resolution are an attempt to bring them on the
President in a manner unauthorized by the Constitution. To shield him
and other officers who are liable to impeachment from consequences
so momentous, except when really merited by official delinquencies,
the Constitution has most carefully guarded the whole process of
impeachment. A majority of the House of Representatives must think the
officer guilty before he can be charged. Two-thirds of the Senate must
pronounce him guilty or he is deemed to be innocent. Forty-six Senators
appear by the Journal to have been present when the vote on the
resolution was taken. If after all the solemnities of an impeachment
thirty of those Senators had voted that the President was guilty, yet
would he have been acquitted; but by the mode of proceeding adopted in
the present case a lasting record of conviction has been entered up by
the votes of twenty-six Senators without an impeachment or trial, whilst
the Constitution expressly declares that to the entry of such a judgment
an accusation by the House of Representatives, a trial by the Senate,
and a concurrence of two-thirds in the vote of guilty shall be
indispensable prerequisites.

Whether or not an impeachment was to be expected from the House of
Representatives was a point on which the Senate had no constitutional
right to speculate, and in respect to which, even had it possessed the
spirit of prophecy, its anticipations would have furnished no just
ground for this procedure. Admitting that there was reason to believe
that a violation of the Constitution and laws had been actually
committed by the President, still it was the duty of the Senate, as his
sole constitutional judges, to wait for an impeachment until the other
House should think proper to prefer it. The members of the Senate
could have no right to infer that no impeachment was intended. On the
contrary, every legal and rational presumption on their part ought to
have been that if there was good reason to believe him guilty of an
impeachable offense the House of Representatives would perform its
constitutional duty by arraigning the offender before the justice of
his country. The contrary presumption would involve an implication
derogatory to the integrity and honor of the representatives of the
people. But suppose the suspicion thus implied were actually entertained
and for good cause, how can it justify the assumption by the Senate of
powers not conferred by the Constitu