In an elective government, the difficulty of resisting the popular branch of the legislature is at all times great, but is particularly so when the passions of the public have been strongly and generally excited.

The popularity of a demand for information, the large majority by which that demand was supported, the additional force which a refusal to comply with it would give to suspicions already insinuated, that circumstances had occurred in the negotiation which the administration dared not expose, and that the President was separating himself from the representatives of the people, furnished motives, not lightly to be over-ruled, for yielding to the request which had been made.
[Illustration: George Washington _From the profile portrait by James Sharples_ _Sharples painted two pictures of Washington--this portrait showing him in the costume of a country gentleman, distinguished as being the only profile of the First President ever painted, and a full face presentation of him in military dress, reproduced in Volume IV of this work._ _Sharples, an English painter by birth, was recommended by the great George Romney as being equipped to produce a work "worthy of the greatest of Americans." His success is attested by the praise of Washington's adopted son, who declared the Sharples portraits to be "the truest likenesses ever made," and by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who saw the pictures later in England and wrote: "I would willingly have crossed the Atlantic, if only to look on these portraits."_ Courtesy Herbert L.Pratt] But these considerations were opposed by others which, though less operative with men who fear to deserve the public favour by hazarding its loss, possess an irresistible influence over a mind resolved to pursue steadily the path of duty, however it may abound with thorns.
That the future diplomatic transactions of the government might be seriously and permanently affected by establishing the principle that the house of representatives could demand as a right, the instructions given to a foreign minister, and all the papers connected with a negotiation, was too apparent to be unobserved.

Nor was it less obvious that a compliance with the request now made, would go far in establishing this principle.

The form of the request, and the motives which induced it, equally led to this conclusion.

It left nothing to the discretion of the President with regard to the public interests; and the information was asked for the avowed purpose of determining whether the house of representatives would give effect to a public treaty.
It was also a subject for serious reflection, that in a debate unusually elaborate, the house of representatives had claimed a right of interference in the formation of treaties, which, in the judgment of the President, the constitution had denied them.