A still graver objection, however, to the use of any of these early treaties for our type-lesson lies in the fact that they are in no sense typical. While they, of course, concerned the colonists very directly, they were nevertheless treaties between foreign nations; our country was not a party to them. Neither can we consider as typical the early treaties into which we entered in the first days of our national existence,—that with France in 1778, and that with England in 1783. Both of these were negotiated under authority of a constitution widely different from that which prescribes the treaty-making process in our nation to-day.
Our treaty with England in 1794 was the first important treaty (important, that is, from the point of view of our elementary course of study) to which the American nation in the present significance of that term was a party. It answers admirably the purpose of a type-lesson. Here are to be found all the important elements necessary for the proper grasp of later treaties. Moreover, the history work in most of our elementary schools is so graded that pupils come to the study of the post-Revolutionary period with sufficient maturity of mind to grasp and to enjoy the international and constitutional questions around which the story of the Jay Treaty develops.
The topic of our type-lesson having been selected, the mode of presentation next demands the teacher’s attention. We must keep clearly in mind that our purpose is the development of a type-idea, a regulating concept which will help in the firm and instant comprehension of later treaties when they shall find their way into our story. It becomes necessary, therefore, to select with great care and present with special emphasis those elements which have most real and far-reaching significance. The following questions may help us in our selection: What should the pupil’s notion of a treaty include when he leaves the elementary school? How much of this desired understanding can be developed by means of our lesson on the Jay Treaty? In a word, what are the type-elements of our lesson?
The essential elements of the idea we are striving to develop through our type-lesson fall naturally under two heads:
1. The pupil should receive from the study of the Jay Treaty a clear notion of the treaty-making process as prescribed by the Constitution. He should further have some idea of the way in which the constitutional provision has worked out in practice.
2. The pupil should gain from the lesson a definite knowledge of the essential, significant, or typical parts of a treaty. This knowledge should include some idea of the general form and arrangement of the document.
Our type-lesson should be developed with the purpose of impressing these two type-elements.
A lesson, however, which concerned itself exclusively with type-elements would be a very dull and lifeless affair. In fact, the events which make up the greater part of the story of the Jay Treaty are by no means typical of treaties in general. It must be borne in mind, however, that to them attach a value and an interest of their own. Local color, objective reality, in a word, everything which makes history actual and living depends on the proper use of specific, characteristic, but not necessarily typical, details. The teacher’s task is to make such use of this auxiliary material as will bring into strong relief the type-elements. He must strive to effect a combination of the typical and the specific, the general and the particular, so that in the end he shall have developed in his pupil’s mind a consistent and complete type-idea, vivified and enriched by a wealth of local incident and illuminating detail. The introductory stage of the Jay Treaty lesson should consist of a brief review of our relations with Great Britain since the Revolutionary War. The treaty which closed that war, besides recognizing the independence of the United States, had placed both countries under certain definite mutual obligations. There is no real inconsistency in this reference to the treaty of 1783 before the full development of our type-lesson on the Jay Treaty. We are not assuming that the pupil has the sort of grasp which the type-lesson aims to secure; we are simply taking for granted his general understanding of a treaty as a formal agreement between nations, a simple enough notion and one which can hardly fail to have been developed incidentally in the earlier course of the work. To return, then, to our preparatory consideration of the treaty of 1783, it should be pointed out that certain articles of that treaty[7] had provided for the payment of debts contracted before the war, for the restitution of all confiscated Tory estates, and, on the other side, for the withdrawal of English troops from United States territory. These provisions had not been carried out. Hard feeling between the two countries was further aggravated by England’s serious interference with our commerce. Her vessels persisted in searching our ships and impressing our seamen. The limit of patient endurance seemed reached when in 1793 the English government ordered the seizure of all neutral vessels carrying provisions to French ports. What was to be done? Clearly either one of two things: resort to war or enter into a new agreement. The class is presumably familiar with the fact that in spite of the advocacy of an alliance with France by certain of our leaders and their insistence on a renewal of the war with England, our government had definitely decided on a policy of neutrality and peace. Since we were not to fight England, it remained to settle our difficulties by means of a new treaty.
How can our government make a treaty with a foreign nation? With this question we bring our pupils face to face with the first type-element in the Jay Treaty lesson. The class has not long since taken up the story of the making of our Constitution, and may be assumed to realize its significance as the “fundamental law.” What has the Constitution to say on the subject of treaty-making? The President “shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.” The significance of this provision can easily be cleared up by a brief explanation of the organization of Congress, the chief general powers of that body, and the most important points of difference between the functions of the two houses.