inquiries into the administration of the Executive Department or of
instrumentalities of the Government. Until the administration of Andrew
Jackson this power was not seriously challenged.[86] During the
controversy over renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United
States, John Quincy Adams contended that an unlimited inquiry into the
operations of the bank would be beyond the power of the House.[87] Four
years later the legislative power of investigation was challenged by the
President. A committee appointed by the House of Representatives "with
power to send for persons and papers, and with instructions to inquire
into the condition of the various executive departments, the ability and
integrity with which they have been conducted, * * *"[88] called upon
the President and the heads of departments for lists of persons
appointed without the consent of the Senate and the amounts paid to
them. Resentful of this attempt "to invade the just rights of the
Executive Departments" the President refused to comply and the majority
of the committee acquiesced.[89] Nevertheless Congressional
investigations of Executive Departments have continued to the present
day. Shortly before the Civil War, contempt proceedings against a
witness who refused to testify in an investigation of John Brown's raid
upon the arsenal at Harper's Ferry occasioned a thorough consideration
by the Senate of the basis of this power. After a protracted debate,
which cut sharply across sectional and party lines, the Senate voted
overwhelmingly to imprison the contumacious witness.[90] Notwithstanding
this firmly established legislative practice the Supreme Court took a
narrow view of the power in the case of Kilbourn _v._ Thompson.[91] It
held that the House of Representatives had overstepped its jurisdiction
when it instituted an investigation of losses suffered by the United
States as a creditor of Jay Cooke and Company, whose estate was being
administered in bankruptcy by a federal court. But nearly half a century
later, in McGrain _v._ Daugherty,[92] it ratified in sweeping terms, the