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John A. Bingham said that "the President having criminally violated the Constitution and the laws, I propose for one to put him on trial." Mr. Farnsworth of Illinois declared that "no student of our Constitution, no citizen, can doubt that Andrew Johnson has been guilty of a flagrant violation of our Constitution, which is justly impeachable."
The reason why these courts are so intensely servile and corrupt, is, that they are not only parts of, but the veriest creatures of, the very governments whose oppressions they are thus seeking to uphold. They receive their offices and salaries from, and are impeachable and removable by, the very governments upon whose acts they affect to sit in judgment.
There is an enlightened justice, as well as a beautiful symmetry, in every part of the Constitution. This is conspicuously manifested in regard to impeachments. The House of Representatives possesses "the sole power of impeachment," the Senate "the sole power to try all impeachments;" and the impeachable offenses are "treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors."
What Dicky's aunt, the Dowager Lady Carmichael, would have said to have seen Dicky flaunting it in the clothes of a dancing-girl through the streets of vile Beni Hassan, must not be considered. None would have believed that his pink-and-white face and slim hands and staringly white ankles could have been made to look so boldly handsome, so impeachable.
As to the question of the guilt or innocence of the President of the commission of an impeachable offense, this vote of the Senate was in the nature of a vote of "guilty."
Ships adapted both for war and for trade were required; but the means of building such ships did not exist in Scotland; and no firm in the south of the island was disposed to enter into a contract which might not improbably be considered by the House of Commons as an impeachable offence. It was necessary to have recourse to the dockyards of Amsterdam and Hamburg.
It may be assumed, I think, that for this country, at least, the question that was raised at the beginning and argued with great force, and by which possibly the House of Representatives may have been influenced in the year 1867, has been settled in accord with the report of the majority of the Judiciary Committee. The House decided that the President was impeachable for misdemeanors in office.
But it may perhaps have been a matter almost of indifference to him, till you undertook its defence: then make it of consequence by rising in eagerness, in proportion to the insignificance of your object; if he can draw consequences, this will be an excellent lesson: if you are so tender of blame in the veriest trifles, how impeachable must you be in matters of importance!
Jefferson's opinion of the treaty is well known from his rhetorical letter to Rutledge, which, in two or three lines, contains the adjectives, unnecessary, impolitic, dangerous, dishonorable, disadvantageous, humiliating, disgraceful, improper, monarchical, impeachable. The Mazzei letter, written not long after the ratification, displays the same bitter feeling.
It was very voluminous, prepared with great care in writing, and read to the Senate from printed slips. It was accompanied by a brief of authorities upon the law of impeachable crimes and misdemeanors, prepared by Hon. William Lawrence of Ohio with characteristic industry and learning.
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