resolution. It carefully abstains from averring in _which_ of "the late
proceedings in relation to the public revenue the President has assumed
upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and
laws," It carefully abstains from specifying _what laws_ or _what parts_
of the Constitution have been violated. Why was not the certainty of the
offense--"the nature and cause of the accusation"--set out in the manner
required in the Constitution before even the humblest individual, for
the smallest crime, can be exposed to condemnation? Such a specification
was due to the accused that he might direct his defense to the real
points of attack, to the people that they might clearly understand in
what particulars their institutions had been violated, and to the truth
and certainty of our public annals. As the record now stands, whilst
the resolution plainly charges upon the President at least one act of
usurpation in "the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public
revenue," and is so framed that those Senators who believed that one
such act, and only one, had been committed could assent to it, its
language is yet broad enough to include several such acts, and so it
may have been regarded by some of those who voted for it. But though
the accusation is thus comprehensive in the censures it implies, there
is no such certainty of time, place, or circumstance as to exhibit the
particular conclusion of fact or law which induced any one Senator to
vote for it; and it may well have happened that whilst one Senator
believed that some particular act embraced in the resolution was an
arbitrary and unconstitutional assumption of power, others of the
majority may have deemed that very act both constitutional and
expedient, or, if not expedient, yet still within the pale of the
Constitution; and thus a majority of the Senators may have been enabled
to concur in a vague and undefined accusation that the President, in
the course of "the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public
revenue," had violated the Constitution and laws, whilst if a separate