publish the same,
except such parts as may in their judgment required secrecy."[124] That
these provisions were of little practical value is evident from the fact
that they contain no definite statement as to when and how often the
accounts and journals are to be published. The phrase _from time to
time_ was susceptible of almost any interpretation that either house of
Congress or the President might wish to give it, and could easily have
been so construed as to justify a method of publication which gave the
people but little information concerning the present state of public
affairs. The framers of the Constitution did not believe that the
management of the government was in any proper sense the people's
business; yet they realized that the people themselves took a different
view of the matter, which made some constitutional guarantee of
publicity necessary. It was, however, the form rather than the substance
of such a guarantee which the Constitution contained.

Neither house of Congress is required by the Constitution to hold open
sittings or publish its speeches and debates.[125] Until 1799 the Senate
exercised its constitutional right to transact public business in
secret; and during that period preserved no record of its debates. This
policy did not win for it the confidence of the people, and until after
it was in a measure abandoned, the Senate, notwithstanding the important
powers conferred on it by the Constitution, was not a very influential
body.

To deny the right of the people to control the government leads
naturally to denial of their right to criticise those who shape its
policy; since if free and unrestricted discussion and even condemnation
of official conduct were allowed, no system of minority rule could long
survive. This was well understood in the Federal Convention. The members
of that body saw that the constitutional right of public officials to
disregard the wishes of the people was incompatible with the right of
the latter to drag them before the bar of public opinion. Hence some
limitation of the right to criticise public officials was necessary to
safeguard and preserve their official independence. This seems to have
been the purpose of the Constitution in providing with reference to
members of Congress that "for any speech or debate in either House they
shall not be questioned in any other place."[126]

This provision may be traced to the English Bill of Rights where it was
intended as a