To require a fixed proportion of the whole body would not, in all probability, contribute to the advantages of a numerous agency, better then merely to require a proportion of the attending members. The former, by making a determinate number at all times requisite to a resolution, diminishes the motives to punctual attendance. The latter, by making the capacity of the body to depend on a proportion which may be varied by the absence or presence of a single member, has the contrary effect. And as, by promoting punctuality, it tends to keep the body complete, there is great likelihood that its resolutions would generally be dictated by as great a number in this case as in the other; while there would be much fewer occasions of delay.
And as, by promoting punctuality, it tends to keep the body complete, there is great likelihood that its resolutions would generally be dictated by as great a number in this case as in the other; while there would be much fewer occasions of delay.
Why would any Senator want to delay a treaty of which he approved? Hmmm?
You can see in Mr. Hamilton's language the bias toward adopting treaties as if they were necessarily matters of great urgency. The Supreme Law of the Land should NEVER be treated as such. If you can't get enough Senators into the room on time to sign their names to the document, it probably shouldn't be concluded.
I have done the research in Farrand on Article VI and the case is as I had described: there was no discussion on the language in Article VI. Further, there is discussion of the difficulties due to transportation delays from states further afield. So my conclusion was based upon what was said and agreed upon in the convention, not necessarily by those who drafted the language to spin the meaning later.
Unfortunately, I don't trust Mr. Hamilton very much, and your citation does more to convince me that he was answering objections to the language subsequent to conclusion of the convention when the Federalist was written. Hamilton was too often guilty of some rather licentious spin on language clearly left deliberately ambiguous (to be interpreted later) or upon objections raised within the convention. I remember particularly his pooh-poohing the assertion that the Constitution lent itself to becoming a government of lawyers.
We've all seen how that came out with the British Accreditation Registry BAR.
The former, by making a determinate number at all times requisite to a resolution, diminishes the motives to punctual attendance. The latter, by making the capacity of the body to depend on a proportion which may be varied by the absence or presence of a single member, has the contrary effect.
This is the kind of total baldfaced assertion of which Hamilton was so very fond in the Federalist. What in fact has happened is that (particularly in recent years, but I have records of such going back to the Roosevelt Administration) the Senate has rammed through treaties almost in the dark of night, that, were they subjected to debate or the requirement for full attendence and recorded vote, they would have failed otherwise for having alerted the opposition (remember that package of 34 treaties adopted by voice vote a few years ago?). I know people who have video records of the Senate Chamber virtually emptying just before such a vote.
Later on, they can say they weren't there.
IMHO, the use of international agreements and laws was anticipated as a means to change the effect of the Constitution almost at will. That Hamilton felt he had need to address objecitons to this phrase publicly only deepens my suspicions.