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 Constitution?

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