fficer proposed to be removed, and touching the character
and conduct of the person proposed to be appointed, be sent
to the Committee for its information. To this the Attorney-
General replied that he was directed by the President to say
that there been sent already to the Judiciary Committee all
papers in the Department relating to the fitness of John D.
Burnett, recently nominated, but that it was not considered
that the public interests would be promoted by a compliance
with said resolution and the transmission of the papers and
document therein mentioned to the Senate in Executive session.

That made a direct issue. Thereupon a very powerful report
affirming the right of the Senate to require such papers was
prepared by Mr. Edmunds, Chairman of the Committee on the
Judiciary, and signed by George F. Edmunds, Chairman, John
J. Ingalls, S. J. R. McMillan, George F. Hoar, James F. Wilson
and William M. Evarts.

This was accompanied by a dissenting report by the minority
of the Committee, signed by James L. Pugh, Richard Coke, George
C. Vest and Howell E. Jackson, afterward Associate Justice
of the Supreme Court of the United States.

So it will be seen that the two sides were very powerfully
represented. The report of the Committee was encountered
by a message from President Cleveland, dated March 1, 1886,
in which the President claimed that these papers in the Attorney-
General's Department were in no sense upon its files, but
were deposited there for his convenience. He said: "I suppose
if I desired to take them into my custody I might do so with
entire propriety, and if I saw fit to destroy them no one
could complain." Continuing, the President says that the
demands of the Senate "assume the right to sit in judgment
upon the exercise of my exclusive discretion and Executive
function, for which I am solely responsible to the people
from whom I have so lately received the sacred trust of office."

He refers to the laws upon which the Senate based its demand
and said: "After an existence of nearly twenty years of almost
innocuous desuetude these laws are brought forth--apparently
the repealed as well as the unrepealed--and put in the way
of an Executive who is willing, if permitted, to attempt an
improvement in the methods of administration. The Constitutionality
of these laws is by no means admitted."

The President seemed to forget that he had taken action under
those laws, and had expressly cited th