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Britain's Prime Minister William Gladstone called the Senate "the most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics." Most Americans—excepting Senators—were then, and would be now, astonished at such an encomium. The Senate was formed chiefly because the smaller states feared that they would be outvoted and overwhelmed if the only legislative body was apportioned by population alone. To reassure them, the framers of the Constitution agreed to add a second House, in which each state, regardless of size, should have two delegates who should be selected by the state legislatures as "ambassadors" of their states to the national Government.
Senators considered themselves remote from popular passions and found no embarrassment in having Aaron Burr preside over them after his murderous duel with Alexander Hamilton. They felt responsible only to themselves and their own sense of grandeur—and that sense, taken seriously, may force a certain largeness of spirit on the pettiest of men. They early established the tradition that any Senator, with only minimal procedural exceptions, can rise at any time to speak on any subject, and from this right evolved the Senate's unique place as the arena where a minority can make itself heard. Said Daniel Webster: "This is a Senate of equals, of men of individual honor and personal character, and of absolute independence, who know no master and acknowledge no dictation." As for the President, Connecticut's Roger Sherman described "the executive magistracy as nothing more than an institution for carrying the will of the legislature into effect."
The first test of will happened only four months after Washington's Inauguration, when he dutifully called upon the Senate to ask its advice and consent to a treaty with Southern Indians. He brought with him his Secretary of War to explain the details. The treaty was read aloud, but because of the noise of passing carriages, some Senators complained that they had not grasped it and, refusing to be hurried, moved to send the bill to a committee for study. "This defeats every purpose of my coming here," said Washington, who, according to an eyewitness, was "in a violent fret." Two days later, the President returned; he watched as the Senate rewrote the treaty before his eyes. During the episode, he snapped: "I'll be damned if I ever go there again!"
He never did—on treaty business. In fact, no President ever again appeared before the Senate to argue a treaty's merits until a desperate Woodrow Wilson did so, in 1919, to plead for approval of the League of Nations. Soon, other countries came wearily to recognize that any treaty concluded with the U.S. President or Secretary of State was, as Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. put it later, "still inchoate, a mere project for a treaty, until the consent of the Senate has been given to it." In general, this practice has been less hampering to U.S. diplomacy than might have been expected. Over the years, the Senate has considered some 1,500 treaties, rejected or refused to go along with the President in only about one out of ten. On occasion, senatorial amendments have been recognized in afterthought as improvements.
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