Debates in the Several State Conventions/Volume 4/Expunging Resolution (1836)
EXPUNGING RESOLUTION.
Senate, 1836.
Mr. LEIGH. The original manuscript journal is the journal—that journal which the Constitution commands us to keep. But gentlemen insist that the constitutional provision, that "each house shall keep a journal," imports only that they shall make one, without requiring that they shall preserve it.
This Anglo-Saxon word to keep is generally used in a strict literal sense, and then always imports to preserve, and nothing else or more. It is used in divers metaphorical senses, which, from frequency, have the appearance, at first view, of being literal; but it always imports the idea of preservation or indefinite continuation, requested or commanded. It is never used as synonymous with making any thing.
I think myself well warranted in saying that the expunging of the resolution of the Senate of the 28th of March, 1834, from the journal, literally or figuratively, is wholly irreconcilable with the Constitution, upon any fair construction of its words; and that no authority for such expunction can be found in any precedent whatever at all applicable to the purpose, or entitled to the least weight. I think myself warranted in saying, too, that, if the Senate shall adopt this proposition, and carry it into execution, it will set a precedent fraught with the most dangerous and pernicious consequences.
Mr. RIVES. In the jealous apprehensions which were entertained, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, of the encroachments and abuses of the new government, this objection was strongly urged against the clause in question; but it was replied, and with success, that every legislative body must have the power of concealing important transactions, the publication of which might compromise the public interests; and as it was impossible to foresee and enumerate all the cases in which such concealment might be necessary, they should be left to the sound discretion of the body itself, subject to the constitutional responsibility of its members, and the other securities provided by the Constitution against the abuse of power. These securities have hitherto been found sufficient; and, in point of fact, the journals of both houses have been published from day to day, with such special and limited exceptions as have been universally approved by the public judgment.
This publication, when made, is the practical fulfillment and consummation of the design of the Constitution in requiring a journal to be kept, by either house, of its proceedings. It is agreed, on all hands, that the great object for which a journal is required to be kept is, to give authentic information to our constituents of our proceedings; and that information is to be given, as the Constitution provides, by means of a publication, from time to time, of the journal itself The requisition to keep a journal, on which gentlemen have laid so much stress, is therefore merely introductory, or what the lawyers call matter of inducement only, to that which forms the life and substance of the provision, to wit, the publication, from time to time, of the journal. The whole structure and sequence of the sentence sustains this interpretation: "each house shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and, from time to time, publish the same." It is evident that the whole practical virtue and effect of the provision is in the latter member of the sentence, and that the former would have been implied and comprehended in it, though not expressed.
The requisition in the present Constitution, to keep a journal, is but an expression, for the sake of greater fullness, of what would otherwise have been implied, and serves only as a more formal introduction to the practical end and substance of the constitutional provision on the subject, and that with which it emphatically concludes, to wit, the publication, from time to time, of the journal. That publication once made, and the people put in possession of the authentic evidence of the proceedings of their agents, the purposes of the Constitution are fulfilled, and the preservation of the original manuscript journal becomes thenceforward an official formality.