French Parliamentary Committee and the American Foreign Relations Committee. The French Committee 'does not really make French diplomacy more democratic or less concerned in the interchange of ideas through the ordinary diplomatic channels than British diplomacy. … What I have heard about the working of the French Committee does not make me specially desirous of seeing it introduced into this country.'[1] 'The American Foreign Relations Committee stands on a wholly different basis, for this reason among others, that the American Minister responsible for foreign affairs is not, and cannot be, a member either of the House of Representatives or of the Senate. His only connection with the Legislature of his country is through the Committee. If that is the system on which your Constitution is to work, there may be a great deal to be said for it; indeed, a Committee seems to me to be very nearly a necessity. If you are going to exclude your Ministers from this House, very likely you would find it desirable to have a Committee to act as intermediary between them and the House. But that is a change which none of us are going to live to see, and which certainly does not seem to me to be in the democratic direction. What this House desires is to be in contact with the Ministers who control its affairs and to turn them out if it does not like them. That is not the American system. The American system is that Ministers of the day depend upon the President of the day, that the President of the day is elected by direct popular election, and that during his term of office he is, in that sense, quite independent of the approval or disapproval of Congress.'[2]
We have not travelled far beyond the wise words of the author-statesman, Alexander Hamilton, writing in The Federalist[3] against the participation of the House of Representatives in the treaty-making power. 'The fluctuating and, taking its future increase into account, the multitudinous composition of that body, forbid us to expect in it those qualities which are essential to the proper execution of such a trust. Accurate and comprehensive knowledge of foreign
