Personally, I object to no examination. Willingly would I submit to the
most searching scrutiny, not only in the present case, but in all my
public life. There is not an act, letter, or conversation at any time,
that I would save from investigation. I make this statement, because I
would not have the protest I deem it my duty to offer open to suspicion
that there is anything I desire to conceal or any examination I would
avoid.
But appearing before the Committee on an invitation which is in the
nature of a summons, to testify in the investigation originally moved
by me into the sale of arms to France, I am obliged to consider
my duty as a Senator. Personal inclinations, whatever they may be,
cannot be my guide. I must do what belongs to a Senator under the
circumstances of the case.
Before answering any questions, I am constrained to consider the
competency of the Committee which has summoned me. It is of less
importance what these questions may be, although there are certain
obvious limitations, to which I will allude at the outset.
* * * * *
The examination of a Senator by a Committee of the Senate on a matter
outside of the Senate, and not connected with his public duties, is
sustained by precedents,--as when Mr. Seward and Mr. Wilson were
examined with reference to the expedition of John Brown;[25] but any
examination with regard to his public conduct, and especially with
regard to a matter which he has felt it his duty to lay before the
Senate in the discharge of his public duties, is of very doubtful
propriety. In his public conduct a Senator acts on his responsibility,
under sanction of an oath, and the Constitution declares that “for any
speech or debate” he “shall not be questioned in any other place.” This
inhibition, while not preventing questions of a certain character,
must limit the inquiry; but the law steps forward with its own
requirements, according to which it is plain that a Senator cannot be
interrogated, first, with regard to his conference with other Senators
on public business, and, secondly, with regard to witnesses who have
confidentially communicated with him.
Referring to the most approved work on the Law of Evidence,--I mean
that of Professor Greenleaf,--we find under the head of “Evidence
excluded from Public Policy”[26] at least four different classes of
cases, which may enlighten us in determining the questions proper for
Senators.
1. Communications between a lawyer and client. And are not the
relations of Senators, in the discharge of their public duties, equally
sacred?
2. Judges and arbitrators enjoy a similar exemption with regard to
matters before them.
3. Grand jurors, embracing even the clerk and prosecuting officer,
cannot be examined on matters before them.
4. Transactions between the heads of Departments and their subordinate
officers are treated as confidential.
Plainly, the conferences of a Senator, in the discharge of his public
duties, cannot be less protected.
This rule is equally imperative with regard to witnesses who have
confidentially communicated with a Senator. Here again I quote
Professor Greenleaf, who quotes the eminent English judge of the close
of the last century, Lord Chief-Justice Eyre, as follows:--
“There is a rule which has universally obtained on account of its
importance to the public for the detection of crimes, that those
persons who are the channel by means of which that detection is
made should not be unnecessarily disclosed.”[27]