No one had expected this. The unbroken precedents of the Senate had made it a matter of course in public expectation that the investigation would be made. A convention of Ohio editors, sending a memorial for a reconsideration, said: "No instance has yet arisen in the history of the Senate where specific and well-supported charges of bribery in a senatorial election, preferred by the Legislature of a State, have not been promptly investigated by the Senate. In fact, so jealous has the Senate been of its own integrity and honor that it has heretofore promptly ordered investigations upon the memorials of citizens, and in other cases upon the memorial of individual members of a Legislature charging fraud in senatorial elections." In so doing the Senate, to adopt the language used by the chairman of the Committee on Elections, Senator Hoar, declared that "it is indifferent to the question whether its seats are to be in the future the subject of bargain and sale, or may be presented by a few millionaires as a compliment to a friend."[571] "This matter never can be quieted," said Senator Sherman in the debate in the Senate. "There are six or seven men who are known--I could name them--who, if they were brought before this Committee on Privileges and Elections, would settle this matter forever one way or the other in my judgment." The Senate decided that such a charge, accompanied by such offers of proof, did not deserve its attention. The trial of "even a criminal accusation," said the minority of the committee, "requires only the oath of the accuser who is justified if he have probable cause." The minority, Senators Hoar and Frye, further said: "It will not be questioned that in every one of these cases there is abundant probable cause which would justify a complaint, and compel a grand-jury or magistrate to issue process and make an investigation. Is the Senate to deny to the people of a great State, speaking through their Legislature and their representative citizens, the only opportunity for a hearing of this momentous case which can exist under the Constitution? The question now is not whether the case is proved--it is only whether it shall be inquired into. That has never yet been done. It cannot be done until the Senate issues its process. No unwilling witness has ever yet been compelled to testify; no process has gone out which should cross State lines. The Senate is now to determine, as the law of the present case, and as the precedent for all future cases, as to the great crime of bribery--a crime which poisons the waters of republican liberty in the fountain--that the circumstances which here appear are not enough to demand its attention. It will hardly be doubted that cases of purchase of seats in the Senate will multiply rapidly under the decision proposed by the majority of the committee."[572]