The extent of the abuse now in question will be seen, if I call the attention of the Senate to the last Report of the Committee of Investigation. By that Report it appears that they undertook to examine two agents of the Telegraph Company, who, finally, at the last moment, when asked to make a definitive statement with regard to the copy of the Treaty lodged with them for communication to New York, declined to answer. And you have now in this usurpation of the Senate an attempt to break into the telegraph-offices of the United States. You raise, for the first time in this Chamber, one of the great questions of the times. Can you do any such thing?
Mr. Nye [of Nevada]. I should like to ask the Senator from Massachusetts if the courts have not broken into the telegraph-offices?
Mr. Sumner. I am not speaking about the courts. I am speaking about the Senate of the United States.
Mr. Nye. I ask the Senator if the Senate of the United States, in this investigation, as long as it exists, has not all the authority of a court?
Mr. Sumner. I have already stated that it has not,—that it has not the authority of a justice of the peace. The Senate proposes to break into the telegraph-offices of the United States. In the guise of privilege, it enters those penetralia and insists that the secrets shall be disclosed. What is the difference between a communication by telegraph and a communication by letter? Is there not a growing substitution of the telegram for the letter? Has not this taken place to an immense extent in England? Is it not now taking place to an immense extent in our own country?
Now, Sir, mark the limitation of my language. I do not mean to say that the telegram is entitled to all the sacredness of the letter; but I do insist that the Senate, before it undertakes to break into the telegraph-offices of the United States, shall calmly consider the question, and see to what end the present disposition will carry them. Senators who have not entirely forgotten the recent history of England know that the powerful Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel for a time trembled under the imputation that one of its ablest members, Sir James Graham, who, Mr. Webster told me, in his judgment, was the best speaker in Parliament, had authorized the opening of the letters of Mazzini at the Post-Office. The subject was brought before Parliament night after night. You shall see how it was treated. The Liberal member from Finsbury, Mr. Duncombe, in presenting it first,—I read from Hansard,—after inveighing against the opening of letters, said:—
“That was a system which the people of this country would not bear, which they ought not to bear; and he hoped, after the exposure which had taken place, that some means would be adopted for counteracting this insidious conduct of her Majesty’s ministers. It was disgraceful to a free country that such a system should be tolerated. It might do in Russia, ay, or even in France, or it might do in the Austrian dominions, it might do in Sardinia; but it did not suit the free air of this free country.”[123]
Lord Denman, always on the side of Freedom, at the time Chief-Justice of England, in the House of Lords said:—
“Could anything be more revolting to the feeling than that any man might have all his letters opened in consequence of some information respecting him having been given to the Secretary of State, and that the contents of those letters, which he might have never received, might be made use of for the purpose of proceeding against him in a court of justice? The letters of a man might be opened, and he might not have the slightest intimation that he was betrayed. Now is such a state of things to be tolerated in a civilized country? He would say, without the slightest hesitation, that it ought not to be borne with for a single hour.”[124]
Lord Brougham observed that—