, while we are at peace with Hayti, is nothing less than war with…

Nor is it any the less “a crime against God and man and our own Constitution” in the case of Hayti than in the case of Mexico.

Therefore, according to the precedents of our history, reinforced by reason and authority, does the “assumpsit” of the treaty fail.

The usurpation pivots on nonentity,--always excepting the kingly will of the President, which constitutionally is a nonentity.

The President has not even a puff of air to stand on.

I leave them to your judgment without one word of comment, reminding you only that no President is entitled to substitute his kingly will for the Constitution of our country.

It may not have occurred to these gentlemen that by so doing they will virtually place themselves in the position of spies, and if they are taken by Cabral’s people, they can be hung to the nearest tree by sentence of a drum-head…

For they belong to a nation that, through the orders of its Executive to the naval vessels here, has chosen to take part in the internal conflicts of this country; they come directly from the head-quarters of Cabral’s enemies; they are…

They go expressly to learn everything connected with the enemy’s country, and their observations are intended for publication, and thus indirectly to be reported back to President Baez.

Controversy, especially at my time of life, has no attraction for me; but I have been reared in the school of duty, and now, as of old, I cannot see wrong without trying to arrest it.

I plead now, as I have often pleaded before, for Justice and Peace.

On this unanswerable and cumulative testimony, where each part confirms the rest, and the whole has the harmony of truth, I present this transgression.

And all this has been done by kingly prerogative alone, without the authority of an Act of Congress.