Horace Gray

“ The constitution protecting every one from being prosecuted in a court of the United States without the intervention of a grand jury, for any crime which is subject by law to an infamous punishment, no declaration of congress is needed to secure, or competent to defeat, the constitutional safeguard. What punishment shall be considered as infamous may be affected by the changes of public opinion from one age to another, and for more than a century imprisonment at hard labor in the state prison or penitentiary has been considered an infamous punishment in England and America. ”

“ The including, in a single clause, of two classes of offenses, one of which may be prosecuted by information, is a sufficient reason for mentioning informations as well as indictments, without attributing to congress an intention that both classes should be prosecuted by information; and imprisonment in the penitentiary is made the line of distinction between the two classes. ”

“ The acts of congress referred to at the argument clearly show that the opinion of the legislative branch of the national government, so far as it has been expressed, is in full accordance with what we hold to be the true judicial construction of the constitution. ”