President in cases of this nature possesses the exclusive power of removal from office, and, under the sanctions of his official oath and of his liability to impeachment, he is bound to exercise it whenever the public welfare shall require.  If, on the other hand, from corrupt motives he abuses this power, he is exposed to the same responsibilities.  On no principle known to our institutions can he be required to account for the manner in which he discharges this portion of his public duties, save only in the mode and under the forms prescribed by the Constitution.  The suggestion that the charges a copy of which is requested by the Senate “may contain information necessary to their action” on a nomination now before them can not vary the principle.  There is no necessary connection between the two subjects, and even if there were the Senate have no right to call for that portion of these matters which appertains to the separate and independent action of the Executive.  The intimation that these charges may also be necessary “to the investigation now in progress respecting frauds in the sales of public lands” is still more insufficient to authorize the present call.  Those investigations were instituted and have thus far been conducted by the Senate in their legislative capacity, and with the view, it is presumed, to some legislative action.  If the President has in his possession any information on the subject of such frauds, it is his duty to communicate it to Congress, and it may undoubtedly be called for by either House sitting in its legislative capacity, though even from such a call all matters properly belonging to the exclusive duties of the President must of necessity be exempted.

The resolution now before me purports to have been passed in executive session, and I am bound to presume that if the information requested therein should be communicated it would be applied in secret session to “the investigation of frauds in the sales of the public lands.”  But, if so applied, the distinction between the executive and legislative functions of the Senate would not only be destroyed, but the citizen whose conduct is impeached would lose one of his valuable securities, that which is afforded by a public investigation in the presence of his accusers and of the witnesses against him.  Besides, a compliance with the present resolution would in all probability subject the conduct and motives of the President in the case of Mr. Fitz to the review of the Senate when not sitting as judges on an impeachment, and even if this consequence should not occur in the present case the compliance of the Executive might hereafter be quoted as a precedent for similar and repeated applications,

Such a result, if acquiesced in, would ultimately subject the independent constitutional action of the Executive in a matter of great national concernment to the domination and control of the Senate; if not acquiesced in, it would lead to collisions between coordinate branches of the Government, well calculated to expose the parties to indignity and reproach and to inflict on the public interest serious and lasting mischief.