in the discussion. It would be permitted to him, however, cursorily to remark, that the articles of impeachment do not charge William Blount with any crime, or misdemeanour, committed in the execution of his office; with any act, which might not have been committed by any other citizen, as well as a Senator: That there was room for argument, whether an officer could be impeached after he was out of office; not by a voluntary resignation to evade prosecution, but by an adversary expulsion: And that the Honourable Manager had misunderstood the object of the plea, when he supposed it asserted a right to a trial by jury, in cases properly impeachable; since the clause to which he referred, was merely inserted to show, that unless this was a case in which an impeachment would lie, the party was entitled to a trial by jury, in the ordinary courts, having cognizance of the matters charged.

Upon the whole, Mr. Dallas expressed his hope, that for the sake of the principle, as well as in favour of his client, the plea to the jurisdiction of the Senate would be sustained, and the impeachment dismissed: but whatever should be the result, he was confident it would be produced by deliberation, wisdom, justice, and impartiality.

The Court adjourned until to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock.

January 5.-The Court being formed, and the Managers and counsel having attended, Mr. Ingersoll spoke as follows:

MR. PRESIDENT, and Gentlemen of this Honourable Senate,

A cause involving the construction of an important part of the Constitution of the United States, the dignity and independence of the Senate, and the rights of the House of Representatives, offers for consideration.

Motives of such high import secure to me the attention of this honourable body, while I attempt the discussion of a question, novel, curious and interesting to every citizen of the Union.

I shall class my observations under these three particulars, to wit: The nature, the extent, and the objects of the power of impeachment, as designated by the Constitution of the United States.

The honourable chairman of the Managers has told us, that the Constitution has adopted the word impeachment, as well as many other technical terms, and has sent us to the common law for its exposition; that by following the guide to which he refers us, we shall find that this power is universal and without exception, pervades every part, indefinite as to offenders and offences, restricted only in the punishment to be inflicted.

This suggestion gives to the cause an importance, the weight of which oppresses me. I now feel a zeal beyond the line of the mere advocate. This is the first and last opportunity to pause and consider before the irretrievable step is taken. The interest of my client is lost in the consideration, how the event of this hearing may affect the public.

Sir, when I turn as directed to the books of the law, to know the nature of the proceeding by impeachment, what do I find of it there? Little good, and much ill; and while the energy of the English language, copious as it is, is exhausted in eulogiums on trials by jury in criminal cases, I read of none on proceedings by impeachment. The best English writers content themselves with stating, coldly, that the most proper and the most usual instances of proceeding by impeachment, are against the Ministers and other great officers of state, who, surrounded by the imposing splendour of royal favour, are too great for the grasp of law, administered by courts and juries; and from the special nature of the alleged crimes, sometimes a knowledge is requisite not always possessed by juries.

Sir, I find in those books, that the trial by jury in criminal cases, is the pal

ladium which has preserved the liberties of the British nation during the shocks of conquest from abroad, the convulsions of civil wars within, and the more dangerous period of modern luxury.

My impression or my sentiments upon this subject, are not entitled as such, to the notice of this honourable body; but when I can cite in their support such names as Hale, Hume, Blackstone and Woodeson; when I can add the expressions of the first great charter of American freedom, the Declaration of Independence, in which I find it assigned as one reason for the dismemberment of the Empire, that the King had given his assent to laws, for depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury; I trust what I have observed in this particular will not be stigmatised as declamation.

Since the Honourable Manager has put me in this course, I will pursue it a little further. And I ask, is proceeding by impeachment the genuine offspring of that Constitution whose very end and aim, in the view of Montesquieu, was civil liberty; or is it an excrescence on the body politic, a necessary evil to cure a greater mischief; a balance to counterpoise the weight of monarchy? I read in Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. i. pp. 244, 249, 250, 251, 252, 257, 258; and Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iv. 259, 260, that the King, all perfect and immortal in his royal capacity, can do no wrong; and hence the necessity of a check by impeachment upon his ministers, and those subjects who are entrusted with the administration of public affairs, who may infringe the rights of the people, and be guilty of such crimes, as the ordinary magistrate either dares not or cannot punish-a part of these reasons, surely, cannot operate in a republican system.

I read in Magna Charta that no man shall be condemned but by the lawful judgment of his Peers, or the law of the land. What was this law of the land? what other mode of proceeding in criminal causes was then in practice, except trial by jury? Hale, eminently great and equally good, expresses it to be by the common law of the land. A learned English historian explains the expression, as alluding to those methods of trial which originated in the presumptuous abuse of revelation in the ages of dark superstition. The trial by ordeal, of fire or water, the corsned or morsel of execration, and the trial by battle. I add informations originally reserved in the great plan of the English Constitution, and attachments for contempts. Was the proceeding by impeachment within the exception? Magna Charta bears date A. D. 1225; the first instance of impeachment mentioned in the judicial history of England (as far as I can find) was on the 3d of February, 1388, or at least 1327, in the reign of Edward III., more than one hundred years after Magna Charta; unless, indeed, it be the proceedings against the two Dispensers in 1321, which were so irregular that it was made void in Parliament the subsequent year.

Appeals in Parliament had been practised and their inconvenience became intolerable, and by the fourteenth chapter of the 1st Hen. IV. A. D. 1399, they were abolished; after which the proceeding by impeachment became frequent.

Supposing its origin to be as clear as it is doubtful, has not its history been. marked with injustice; and is it a mode of trial as safe and useful as the trial by jury?

"It is sufficient," says the celebrated Montesquieu, as quoted by Justice Blackstone, "to render any government arbitrary, that the laws on the subject of treason are indefinite ;" for this reason, the statute of 25th Edward III. attempted to render the law on this subject definite and clear. The House of Commons, in order to destroy an object of their vengeance, attempted to introduce a new species of treason, constructive, and to support the charge by a new species of evidence, called accumulative: can any man read without the strongest sensibility the defence made on that occasion? Penalties are imposed previous to the promulgation of the laws, and the defendant is tried

by maxims, unheard of until the moment of the prosecution. Who can recollect without horror the cruel manner in which the defendant was treated on his trial, as described by Woodeson, vol. ii. pp. 608, 609. Personal animosity and violence, and the implacability of determined enemies, marked their proceeding, until it ended in a bill of attainder, which a subsequent Parliament repealed, erased and defaced. Let me add, in the words of the same author, Woodeson, vol. ii. p. 620, from this, or a more particular survey of the proceedings on impeachment, we shall find occasion to observe, that though great is the utility of the public ends, which they are designed to answer, they have been too often misguided by personal and factious animosities and productive of alarming dissentions between two branches of the Legislature. The incompetency of a court and jury sometimes to decide, from the greatness of the offender and the nature of the crime, is urged against me. I do not believe that at present any offender is too great for the grasp of law as administered by our courts and juries; but what may happen, in our eventful history, I know not, and therefore I confess it to be proper that a provision of this kind should find a place in the Constitution, as far as respects the Executive and its officers; but further than this I contend there is not any necessity that it should be carried, and that such extension of this proceeding would be infinitely dangerous to the citizens. Might not the influence, the weight, and the protracted nature of such proceedings by impeachment, endanger even innocence? Have we not seen, in our own days, an impeachment continue seven years? Had the defendant possessed no other means of defence than innocence, the prosecution would have occasioned his ruin in one-seventh of the time.

Wherever a proceeding in a criminal matter deviates from the course of the common law by jury, whether such proceeding be introduced by statute or by a Constitution, such statute and such Constitution ought to be strictly construed. If any one thinks I have dwelt too long on this prefatory matter, let him read the encomium on trial by jury, by Mr. Justice Blackstone; let him read Hume's History of England, vol. i. p. 98, and Blackstone's Com. vol. iii. p. 349, and Black. Com. vol. iv. pp. 349, 414; he will not find trials by jury spoken of in those qualifying observations which Woodeson applies to the trial by impeachment.

Thus far I urge the argument and no farther. The constitutional power of impeachment is to be strictly construed. If the question that now arises be involved in doubts, those doubts ought to be decisive in favour of the accused. The power is to be extended only so far as is expressed, or to be clearly inferred, by a fair and clear, if not necessary, implication from what is expressed. Lacknowledge that the trial by jury, like every human institution, is liable to abuse; but I contend that it is less so, infinitely less so, than trial by impeachment. The demon of faction most frequently extends his sceptre over numerous bodies of men.

I conceive that it was this retrospective view of the history of impeachment that was in the mind of the Convention who framed the Constitution of the United States. Hence, the salutary restriction, as I understand it, not as contended by our opponents, an introduction upon the indefinite ground on which it is placed in England; but in a restricted manner, in a narrow channel, to supersede the trial by jury only in certain cases. The malignant suggestions of envenomed jealousy have no access to my breast. I do not impute improper motives anywhere. I ask only a reasonable construction to ascertain its extent. I thought proper to consider its nature as exemplified in the juridical history of that country from whose system of jurisprudence we have adopted it. Let us obtain an exposition of our great Charter according to its true and genuine meaning. It is surely our duty to examine and to understand, as well as to revere and to defend the Constitution. Previous to the formation

of the present Constitution of the United States, this subject had been under consideration in forming State Constitutions; and in New York, whose Constitution was made in 1777, and in Massachusetts, whose Constitution was made in 1780, the practice of proceeding by impeachment was, in these and every instance, where the power was allowed, restricted to the Executive and its officers for malconduct in office. A strong indication of the sentiment that was generally entertained upon the subject; and such was the situation of the private citizen, that he could not be condemned on any criminal charge, but by the unanimous consent of a jury of his neighbourhood.

I consider myself as having now prepared the way for a discussion of the second point, the extent of the power of impeachment under the Constitution. of the United States; which power and proceeding I shall endeavour to show, is restricted to the President, Vice-President and civil officers of the United States, for malconduct in office. I shall afterwards endeavour to make it appear that Senators are not the objects of this power, not being comprehended under the designation of civil officers of the United States.

Art. 2, sec. 4, is thus expressed: "The President, Vice-President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanours."

To construe an act of Parliament, it is necessary, we are told, to know what was the common law previous to passing the statute. For a similar reason, let it be recollected, that previous to the present Constitution of the United States, Congress had not any judiciary power; it was exclusively in the States separately-of both kinds-criminal and civil. The 12th amendment, now considered as a part of the original Constitution, declares "that the powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It was not in contemplation that either the legislative, executive or judiciary powers of Congress should be indefinite. The first section of the first article declares, not that all legislative powers shall be vested in Congress, but "that all legislative powers herein granted, shall be vested in a Congress," &c. The Executive is to execute the laws made by the limited legislature. The judiciary is to extend to all those causes which arise out of the laws of the United States-to those which concern the execution of the provisions contained in the Articles of Union-to those in which the United States is a party -to those which involve the peace of the confederacy-to those which originate on the high seas-and those in which the State tribunals cannot be supposed to be impartial.

That the Constitution of the United States, limited in its legislative and executive powers to certain enumerated objects, as well as in its judiciary, where a jury constitutes a part of its administration of justice, should be left without bounds in this hazardous proceeding by impeachment only, is grossly improbable, and, I trust, unfounded. Contrary, I am sure, to the spirit, and, I think, also to the letter of the Constitution. Let us trace the operation of this principle. A State officer is liable to impeachment in the Senate of the State. Is he liable, at the same time, and for the same offence, to impeachment in the Senate of the State and of the United States? Will an acquittal in one be a bar in the other? In disputes between the powers and relative jurisdictions of State and United States, the same reasons may induce an acquittal in the former and a condemnation in the latter. Would not this occasion a Babel, a confusion of constitutions, a monster of jurisprudence? In jurisdictions not emanating from the same authority, where a party had not his choice, the citizen is liable, it is said, to successive trials, and contradictory determinations, for one offence. The distant inhabitant is amenable, we are told, at the bar of this Court, for every species of offence, at the distance of a hundred, or a thousand miles from his vicinage, to whom the prosecution

itself would be ruin, and here must submit to the awful discretion of the Senate whether he shall retain his honour or be doomed to disgrace, recorded and transmitted to posterity, upon your archives, as unworthy the offices of Government, and, in part, reduced from the rank of a citizen.

I have said, sir, to the discretion of the Senate; because it is perfectly well known that, not only in the delineation of the offence by the prosecutors, but also in the construction of it by the judge, a Court of Impeachment is not tied down by such strict rules as, in common cases, before a court and jury, give personal security.

Improvident citizens! They have taken care that they shall not be subjected to a fine of one shilling, nor to imprisonment of their bodies for one hour, but, in consequence of a verdict of the neighbourhood, at the same time that it is suggested, their honour they have not secured with equal precaution. The suggestion, I undertake to say, is unfounded. The mistake is not in the people, but in those who impute to them so great an inadvertency.

I recur, then, fortified by these general reflections, to the words of the 4th section of the 2d article. My position is, that the clause in question was intended, and operates for the purpose of designating the extent of the power of impeachment, both as to the offences and the persons liable to be thus proceeded against. It will be of use here to recollect, that the Constitution had previously provided for the purity of the Legislature, in the 2d clause of the 5th section of the 1st article, by empowering each House to punish its members for disorderly behaviour, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, to expel a member. No clause similar to that which is introduced into some of the State Constitutions (that a member expelled and then returned, is not liable to be expelled again for the same offence) is to be met with in the Constitution of the United States; and, therefore, the Senate has an unlimited power to expel any member they shall deem unworthy their society.

Here, then, I flatter myself, the dispute admits of a clear solution, is reduced within a narrow compass, and brought to a point.

It is a rule of construction, that every part of an instrument be, if possible, made to take effect, and every word operate in some shape or other.

There are but two constructions suggested as possible; the one for which the Honourable Managers contend, to wit, that the 4th section of the 2d article was intended as an imperative injunction upon the Senate, that when, judgment was rendered against a civil officer of the United States, it should be for removal from office; the other that for which we, as counsel for the defendant, insist, that is, that it was intended to designate the extent of the practice of proceeding by impeachment, specifying who are the persons to be proceeded against, and for what offences. If, then, I am able to show that the words of the 4th section of the 2d article will not have any effect or operation at all, unless they receive the construction for which I contend; if I establish these premises, the inference will necessarily follow, that the construction for which the Honourable Managers contend is not well founded, and that the construction for which we contend is the true meaning of the Constitution in this particular. To this fair, short, and decisive test be the appeal.

In a previous paragraph, to wit, the 7th clause of the 3d section of the 1st article, it is provided that judgment, in cases of impeachment, shall not extend further than to removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honour, trust, or profit under the United States; that is, judgment must be either,-1st. Removal from office; or 2d. Removal and disqualification; or, 3d. Disqualification without removal, where the person convicted is not an officer. I have spoken of a judgment of disqualification, where the conviction was of a person not in office, because I am now endeavouring to show the weakness of the reasoning used against me; and,