m
the presentation of the charges by the House of Representatives until
the final adjournment of the Senate as a Court of Impeachment, was
eighty-two days. Within that period the amplest opportunity was
afforded to submit testimony and to hear the pleas of counsel. The
gravity of the procedure was fully realized by all who took part in it,
and no pains were spared to secure the observance of every
Constitutional requirement to the minutest detail. In conserving its
own prerogatives Congress made no attempt to curtail the prerogatives
of the President during his trial. The army and the navy were under
his control, together with the power to change that vast host of
Federal officers and employees whose appointment does not require the
confirmation of the Senate. Confidence in the reign of law was so
absolute that no one ever dreamed it possible for the President to
resist the force of its silent decree against him if one more voice in
the Senate had pronounced him guilty.

The trial of Warren Hastings is always quoted as a precedent of
imposing authority and consequence. But that was simply the
arraignment of a subordinate official, upon charges of peculation and
cruelty--misdemeanors not uncommon with the Englishmen of that day who
were entrusted with Colonial administration. The great length of the
Hastings trial, and especially the participation of Edmund Burke as
original accuser and chief manager, have given it an extraneous
importance to students of English history and law. The Articles of
Impeachment, drawn by Mr. Burke, were presented at the bar of the House
of Lords in April, 1786. They were so elaborate as to fill a stately
octavo volume of five hundred pages. Mr. Burke's opening speech was
not made for two years thereafter, and his closing plea was made in
June 1794. During these eight years his splendid eloquence was the
admiration and pride of the English people, and gave to the arraignment
of Hastings an extrinsic interest far beyond the real importance. It
bore no comparison in any of its essential aspects with a change of
Rulership in a Republic of forty millions of people. Scarcely an
incident of Hastings' life in India would be known to the popular
reader, except for the association of his name with the most celebrated
period of Mr. Burke's majestic career. Baron Plassy, a far greater
man in the same field of achievement, is, compared with Hastings,
little known--the title not being rememb