The relation between the Senate and House of Representatives, in whom legislative power is concurrently vested, is sufficiently analogous to illustrate that between the Executive and Senate in making appointments and treaties. The two Houses are in like manner independent of and coordinate with each other, and the invariable practice of each in appointing committees of conference and consultation is to commission them to confer not with the coordinate body itself, but with a committee of that body; and although both branches of the Legislature may be too numerous to hold conveniently a conference with committees, were they to be appointed by either to confer with the entire body of the other, it may be fairly presumed that if the whole number of either branch were not too large for the purpose the objection to such a conference, being against the principle as derogating from the coordinate relations of the two Houses, would retain all its force.
I add only that I am entirely persuaded of the purity of the intentions of the Senate in the course they have pursued on this occasion, and with which my view of the subject makes it my duty not to accord, and that they will be cheerfully furnished with all the suitable information in possession of the Executive in any mode deemed consistent with the principles of the Constitution and the settled practice under it.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:
There being sufficient ground to infer that it is the purpose of the enemy to combine with the blockade of our ports special licenses to neutral vessels or to British vessels in neutral disguises, whereby they may draw from our country the precise kind and quantity of exports essential to their wants, whilst its general commerce remains obstructed, keeping in view also the insidious discrimination between the different ports of the United States; and as such a system, if not counteracted, will have the effect of diminishing very materially the pressure of the war on the enemy, and encouraging a perseverance in it, at the same time that it will leave the general commerce of the United States under all the pressure the enemy can impose, thus subjecting the whole to British regulation in subserviency to British monopoly, I recommend to the consideration of Congress the expediency of an immediate and effectual prohibition of exports limited to a convenient day in their next session, and removable in the meantime in the event of a cessation of the blockade of our ports.