evision of the tariff duties on imported goods,"[93] the
two Houses have asserted the right to inquire into private affairs when
necessary to enlighten their judgment on proposed legislation. In
Kilbourn _v._ Thompson,[94] the Court denied the right of Congress to
pry into private affairs. Again, in Interstate Commerce Commission _v._
Brimson,[95] in sustaining a statute authorizing the Courts to use their
process to compel witnesses to give testimony sought by the Commission
for the enforcement of the act, the Court warned that, "neither branch
of the legislative department, still less any merely administrative
body, established by Congress, possesses, or can be invested with, a
general power of making inquiry into the private affairs of the
citizen."[96] Finally, however, in McGrain _v._ Daugherty,[97] the power
of either House "to compel a private individual to appear before it or
one of its committees and give testimony needed to enable it efficiently
to exercise a legislative function belonging to it under the
Constitution, * * *"[98] was judicially recognized and approved.

PURPOSE OF INQUIRY

In the absence of any showing that legislation was contemplated as a
result of the inquiry undertaken in Kilbourn _v._ Thompson, the Supreme
Court concluded that the purpose was an improper one--to pry into
matters with which the judiciary alone was empowered to deal.[99]
Subsequent cases have given the legislature the benefit of a presumption
that its object is legitimate. In re Chapman[100] established the
proposition that to make an investigation lawful "it was certainly not
necessary that the resolutions should declare in advance what the Senate
meditated doing when the investigation was concluded."[101] Similarly,
in McGrain _v._ Daugherty, the investigation was presumed to have been
undertaken in good faith to aid the Senate in legislating.[102] Going
one step further in Sinclair _v._ United States,[103] which on its facts
presented a close parallel to the Kilbourn Case, the Court affirmed the
right of the Senate to carry on its investigation of fraudulent leases
of government property after suit for the recovery thereof had been
instituted. The president of the lessee corporation had refused to
testify on the ground that the questions related to his private affairs
and to matters cognizable only in the courts wherein they were pending
and that the committee avowedly had departed from any inquiry in aid of
legislati