transmitted to the Senate.

It is alike due to the subject, the Senate, and the people that the
views which I have taken of the proceedings referred to, and which
compel me to regard them in the light that has been mentioned, should
be exhibited at length, and with the freedom and firmness which are
required by an occasion so unprecedented and peculiar.

Under the Constitution of the United States the powers and functions
of the various departments of the Federal Government and their
responsibilities for violation or neglect of duty are clearly defined
or result by necessary inference. The legislative power is, subject to
the qualified negative of the President, vested in the Congress of the
United States, composed of the Senate and House of Representatives; the
executive power is vested exclusively in the President, except that in
the conclusion of treaties and in certain appointments to office he is
to act with the advice and consent of the Senate; the judicial power is
vested exclusively in the Supreme and other courts of the United States,
except in cases of impeachment, for which purpose the accusatory power
is vested in the House of Representatives and that of hearing and
determining in the Senate. But although for the special purposes which
have been mentioned there is an occasional intermixture of the powers of
the different departments, yet with these exceptions each of the three
great departments is independent of the others in its sphere of action,
and when it deviates from that sphere is not responsible to the others
further than it is expressly made so in the Constitution. In every other
respect each of them is the coequal of the other two, and all are the
servants of the American people, without power or right to control or
censure each other in the service of their common superior, save only
in the manner and to the degree which that superior has prescribed.