TREATY CURIOSITIES

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 38, 15 February 1919, Page 10

TREATY CURIOSITIES

FLOWJJRY PREAMBLES AND FALSE PROFESSIONS

SOME QUAINT SAMPLES,

In 1789 the Senate appointed a committee to confer with the President "on the mode of communication" between him and the Senate "respecting treaties and nominations." The whole procedure and etiquette were as yet unborn, says the Neve York Times. It seems to have been the general opinion that those "communications" were meant by the Constitution to be by word of mouth., "In all matters respecting treaties," Washington wrote, "oral communications seem indispensably necessary, because in these a variety of matters are contained, all oi which not only require consideration, but some may undergo much discussion, to do which by written communications would bo tedious without being satisfactory." It was right, he thought, that he should ask the Senate to come to his residence to discuss treaties; but till Congress built a residence for the President he would visit the Senate on treaty occasions. His first and last visit was a warning to his successors. In accordance, with a notice sent the day before, he met the Senate in the Senate Chamber, 26th August, 1789, "to advise with them on the terms of the treaty to be negotiated with tho Southern Indians." This was the first operation of the clause in .the, Constitution giving the President the power to make treaties by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. Washington found the Senate unwilling or unready. Joint consultation went on, or wi* sapposod to go on, for two days. Washington was impatient, and left the Chamber. Most of us have a new affection for the First Character when we read the story recorded by J. Q. Adame, that "the Senate debated it and proposed alterations bo that when Washington left the Senate Chamber he said he ;would be d—?d if he ever went there again." The preamble of a treaty recites the names and titles of the parties, and the subject matter of the convention, "often," wrote the late John W. Foster in hi 6 entertaining and learned "Practice of Diplomacy," "the motives or intentions of the contracting parties" To the curiosity seeker the chief preambulary charm is the pompous procession of titles and flowers of poetry in treaties between Western nations and Oriental monarchs. Thus our treaty with Persia in/1866 preambled :—- ---"In the name of God, the clement and merciful. The President of the United States of North America and his Majesty, as exalted as the planet Saturn j the Sovereign to whom the sun serves a* a standard; whose splendour and magnificence are equal to that of the sky ; the Sublime Sovereign, the Monarch, whose greatness calls to mind that of Jemshid ; whose magnificence i equals that of Darius." ■

And so on, in a style worthy of the divine cashiered Hohenzollern, were he on his dreamed-of throne, commanding "300,000,000 Moslems." The pious formal invocation in treaties sworn and broken, and meant to be broken, was a usual ironic part of those tedious documents for one knows not how many centuries. The United States, a respecter of treaties, adopted the religious formulas from Europe. ■ The preamble of the Treaty of Peace with Great Britain; in 1783 begins: "In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity." 'fit illustrates the inaptness of the use of such an invocation," wrote Mr. Foster; "that of the three American negotiators of that treaty, Adams, Franklin, and Jay, the latter was the only one who accepted the dogma of the Trinity." Mr. Foster might have cited as perhaps the bright, consummate flower of treaty piety the opening words of the Holy Alliance of the Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia in 1815: — "Conformably to the words of Holy Scriptures which command all men to consider each other as brethren, the three contracting Monarchs will remain united by the bonds of a true and fraternal alliance."

In the Middle Ages, Christian Princes used to give additional sanction to their treaty engagements by invoking on themselves, if they broke them, excommunication and its consequences, temporal and eternal. It is said that the treaty of Paris in 1856, ending the Crimean War, was tlie last in which European diplomatists took upon themselves to speak "in the name of "Almighty .God," a formula common in our earlier treaties, as "in the name •of the Most Holy Trinity" is in those of the Latin-Ameri-can countries. Justice in the terms, good faith in fulfilling them, is the best religion for treaties.