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The preamble then refers to "the real-estate pool," in which it is said Jay Cooke & Co. had a large interest, as something well known and understood, and which had been the subject of a partial investigation by the previous Congress, and alleges that the trustee in bankruptcy of Jay Cooke & Co. had made a settlement of the interest of Jay Cooke & Co. with the associates of the firm of Jay Cooke & Co., to the disadvantage and loss of their numerous creditors, including the government of the United States, by reason of which the courts are powerless to afford adequate redress to said creditors.

Several very pertinent inquiries suggest themselves as arising out of this short preamble.

How could the House of Representatives know, until it had been fairly tried, that the courts were powerless to redress the creditors of Jay Cooke & Co.? The matter was still pending in a court, and what right had the Congress of the United States to interfere with a suit pending in a court of competent jurisdiction? Again, what inadequacy of power existed in the court, or, as the preamble assumes, in all courts, to give redress which could lawfully be supplied by an investigation by a committee of one House of Congress, or by any act or resolution of Congress on the subject? The case being one of a judicial nature, for which the power of the courts usually afford the only remedy, it may well be supposed that those powers were more appropriate and more efficient in aid of such relief than the powers which belong to a body whose function is exclusively legislative. If the settlement to which the preamble refers as the principal reason why the courts are rendered powerless was obtained by fraud, or was without authority, or for any conceivable reason could be set aside or avoided, it should be done by some appropriate proceeding in the court which had the whole matter before it, and which had all the power in that case proper to be intrusted to any body, and not by Congress or by any power to be conferred on a committee of one of the two Houses.

The resolution adopted as a sequence of this preamble contains no hint of any intention of final action by Congress on the subject. In all the argument of the case no suggestion has been made of what the House of Representatives or the Con

gress could have done in the way of remedying the wrong or securing the creditors of Jay Cooke & Co., or even the United States. Was it to be simply a fruitless investigation into the personal affairs of individuals? If so, the House of Representatives had no power or authority in the matter more than any other equal number of gentlemen interested for the government of their country. By "fruitless" we mean that it could result in no valid legislation on the subject to which the inquiry referred.

What was this committee charged to do?

To inquire into the nature and history of the real-estate pool. How indefinite! What was the real-estate pool? Is it charged with any crime or offence? If so, the courts alone can punish the members of it. Is it charged with a fraud against the government? Here, again, the courts, and they alone, can afford a remedy. Was it a corporation whose powers Congress could repeal? There is no suggestion of the kind. The word "pool," in the sense here used, is of modern date, and may not be well understood, but in this case it can mean no more than that certain individuals are engaged in dealing in real estate as a commodity of traffic; and the gravamen of the whole proceeding is that a debtor of the United States may be found to have an interest in the pool. Can the rights of the pool, or of its members, and the rights of the debtor, and of the creditor of the debtor, be determined by the report of a committee or by an act of Congress? If they cannot, what authority has the House to enter upon this investigation into the private affairs of individuals who hold no office under the government.

The Court of Exchequer of England was originally organized solely to entertain suits of the king against the debtors of the crown. But after a while, when the other courts of Westminster Hall became overcrowded with business, and it became desirable to open the Court of Exchequer to the general administration of justice, a party was allowed to bring any commonlaw action in that court, on an allegation that the plaintiff was debtor to the king, and the recovery in the action would enable him to respond to the king's debt. After a while the court refused to allow this allegation to be controverted, and so, by this fiction, the court came from a very limited to be one

of general jurisdiction. Such an enlargement of jurisdiction would not now be tolerated in England, and it is hoped not in this country of written constitutions and laws; but it looks very like it when, upon the allegation that the United States is a creditor of a man who has an interest in some other man's business, the affairs of the latter can be subjected to the unlimited scrutiny or investigation of a congressiona committee.

We are of opinion, for these reasons, that the resolution of the House of Representatives authorizing the investigation was in excess of the power conferred on that body by the Constitution; that the committee, therefore, had no lawful authority to require Kilbourn to testify as a witness beyond what he voluntarily chose to tell; that the orders and resolutions of the House, and the warrant of the speaker, under which Kilbourn was imprisoned, are, in like manner, void for want of jurisdiction in that body, and that his imprisonment was without any lawful authority.

At this point of the inquiry we are met by Anderson v. Dunn (6 Wheat. 204), which in many respects is analogous to the case now under consideration. Anderson sued Dunn for false imprisonment, and Dunn justified under a warrant of the House of Representatives directed to him as sergeant-at-arms of that body. The warrant recited that Anderson had been found by the House "guilty of a breach of the privileges of the House, and of a high contempt of the dignity and authority of the same." The warrant directed the sergeant-at-arms to bring him before the House, when, by its order, he was repri manded by the speaker. Neither the warrant nor the plea described or gave any clew to the nature of the ac. which was held by the House to be a contempt. Nor can it be clearly ascertained from the report of the case what it was, though a slight inference may be derived from something in one of the arguments of counsel, that it was an attempt to bribe a member.

But, however that may be, the defence of the sergeant-atarms rested on the broad ground that the House, having found the plaintiff guilty of a contempt, and the speaker, under the order of the House, having issued a warrant for his arrest, that

alone was sufficient authority for the defendant to take him into custody, and this court held the plea good.

It may be said that since the order of the House, and the warrant of the speaker, and the plea of the sergeant-at-arms, do not disclose the ground on which the plaintiff was held guilty of a contempt, but state the finding of the House in general terms as a judgment of guilty, and as the court placed its decision on the ground that such a judgment was conclusive in the action against the officer who executed the warrant, it is no precedent for a case where the plea establishes, as we have shown it does in this case by its recital of the facts, that the House has exceeded its authority.

This is, in fact, a substantial difference. But the court in its reasoning goes beyond this, and though the grounds of the decision are not very clearly stated, we take them to be: that there is in some cases a power in each House of Congress to punish for contempt; that this power is analogous to that ex ercised by courts of justice, and that it being the well-estab lished doctrine that when it appears that a prisoner is held under the order of a court of general jurisdiction for a contempt of its authority, no other court will discharge the prisoner or make further inquiry into the cause of his commitment. That this is the general rule, though somewhat modified since that case was decided, as regards the relations of one court to another, must be conceded.

But we do not concede that the Houses of Congress possess this general power of punishing for contempt. The cases in which they can do this are very limited, as we have already attempted to show. If they are proceeding in a matter beyond their legitimate cognizance, we are of opinion that this can be shown, and we cannot give our assent to the principle that, by the mere act of asserting a person to be guilty of a contempt, they thereby establish their right to fine and imprison him, beyond the power of any court or any other tribunal whatever to inquire into the grounds on which the order was made. This necessarily grows out of the nature of an authority which can only exist in a limited class of cases, or under special circumstances; otherwise the limitation is unavailing and the power omnipotent. The tendency of modern decisions every

where is to the doctrine that the jurisdiction of a court or other tribunal to render a judgment affecting individual rights, is always open to inquiry, when the judgment is relied on in any other proceeding. See Williamson v. Berry, 8 How. 495; Thompson v. Whitman, 18 Wall. 457; Knowles v. The Gas-Light & Coke Co., 19 id. 58; Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U. S. 714.

The case of Anderson v. Dunn was decided before the case of Stockdale v. Hansard, and the more recent cases in the Privy Council to which we have referred. It was decided as a case of the first impress on in this court, and undoubtedly under pressure of the strong rulings of the English courts in favor of the privileges of the two Houses of Parliament. Such is not the doctrine, however, of the English courts to-day. In the case of Stockdale v. Hansard (9 Ad. & E. 1), Mr. Justice Coleridge says: "The House is not a court of law at all in the sense in which that term can alone be properly applied here. Neither originally nor by appeal can it decide a matter in litigation between two parties; it has no means of doing so; it claims no such power; powers of inquiry and of accusation it has, but it decides nothing judicially, except where it is itself a party, in the case of contempts. . . . Considered merely as resolutions or acts, I have yet to learn that this court is to be restrained by the dignity or the power of any body, however exalted, from fearlessly, though respectfully, examining their reasonableness and justice, where the rights of third persons, in litigation before us, depend upon their validity." Again, he says: "Let me suppose, by way of illustration, an extreme case; the House of Commons resolves that any one wearing a dress of a particular manufacture is guilty of a breach of privilege, and orders the arrest of such persons by the constable of the parish. An arrest is made and action brought, to which the order of the House is pleaded as a justification. . . . In such a case as the one supposed, the plaintiff's counsel would insist on the distinction between power and privilege; and no lawyer can seriously doubt that it exists but the argument confounds them, and forbids us to enquire, in any particular case, whether it ranges under the one or the other. I can find no principle which sanctions this."

The case of Kielley v. Carson and Others (4 Moo. P. C. 63), from which we have before quoted so largely, held that

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