During the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when absolute monarchy was the prevailing governmental type in Europe, the principle was very generally held by the rulers, and not infrequently acted upon, that the people of a state, together with their lands and other goods and chattels, were, in a very real sense, the property of their king and constituted his patrimonium. That this view should have prevailed, is historically explainable. The entire feudal system, out of which the modern monarchy had evolved, was founded upon the idea that the ownership of land carried with it, as one of its incidents, the right of political rulership. When, then, by a process of development, the king had obtained a supremacy over his feudal lords, when his “peace” had become higher than theirs, and had extended over the whole country, and when these lords and those who in turn held of them were forced to concede that they held their lands by a conditional grant from the king, their liege lord, the idea that the monarch was the owner of the entire realm was complete. In him lay the final legal title to all land. All other persons had “tenures” rather than rights of ownership. And, as for the people themselves, the idea that one person might be another person's “man” or “woman” was universal. The influence of these ideas on recent political conceptions may be indicated by recalling that serfdom did not disappear from Germany until well into the nineteenth century.

This patrimonial conception of monarchy explains the accepted idea that the throne might be inherited, or willed away by testament, like a piece of property, and that it might be bought and sold, and acquired by marriage. It explains also the recognized right of the king to requisition, upon occasion, the goods of his subjects, and even to sell those subjects themselves to foreign powers, as, for example, was done when the Hessian soldiers were sold by their ruler to England for use against the Americans in the Revolutionary War.

In a previous paper foreign relations as a phase of governmental activity were considered chiefly as an international phenomenon. Such relations were there discussed largely in their political bearing and some attempt was made to deduce from practice the considerations which affect foreign offices and the conditions encountered by diplomatic personnel. The problems of secrecy in negotiations and of secret treaties were examined and an effort made to indicate how much knowledge of both may be justifiably concealed. The present paper is a study of legislative control over foreign relations.

Systems of legislative handling of foreign relations may be distinguished as of three types, which we may designate as the continental, the executive, and the American. The American type is characterized by an imposed agreement between the executive and legislative departments of government before treaties can become binding upon the state. The continental type is characterized by a less complete dependence of the executive upon the legislative department in respect to treaty ratification. The executive type is characterized by an almost complete independence of the executive respecting treaty ratification.

All systems recognize definitely that the conduct of foreign relations is an executive function. None denies the patent facts that it is the place of the executive to speak and act for the state, and that, in all matters not definable as legislation, the minister can definitely bind the state. Innumerable decisions under all systems are reached by the department of foreign affairs without any but the executive branch of the government knowing anything of them until they are recorded facts.

According to popular parlance, we elect a President and vice-president, on the Tuesday following the first Monday of November of each fourth year, by vote of the people. It is well known however that, technically speaking, we do not choose these officers on that day or at any time by popular suffrage. Instead of that, we choose in each state a committee that is called the electoral college; and these electors meet on the second Monday of January and elect the President and vice-president by ballot. The theory of the Constitution is that these electors are not to be pledged or obligated to vote for any particular person, but that they and not the people shall really make the choice.

But, practically from the start, and contrary to the expectation of those who framed the Constitution, the choice of President and vice-president was seized by state legislatures and afterwards transferred to the people, through the device of appointing electors that were virtually pledged to designated candidates. So the electoral colleges have failed of their purpose and become a useless complication. And not only are they useless, but objectionable also and dangerous in many and serious ways.

This paper will endeavor to show that our present system of presidential election is bad in every step of the process, viz. in a. the appointment of the electors, b. the membership and proceedings of the electoral colleges, c. the count of the vote in congress, d. the interval between the election and the time when the President takes office, and e. the election by the house of representatives in case the electors fail to give a majority vote to any candidate.