exercise no discretion as to the time in which the matters thus
collected shall be promulgated or in respect to the character of
the information obtained would deprive him at once of the means of
performing one of the most salutary duties of his office. An inquiry
might be arrested at its first stage and the officers whose conduct
demanded investigation may be enabled to elude or defeat it. To require
from the Executive the transfer of this discretion to a coordinate
branch of the Government is equivalent to the denial of its possession
by him and would render him dependent upon that branch in the
performance of a duty purely executive.

Nor can it be a sound position that all papers, documents, and
information of every description which may happen by any means to come
into the possession of the President or of the heads of Departments must
necessarily be subject to the call of the House of Representatives
_merely_ because they relate to a subject of the deliberations of the
House, although that subject may be within the sphere of its legitimate
powers. It can not be that the only test is whether the information
relates to a legitimate subject of deliberation. The Executive
Departments and the citizens of this country have their rights and
duties as well as the House of Representatives, and the maxim that the
rights of one person or body are to be so exercised as not to impair
those of others is applicable in its fullest extent to this question.
Impertinence or malignity may seek to make the Executive Departments the
means of incalculable and irremediable injury to innocent parties by
throwing into them libels most foul and atrocious. Shall there be no
discretionary authority permitted to refuse to become the instruments
of such malevolence?

And although information comes through a proper channel to an executive
officer it may often be of a character to forbid its being made public.
The officer charged with a confidential inquiry, and who reports its
result under the pledge of confidence which his appointment implies,
ought not to be exposed individually to the resentment of those whose
conduct may be impugned by the information he collects. The knowledge
that such is to be the consequence will inevitably prevent the
performance of duties of that character, and thus the Government will
be deprived of an important means of investigating the conduct of its
agents.

It is certainly no new doctrine in the halls of judi