tive officers or by heads of Departments unless they are thereto requested by one of the two Houses. I do not think that volunteering bills from the Executive Department is the proper method. Of course, under the English system, the bills are prepared by the executive government, which is a committee in fact of the two Houses, and they prepare their own measures and introduce them. But here the Executive Department is distinct, and unless we ask for drafts or bills for our own convenience and for the promotion of good legislation, it seems to me that it is irregular, and unwisely irregular, to fall into the practice of having officers of the Executive Department present bills to Congress in this way. Half a dozen came in the other day. They were referred to committees without taking any readings. They were referred to committees for consideration. Those bills have no Calendar number. They do not take the ordinary course of any other bills. I think it is an irregular way, both under the rules and under the statute. I do not want to cut off the advantage that we have in getting officers of the Departments to draw proper bills for us. That is a duty which I hope they will always perform, on the request of the Houses. But I do not think that they ought to submit bills unasked for, which shall go in this irregular way to committees for consideration. If the head of a Department has legislation in which he is interested and presents it to the chairman of a committee or some other Senator, and he sees fit to introduce it, that of course is perfectly proper. The bill takes the usual course. But this is irregular, just as is this method of submitting reports. I do not care how long the custom has lasted, it is an irregularity which has grown up. If we are to have information volunteered from the Departments, let it come through the President of the United States, and any other information we want from the Departments we can ask for. ... MR. HEYBURN.... Now, it is no part of the duty or the province of any Department of the Government to participate in the legislation or in the legislative processes of this body. We are quite capable, in our own judgment and in that of the country, of framing and considering and enacting necessary legislation to meet every requirement, every contingency, and I think the sooner we adopt a rule that shall divorce the executive branch of the Government entirely from participation in the legislation of the country the more nearly we will have planted ourselves upon the original scheme of our Government, which wisely intended that there should be no merging or overlapping in the performance of those duties. The Executive Departments have only the powers we give them. These Departments of the Government have no original powers resting on the organic law of the land. They have such powers and such rights and such duties as we confer upon them. They are there to execute the will of the people as expressed by Congress, which is the only tribunal under the Constitution that speaks the will of the people. If they confine themselves to that duty they will accomplish most fully the purpose for which the Departments were organized. 40. PARDON AND CONTEMPT OF COURT The only limitation imposed by the Constitution upon the power of pardon is with respect to impeachment. Until very recently it had been generally assumed, however, that the President might not pardon in cases of contempt of court. Nevertheless, President Coolidge, in December, 1923, pardoned one Philip Grossman, of Chicago, who had in 1920 been enjoined by the District Court from selling liquor, and who later (in 1921), for violation of that injunction, had been sentenced to jail for contempt of court. The President's pardon was extended even before Grossman began serving his sentence, and was held illegal and void by the lower federal courts, and Grossman was ordered sent to jail. The Supreme Court, however, upheld the President and ordered Grossman's release. [Ez parte Grossman (1925), 267 U. S. 87; 69 L. Ed. 527, 535- Original Petition for a writ of habeas corpus to secure release of one committed for contempt of court. ... Mr. Chief Justice Taft delivered the opinion or the court: ... The only question raised by the pleadings herein is that of the power of the President to grant the pardon. ... The argument for the defendant is that the President's power extends only to offenses against the United States and a contempt of court is not such an offense, that offenses against the United States are not common-law offenses, but can only be created by legislative act, that the President's pardoning power is more limited than that of the King of England at common law, which was a broad prerogative and included contempts against his courts chiefly because the judges thereof were his agents and acted in his name; that the context of the Constitution shows that the word "offenses" is used in that instrument only to include crimes and misdemeanors triable by jury, and not contempts of the dignity and authority of the Federal courts, and that to construe the pardon clause to include contempts of court would be to violate the fundamental principle of the Constitution in the division of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, and to take from the Federal courts their independence and the essential means of protecting their dignity and authority. ... Executive clemency exists to afford relief from undue harshness or evident mistake in the operation or enforcement of the criminal law. The administration of justice by the courts is not necessarily always wise or certainly considerate of circumstances which may properly mitigate guilt. To afford a remedy, it has always been thought essential in popular governments, as well as in monarchies, to vest in some other authority than the courts power to ameliorate or avoid particular criminal judgments. It is a check intrusted to the Executive for special cases. To exercise it to the extent of destroying the deterrent effect of judicial punishment would be to pervert it; but whoever is to make it useful must have full discretion to exercise it. Our Constitution confers this discretion on the highest officer in the nation in confidence that he will not abuse it. An abuse in pardoning contempts would certainly embarrass courts, but it is questionable how much more it would lessen their effectiveness than a wholesale pardon of other offenses. If we could conjure up in our minds a President willing to paralyze courts by pardoning all criminal contempts, why not a President ordering a general jail delivery. A pardon can only be granted for a contempt fully completed. Neither in this country nor in England can it interfere with the use of coercive measures to enforce a suitor's right. The detrimental effect of excessive pardons of completed contempts would be in the loss of the deterrent influence upon future contempts. It is of the same character as that of the excessive pardons of other offenses. The difference does not justify our reading criminal contempts out of the pardon clause by departing from its ordinary meaning, confirmed by its common-law origin and long years of practice and acquiescence. If it be said that the President by successive pardons of constantly recurring contempts in particular litigation might deprive a court of power wer to enforce its orders in a recalcitrant neighborhood, it is enough to observe that such a course is so improbable as to furnish but little basis for argument. Exceptional cases like this, if to be imagined at all, would suggest a resort to impeachment rather than to a narrow and strained construction of the general powers of the President. The power of a court to protect itself and its usefulness by punishing contemners is of course necessary, but it is one exercised without many of the guaranties which the Bill of Rights offers to protect the individual against unjust conviction. Is it unreasonable to provide for the possibility that the personal element may sometimes enter into a summary judgment pronounced by a judge who thinks his authority is flouted or denied? May it not be fairly said that in order to avoid possible mistake, undue prejudice or needless severity, the chance of pardon should exist at least as much in favor of a person convicted by a judge without a jury as in favor of one convicted in a jury trial? The pardoning by the President of criminal contempts has been practised more than three quarters of a century, and no abuses during all that time developed sufficiently to invoke a test in the Federal courts of its validity. It goes without saying that nowhere is there a more earnest will to maintain the independence of Federal courts and the preservation of every legitimate safeguard of their effectiveness afforded by the Constitution than in this court. But the qualified independence which they fortunately enjoy is not likely to be permanently strengthened by ignoring precedent and practice and minimizing the importance of the co-ordinating checks and balances of the Constitution. The rule is made absolute, and the petitioner is discharged. CHAPTER VII THE CABINET 41. ORIGIN OF THE CABINET Nowhere in the Constitution is there any mention of a Cabinet or of any collective body to advise the President, nor has any law ever been enacted prescribing the organization or even the existence of such a body. It is evident, therefore, that the President may seek advice from whomsoever he will, and that these advisers meet together as a group whenever he desires. One of the earliest, if not actually the first, of such meetings, was held, in response to Washington's request, on April 11, 1791, and was attended by Jefferson (Secretary of State), Hamilton (Secretary of the Treasury), Knox (Secretary of War), and Adams (Vice President). Later meetings were attended also by the Attorney General (who did not, however, rank with the Secretaries as the head of an executive department until 1870); but the Vice President (Adams) apparently was not again present. Out of this. beginning developed the institution known as the Cabinet. a. Call for First Cabinet Meeting [Writings of George Washington (Ford ed., published by G. P. TO THE SECRETARIES OF THE DEPARTMENTS OF GENTLEMEN, Mount Vernon, 4 April, 1791. As the public service may require, that communications should be made to me during my absence from the seat of government by the most direct conveyances, and as, in the event of any very extraordinary occurrence, it will be necessary to know at what time I may be found in any particular place, I have to inform you, that, unless the progress of my journey to Savannah is retarded by unforeseen interruptions, it will be regulated, including days of halt, in the following manner. [Here follow details of his travel plans.] ... After thus explaining to you, as far as I am able at present, the direction and probable progress of my journey, I have to express my wish, if any serious and important cases (of which |