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 of injustice and the
encroachments of arbitrary power. But the framers of the Constitution
were also undoubtedly aware that this formidable instrument had been and
might be abused, and that from its very nature an impeachment for high
crimes and misdemeanors, whatever might be its result, would in most
cases be accompanied by so much of dishonor and reproach, solicitude and
suffering, as to make the power of preferring it one of the highest