The President has repeatedly, within the last six years,
appointed members of the Senate and the House to be Commissioners
to negotiate and conclude, as far as can be done by diplomatic
agencies, treaties and other arrangements with foreign Governments,
of the gravest importance. These include the arrangement
of a standard of value by International agreement; making
a Treaty of Peace, at the end of the War with Spain; arranging
a Treaty of Commerce between the United States and Great Britain;
making a Treaty to settle the Behring Sea controversy; and
now more lately to establish the boundary line between Canada
and Alaska.
President McKinley also appointed a Commission, including
Senators and Representatives, to visit Hawaii, and to report
upon the needs of legislation there. This last was as clearly
the proper duty and function of a committee, to be appointed
by one or the other branch of Congress, as anything that could
be conceived.
The question has been raised whether these functions were
offices, within the Constitutional sense. It was stoutly
contended, and I believe held by nearly all the Republican
Senators at the time when President Cleveland appointed Mr.
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