entatives, and, upon due conviction, to removal from office
and to the complete and immutable disfranchisement prescribed by the
Constitution. The resolution, then, was in substance an impeachment of
the President, and in its passage amounts to a declaration by a majority
of the Senate that he is guilty of an impeachable offense. As such it is
spread upon the journals of the Senate, published to the nation and to
the world, made part of our enduring archives, and incorporated in the
history of the age. The punishment of removal from office and future
disqualification does not, it is true, follow this decision, nor would
it have followed the like decision if the regular forms of proceeding
had been pursued, because the requisite number did not concur in the
result. But the moral influence of a solemn declaration by a majority of
the Senate that the accused is guilty of the offense charged upon him
has been as effectually secured as if the like declaration had been
made upon an impeachment expressed in the same terms. Indeed, a greater
practical effect has been gained, because the votes given for the
resolution, though not sufficient to authorize a judgment of guilty
on an impeachment, were numerous enough to carry that resolution.

That the resolution does not expressly allege that the assumption of
power and authority which it condemns was intentional and corrupt is no
answer to the preceding view of its character and effect. The act thus
condemned necessarily implies volition and design in the individual to
whom it is imputed, and, being unlawful in its character, the legal
conclusion is that it was prompted by improper motives and committed
with an unlawful intent. The charge is not of a mistake in the exercise
of supposed powers, but of the assumption of powers not conferred by
the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both, and nothing is
suggested to excuse or palliate the turpitude of the act. In the absence
of any such excuse or palliation there is only room for one inference,
and that is that the intent was unlawful and corrupt. Besides, the
resolution not only contains no mitigating suggestions, but, on the
contrary, it holds up the act complained of as justly obnoxious to
censure and reprobation, and thus as distinctly stamps it with impurity
of motive as if the strongest epithets had been used.

The President of the United States, therefore, has been by a majority of
his constitutional triers accused an