Opinion of the Court. of the District of Columbia. In that case it was held that the words in the Act of March 3, 1885, 23 Stat. 443, c. 355, the validity of a "statute of or an authority exercised under the United States" do not embrace a case, which depends only on a judicial construction of an act of Congress, there being no denial of the power of Congress to pass the act, or of the right to enjoy whatever privileges are granted by it. The case now before us is within the very letter of the act of 1885 because there is drawn in question the validity of an authority exercised under the United States. Clayton v. Utah Territory, 132 U. S. 632, 637. It is, consequently, our duty to inquire whether the court below erred in withholding the relief asked by the petitioners. It is clear that such relief cannot be granted without deciding that the body over which George P. Wheeler presided was not the lawful House of Representatives; that the one over which S. F. Taylor presided was not the lawful Council; and that the minutes filed with the secretary of the Territory, purporting to be the record of the proceedings of the last day of the fifteenth session of the legislature, were not true minutes of that day's session prior to its legal termination, but were, in part, minutes of the proceedings of persons who did not constitute the Council and House of Representatives of the Territory. Those facts being determined in favor of the petitioners the court is, in effect, asked to take these minutes into its own custody or under its control; to cause them to be corrected in accordance with the facts as alleged by the petitioners to exist; to order them, after being thus corrected, to be filed in the office of the secretary of the Territory as the only true records of the legislative proceedings in question; and to require that officer to expunge from the files and records of the laws of the Territory the acts passed while Taylor and Wheeler assumed to be the presiding officers, respectively, of the Council and House of Representatives of the Territory. And this relief, it is to be observed, is not asked by any one claiming to have a beneficial interest in defeating or in sustaining the enactments passed by the two bodies alleged to have usurped the functions of a legislative assembly. Rev. Stats. Idaho, § 4978. Opinion of the Court. We are all of opinion that there was no error in denying these applications for writs of mandamus. We have not been referred to any adjudged case that would justify a court in giving the relief asked by the petitioners. And we do not suppose that such a case can be found in any State whose powers of government are distributed - as is the case in the Territory of Idaho among separate, independent and coordinate departments, the legislative, the executive and the judicial. 12 Stat. 808, c. 97; Rev. Stat. §§ 1841, 1846, 1907. "One branch of the government," this court said in the Sinking Fund Cases, 99 U. S. 700, 718, "cannot encroach on the domain of another without danger. The safety of our institutions depends in no small degree on a strict observance of this salutary rule." It is not one of the functions of a court to make up the records of the proceedings of legislative bodies. Nor can it be required, in a case not involving the private interests of parties, to determine whether particular bodies, assuming to exercise legislative functions, constitute a lawful legislative assembly. Such a question might indeed arise in a suit depending upon an enactment passed by such an assembly. And it might be that, in a case of that character, and under some circumstances, the court would be compelled to decide whether such an enactment was passed by a legislature having legal authority to enact laws. How far in the decision of such a question the judiciary would be concluded by the record of the proceedings of those bodies, deposited by the person whose duty it was to keep it with the officer designated by law as its custodian, are questions we have no occasion at this time to consider. It is sufficient for the disposition of the present case to say that the court below properly refused to lay its hands upon what purported to be the record of the proceedings of the legislative assembly of Idaho, in the custody of the secretary of that Territory, and to cause changes or alterations to be therein made. The cases cited by the appellants do not assert any different doctrines in respect to the power of the courts over the record of the proceedings of a co-ordinate department of government. They go no further than to assert the rule that a Statement of the Case. writ of mandamus, where there is no other adequate remedy, may be granted to compel inferior tribunals, corporations and public officers or agents to perform purely ministerial duties, in respect to which there is no discretion to be exercised. Rev. Stat. Idaho, § 4977. Such cases do not sustain the proposition that the judiciary, by means of writs of mandamus operating upon the officers of legislative bodies, may supervise the making up of the records of the proceedings of those bodies, or cause alterations to be made in such records as prepared by the officer whose duty it was to prepare them. Much less do they justify the court, in a case that does not involve the private rights of litigants, to determine whether particular bodies of persons constituted a lawful legislative assembly. The judgment in each case is affirmed. IN RE LONEY. APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA. No. 1118. Submitted January 21, 1890.- Decided March 24, 1890. The courts of a State have no jurisdiction of a complaint for perjury in testifying before a notary public of the State upon a contested election of a member of the House of Representatives of the United States; and a person arrested by order of a magistrate of the State on such a complaint will be discharged by writ of habeas corpus. THIS was a writ of habeas corpus, granted upon the petition. of Wilson Loney, by the Circuit Court of the United States, to the police sergeant of the city of Richmond, in the State of Virginia, who justified his detention of the prisoner under a warrant of arrest from a justice of the peace for that city upon a complaint charging him with wilful perjury committed on February 2, 1889, in giving his deposition as a witness before a notary public of the city in the case of a contested election. of a member of the House of Representatives of the United States. Opinion of the Court. The Circuit Court discharged the prisoner, upon the ground that the offence charged against him was punishable only under § 5392 of the Revised Statutes, and was within the exclusive cognizance of the courts of the United States. 38 Fed. Rep. 101. The respondent appealed to this court. Mr. J. Randolph Tucker and Mr. R. A. Ayers, Attorney General of the State of Virginia, for appellant. No appearance for appellee. MR. JUSTICE GRAY, after stating the case as above, delivered the opinion of the court. By the Constitution, the judicial power of the United States is vested in the courts of the United States. Art. 3, sect. 1. By the statutes of the United States, those courts have jurisdiction, exclusive of the courts of the several States, of "all crimes and offences cognizable under the authority of the United States;" Rev. Stat. § 711, cl. 1; and the Circuit Courts of the United States have exclusive cognizance of all such crimes and offences, except where otherwise provided by law, the principal exception being where concurrent jurisdiction is given to the District Courts of the United States; Rev. Stat. § 629, cl. 20; Act of August 13, 1888, c. 866, § 1, 25 Stat. 434; and it is declared, by way of greater caution, that nothing contained in the Crimes Act of the United States "shall be held to take away or impair the jurisdiction of the courts of the several States under the laws thereof." Rev. Stat. § 5328. The House of Representatives of the United States is made by the Constitution the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members. Art. 1, sect. 5. Congress has regulated by law the form in which notice of a contested election may be given and answered, and the time and manner in which depositions on oath of witnesses in such cases may be taken and returned to the House of Representatives by a judge of any court of the United States, or of a court of record of any State, or by any mayor or recorder of a city, or by any register in bankruptcy or notary public, or, if Opinion of the Court. the parties so agree, by any officer authorized to take depositions by the laws of the State or of the United States; and has provided for the punishment of such witnesses failing to attend and testify after being duly summoned. Rev. Stat. $S 105-130; Act of March 2, 1887, c. 318, 24 Stat. 445. Congress has also enacted that every person, having taken an oath to testify truly, "before a competent tribunal, officer or person, in any case in which a law of the United States authorizes an oath to be administered," who wilfully and contrary to such oaths states any material matter which he does not believe to be true, is guilty of perjury, and shall be punished by fine and imprisonment. Rev. Stat. § 5392. The laws of Virginia indeed provide that notaries public shall be appointed by the Governor of the State; and may take "any oath or affidavit required by law, which is not of such nature that it must be made in court." Virginia Code of 1887, SS 923, 173. But the oath of a witness in the case of a contested election of a member of the House of Representatives of the United States is not required by any law of Virginia, but is an oath authorized to be administered by the laws of the United States, and by those laws only; and the witness gives his testimony in obedience to those laws, and not in the performance of any duty which he owes to the State in which his testimony is taken. Any one of the officers designated by Congress to take the depositions of such witnesses, (whether he is appointed by the United States, such as a judge of a Federal court or a register in bankruptcy, or by the State, such as a judge of one of its courts of record, a mayor or recorder of a city, or a notary public,) performs this function, not under any authority derived from the State, but solely under the authority conferred upon him by Congress, and in a matter concerning the government of the United States. Testimony taken with the single object of being returned to and considered by the House of Representatives of the United States exercising the judicial power, vested in it by the Constitution, of judging of the elections of its members, and taken before an officer designated by Congress as compe |