tion?

It is only necessary to look at the condition in which the Senate and
the President have been placed by this proceeding to perceive its utter
incompatibility with the provisions and the spirit of the Constitution
and with the plainest dictates of humanity and justice.

If the House of Representatives shall be of opinion that there is just
ground for the censure pronounced upon the President, then will it be
the solemn duty of that House to prefer the proper accusation and to
cause him to be brought to trial by the constitutional tribunal. But in
what condition would he find that tribunal? A majority of its members
have already considered the case, and have not only formed but expressed
a deliberate judgment upon its merits. It is the policy of our benign
systems of jurisprudence to secure in all criminal proceedings, and even
in the most trivial litigations, a fair, unprejudiced, and impartial
trial, and surely it can not be less important that such a trial should
be secured to the highest officer of the Government.

The Constitution makes the House of Representatives the exclusive
judges, in the first instance, of the question whether the President
has committed an impeachable offense. A majority of the Senate, whose
interference with this preliminary question has for the best of all
reasons been studiously excluded, anticipate the action of the House of
Representatives, assume not only the function which belongs exclusively
to that body, but convert themselves into accusers, witnesses, counsel,
and judges, and prejudge the whole case, thus presenting the appalling
spectacle in a free State of judges going through a labored preparation
for an impartial hearing and decision by a previous _ex parte_
investigation and sentence against the supposed offender.

There is no more settled axiom in that Government whence we derived the
model of this part of our Constitution than that "the lords can not
impeach any to themselves, nor join in the accusation, _because they
are judges_." Independently of the general reasons on which this rule
is founded, its propriety and importance are greatly increased by the
nature of the impeaching power. The power of arraigning the high
officers of government before a tribunal whose sentence may expel them
from their seats and brand them as infamous is eminently a popular
remedy--a remedy designed to be employed for the protection of private
right and public liberty against the abuses