“No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, … nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” “Without due process of law.” What is the meaning of that language? Judge Story[117] tells us, as follows:-- “Lord Coke[118] says that these latter words, _per legem terræ_, (by the law of the land,) mean _by due process of law_: that is, without due presentment or indictment, and being brought in to answer thereto by due process of the Common Law. So that this clause in effect affirms the right of trial according to the process and proceedings of the Common Law.”[119] There, Sir, is a living text of the Constitution of the United States, binding upon this Senate. Where do you find any other text authorizing you to institute this proceeding? or if you institute the proceeding, must it not come within the limitations of this prohibition? But I may be reminded that there are precedents. How many precedents are there for such a proceeding? We are familiar with all of them. The latest, the most authentic, is that of Thaddeus Hyatt, proceeded against because he refused to testify before the Harper’s Ferry Investigating Committee. Is that a precedent which you are disposed to follow? I am sure you would not, if you read the weighty argument in that proceeding made by the late John A. Andrew, and Samuel E. Sewall, of Massachusetts, the accomplished jurist, who still survives to us. Go still further back and you have the case, entirely like that before us, of Nugent,--who was not pursued, I was going to say, as ferociously as the present witnesses have been pursued, for his custody was simply that of the house of the Sergeant-at-Arms, and it was recognized at that time that even that mild custody would expire with the session of the Senate. You have also the earlier precedent of 1800 in the case of Duane, which, I think, Senators would hesitate now to vindicate. Let them look at it and see whether they would sanction a similar proceeding at this day,--whether such a tyranny could go on without shocking the public conscience, and being recognized universally as an assault upon the liberty of the press.[120] Those are the cases furnished by the history of the Senate. Lord Denman, in the case of _Stockdale_ v. _Hansard_, the famous case to which I have referred, gives an answer to them as follows: I quote from the ninth volume of Adolphus and Ellis’s Reports, page 155:--