I do, therefore, for the reasons stated, and in the name of the people of the several States, solemnly protest against these proceedings of the House of Representatives, because they are in violation of the rights of the coördinate executive branch of the Government, and subversive of its constitutional independence; because they are calculated to foster a band of interested parasites and informers, ever ready, for their own advantage, to swear before _ex parte_ committees to pretended private conversations between the President and themselves, incapable, from their nature, of being disproved, thus furnishing material for harassing him, degrading him in the eyes of the country, and eventually, should he be a weak or a timid man, rendering him subservient to improper influences, in order to avoid such persecutions and annoyances; because they tend to destroy that harmonious action for the common good which ought to be maintained, and which I sincerely desire to cherish between coördinate branches of the Government; and, finally, because, if unresisted, they would establish a precedent dangerous and embarrassing to all my successors, to whatever political party they might be attached. JAMES BUCHANAN. WASHINGTON, March 28, 1860. This message was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, a majority of whom, through their chairman, on the 9th of April, reported resolutions against its constitutional doctrines, which the House adopted on the 8th of June, by a party vote, and the proceedings of the Covode Committee went on until the 16th of that month. Mr. Train, of Massachusetts, one of the committee, then reported to the House a great mass of testimony which had been taken from all sorts of willing witnesses against the President, but without a single resolution accusing or censuring either him or any member of his cabinet. This was, in one sense, as he has himself said, “a triumphant result for the President.”[57] But the movers in this business had attained their object, in procuring and spreading before the country the means of traducing the President; means which rested for the most part on perjury, and for the residue were colored by personal or political hostility. It was impossible for Mr. Buchanan to allow this to pass without further notice. It is more than probable that the further notice which he took of it prevented a repetition of this kind of proceeding, when, on a future occasion, another President of the United States incurred the hostility of a dominant majority in the House of Representatives. On the 22d of June he sent to the House the following additional message:— Footnote 57: Buchanan’s Defence, p. 218. “TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:—