556 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



thereupon. If it is a question of the interpretation of a law, 

 do you want to send for persons and papers to enable you 

 to interpret a law ? What papers will you send for to enable 

 the committee of the House of Rej^resentatives to ascertain 

 what is the meaning of this law? Do you want the statute? 

 Surely the committee can get that without having power to 

 send lor papers. Do you want the proceedings which took 

 place at the time when this law was enacted, the parlia- 

 mentary history of it? Surely that can be obtained without 

 a power in the committee to send for papers or for persons. 

 But if you suppose the investigation is pursued for the pur- 

 pose of ferreting out a delinquency, an abuse, a malversa- 

 tion, then that part of the resolution becomes all appropriate, 

 and the object is to drag up witnesses and compel them to 

 testifj' to the conduct of the perpetrators in this stupendous 

 fraud, not only on the law of the country, but on the noble 

 charity which they are appointed to administer. If that be 

 the aspect in which this subject is taken up, we have nothing 

 to do with it; we should not commit ourselves in advance 

 upon it; for, suppose the proceedings of the House of Repre- 

 sentatives should result in preferring articles of impeach- 

 ment, for example, against the Chief Justice, it would be 

 very indelicate and improper for us in advance to form and 

 deliver a solemn opinion upon the question whether there 

 was just cause for the impeachment. 



Then there is onl^' one other respect in which this residue 

 of the paper can be supposed, as it seems to me, to be in- 

 tended to have any influence upon Congress; and that is, 

 that the honorable and distinguished gentleman who writes" 

 this letter, knowing that we have no judicial power over the 

 interpretation of the law, and therefore cannot, by any judg- 

 ment of ours, ascertain that what has been heretofore done 

 in its interpretation has been done wrongfully, in a judicial 

 sense, and knowing that it is not a proper subject for an in- 

 vestigation, with a view to a criminal prosecution by im- 

 peachment, sends it to the two Houses of Congress as a 

 recommendation that they shall institute an inquiry, with a 

 view to an amendment of the law. In this latter view, it 

 strikes me as exceedingly inappropriate for any gentleman, 

 not a member of these bodies, or one of them, and not coming 

 here in the character of a petitioner asserting a claim against 

 the Government, to undertake to advise us of the propriety 

 of further legislation. 



I say, therefore, Mr. President, that I regret very much 

 that this truly distinguished gentleman, of whom the Ameri- 

 can people have reason to be proud as one of their sons, 



