284 When the President makes a treaty, all he makes is a con ,tr~ct, an executory contract. Hie has the right to do that. But only Congress can make that contract the law of the land when the contract calls for the transfer of American territory to a foreign government. He can make the treaty, he can make the contract, but he cannot make the law. Only Congress can convert the treaty into law, and without a law this contract to give away the Panama Canal has no legal effect. The source of the committee's hopeless confusion, Mr. President, seems to be the committee's profound misunderstanding of the socalled concurrent power theory of the President respecting treaties. Both the State Department and the Foreign Relations Committee have insisted that the President has the authority to bypass the House of Representatives because he has concurrent authority with Congress to dispose of public property. Such a view represents a complete distortion of the concurrent power theory. To understand the origin and meaning of the concurrent power theory, which rests at the whole foundation of the Foreign Relations Committee report, it is necessary to turn back to 1795, when this theory was first offered by Alexander Hamilton. The first major treaty that this Nation made under the new Constitution was the Jay Treaty of' 1795. The purpose of the treaty was to resolve disputes between the United States and Great Britain arising out of the American Revolution and the refusal of the British to abide by certain provisions of' the treaty of 1783, which had been made by the Congress under the Articles of Confederation. In 1794, Chief Justice John Jay concluded a treaty of peace and commerce, which was approved by the Senate the following year after a bitter contest and one of the greatest political debates in American history. The major objection to the treaty was that it violated the Constitution. The treaty regulated commerce and the Constitution gave that power to 'Congress, which included the House of Representatives; yet the House had not been consulted. The treaty also involved nturalization, the punishment of piracies, the laying of imposts, and the expenditure of money-and all of these subjects were expressly placed under the control of Congress. Thus the question was raised whether a commercial treaty, or an international compact requiring an appropriation of -money, or indeed any treaty whatever dealing with the delegated powers of Congress could be made by the President. In a series of public letters under the signature of "Camillus," Alexander Hamilton vindicated the treaty and set to rest the question of' constitutionality. These letters by Hamilton were his last great exposition of the Constitution, and they represent the most extensive anal yses of the treaty power ever written by one of the Framers. In l etter No. 36, Hamilton explained that the Constitution does not specify the kinds of treaties which can be made, and that The general proposition must, therefore, be, that whatever is a proper subject of compact between nation and nation. may be embraced by a treaty between the President of the United States, with the advice and consent of the Senate, and the correspondent organ of a foreign state. At the same time, he insisted, the treaty power is not unlimited: It shall not change the Constitution; which results from this fundamental maxim, that a delegated authority cannot alter the constituting act, unless so,