of the duties assigned to the government in the conduct of the affairs of the nation, but they are here in a struggle and contest as to which one of them shall be made to bow, by virtue of constitutional authority, to the other.

Crime and violence have put portions of our political government at some disadvantage; the crime and violence of the Rebellion has deprived this House of Representatives and this Senate of the full attendance of members, which will make up the body, under the Constitution of the United States, when it shall have been fully re-established over the whole country; the crime of violence and of assassination has put the Executive office in the last stage of constitutional authority: there is no constitutionally-elected successor of the President of the United States; and you have now before you a matter I shall call your at tention to, not intending to exhibit here the discussion of constitutional views and doctrines, but simply the result to the government and the country which must follow from your judgment.

If you shall acquit the President of the United States of this accusation, all things will be as they were before; the House of Representatves will retire to discharge its usual duties in legislation, and you will remain to act with it in those duties, and to divide with the President the other associate duties of an executive character which the Constitution has confided to vou.

The President, if freed from this accusation, will occupy through the constitutional term his place of authority, and, whatever course of politics may follow, the government and its Constitution will have received no shock; but if the President should be condemned, and if by the authority of the Constitution necessary to be exercised on condemnation, he shall be removed from office, there will be no President of the United States, for that name and title is conceded by the Constitution to no man who has not received the suffrage of the people for the primary and alternative gift of that office.

A new thing will occur, the duties of the office will attach to some other officer, and be discharged by him through the term which belongs to the first officer.

The presiding officer of the Senate will have to add to the office, conferred on him by the Senate. the performance of the duties of President of the United States, and and whatever there may be in the course of public affairs, it will result from the anomalous situation which is involved in the determination of this case; and therefore, you have directly proposed to you, as a necessary result of one determination, this novelty in our Constitution.

A great nation. whose whole form of government, whose whole scheme and theory of politics rests upon the suffrages of the people, will be without a President, and the office sequestered will be discharged by a member of the body whose judgment has sequestered it. I need not direct your attention-long since called to it, doubtless, and made more familiar, by your reflections, to you than it is to me-to the results that will follow from the exercise of these duties, and you will see at once that the situation, from circumstances for which no man is responsible, is such as to bring into the gravest possible consequences the act which you are to perform.

If the President of the United States, elected by the people, and having standing behind him the second officer of the people's choice, were on trial, no such disturbance or confusion of constitutional duties, and no such shock upon the feelings and traditions of the people would affect us, but as I have said, crime and violence, for which none of the agents of the government are responsible, have brought us to this situation.

Now it would seem that as this trial brings the legislative power of the government, confronted with the executive authority, and its result is to deprive the nation of a President of the United States, and to place the office in the Senate, it is a trial of the Constitution over the head and in the person of the Chief Magistrate who now fills the great office. The forces of this contest are gathered and this is the trial of the Constitution, and neither the dignity of the great office which he holds, nor any personal interest that may be felt in one so high in stati on, nor the great name and force of this exercise, the the House of Representatives speaking for all the people of the United States, nor the august composition of this tribunal, which brings together the Chief Justice of the great court of the country and the Senators who have States for their constituents-which recalls to us the combined splendors of Roman and English jurisprudence and power-not even this spectacle forms any important part of the watchful solicitude with which the people of the country are gazing on this procedure.

The sober thought of the people of the country is never affected by pageant, when they cover real issues and intercsts the people are thinking on far greater things than these. Why, Mr. Chief Justice, it is but a few days since the great tribunal in which you habitually preside, where the law speaks with authority for the whole United States, adjourned, embracing as it does, the great provinces of international law, the great responsibility of judging between the States and the General Government, the conflicting interests and passions belonging to our composite system, and of determining the limits of the co-ordinate branches of the government.

There is one other duty assigned to it in which the people of the country feel a nearer and deeper interest. It is as the guardians of the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, as the watchful protectors of the liberties of the people against the encroachments of law and government, that the people look to the Supreme Court with the great. est honor and greatest affection. That court having before it a subject touching the liberty of the citizens, finds the hamstrings of its endeavor and of its energy to interpose

the power of the Constitution in protection of the citizen, cut by the sharp edge of a Congressional enactment, and in its breast, carries away from the judgment the Consti tution and law, to be determined, if ever, at some future time and under some happier circumstances.

Now, in reference to this matter, the people of the United States give grave attention. They exercise their supervision of the conduct of all their agents, of whom, in any form and in any capacity, and in any majesty, they have not yet learned to be afraid. The people of this country have had nothing in their experience of the last six years to make them fear anybody, anybody's oppres sion, anybody's encroachinent, anybody's assaults, any. body's violence, anybody's war. Masters of this country, and masters of every agent and agency in it, they bow to nothing but the Constitution, and they honor every public servant who bows to the Constitution.

At the same time, by the action of the same Congress, the people see the President of the United States brought as a criminal to your bar, accused by one branch of Con gress, to be tried by the other; his office, as I have said, to be put in commission, and an election ordered. Now, he greatly mistakes who supposes that the attachment of the people of the United States to the office of President, and the great name and power which represents them in their collective capacity, in their united power and in their combined interests, is less than their attachment to any of the other departments of this government.

The President is, in the honor and in the custom of the the people of the United States, the Magistrate: the authority for which, they have that homage, that ro spect which belongs to the elective office. His oath of office is as familiar to the people in this country as it is to you, for they have heard it during the perilous period of the war from the lips which they revered; and they have seen its immense power under the resources of this Con stitution, and supported by their fidelity to maintain the contest of this government against all our foes to sustain the Constitution and laws.

It has been spoken of here as if the President's oath was the oath to discharge faithfully the duties of his office, and as if the principal duty of the office was to execute the laws of Congress; but that is not the President's oath That portion of it, that is the common oath of everybody in authority, is to discharge the duties of his office; but the peculiar oath of the President, the oath of the Constitution is in the larger portion of it which makes him the sworn preserver, protector and defender of the Constitn tion itself that is an office and that is an oath which the people of the United States have intrusted to and exacted from no other public servant than the President of the United States, and when they conferred that power and exacted that duty; they under stood its tremendous responsibility, the tremendous oppo sition which it might encounter, and they understood their duty, implied in the suffrage which had conferred the authority and exacted the obligation to maintain him in it as against foreign aggression, as against domestic violence, as against encroachments from whatever quar ter, under the guise of Congress or under whatever autho rity upon the true vigor of the Constitution.

President Lincoln's solemn declaration, on which he gained strength for himself, and by which he gave strength to the people, "I have a solemn vow registered in Heaven that I will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," carried him and carried the people following him through the struggles, the changes, the vicis situdes of the Rebellion, and that vow as a legend now adorns the halls of legislation in more than one State of the Union.

This oath of the President, this duty of the President the people of this country do not in the least regard as per sonal to him; but it is an oath and a duty assumed and to be performed as their representative in their interests and for their honor, and they have determined, and will ad here to their determination, that that oath shall not be taken in vain. They understand that the literal phrase, "to the best of my ability," which is the modest form in which the President's obligation is assumed, means not only the ability of the President, but the ability of the country; and most magnificently have the people brought out its recourse in aid of that oath of President Lincoln's. And so, when the shock comes, not in the form of violence, of war, of rebellion, but of a struggle between foes of this government in relation to constitutional authority, the people of the United States regard the President as bound to the special fidelity of watching that all departments of this government obey the Constitution, as well as that he obeys it himself.

It gives him no assumption of authority beyond the laws and the Constitution; but all the authority and all the resources of the laws and of the Constitution are open to him, and they will see to it that he, the Presi dent of the United States, whoever he may be, in relation to the office and its duties, shall not take this oath in vain, if they have the power to maintain him in its perform ance. That, indeed, the Constitution is above him, as it is above all of the servants of the people; as it is above the people themselves, until their sovereignty shall change it they do not doubt, and thus all their servants, the Pre sident, the Congress, and whoever they may be, are watched by the people of the United States, in relation the limitation of the Constitution. Not disputing the reg larity, the complete authenticity the adequate authority of this entire procedure of accusation, through trial and down to sentence, the people yet claim the right to see and to know that it is duty to the Constitution, observed and followed throughout, which brings the result, what ever it may be.

Thus satisfied, they adhere to the Constitution, and they have no purpose to change it. They are converts to no theories of Congressional omnipotence; understand none of the nonsense of the Constitution being superior to the laws, except that the laws must be obeyed under the Constitution. They know their government and they mean to maintain it. And when they hear that this tremendous enginery of impeachment and trial and threatened conviction or sentence, "If the laws and facts will justify it," has been brought into play, that that power which has lain in the Constitution, like a sword in a sheath, is now drawn.

They wish to know what the crime is that the President is accused of. They understand that treason and bribery are made offenses; that those who are guilty of them should be brought into question and deposed. They are ready to believe that there may be other great crimes and misdemeanors touching the conduct of the government and the welfare of the State, which may equally fall within the jurisdiction and the duty, but they wish to know what the crimes are. They wish to know whether the President has betrayed our liberties or our possessions to a foreign State. They wish to know whether he has delivered up a fortress or surrendered a State. They wish to know whether he has made merchandise of the public trust or turned authority to private gain, and when informed that none of these things are charged or even declaimed about, they yet seek further information, and they are told that he has removed a member of his Cabinet. Now, the people of this country are so familiar with the removal of members of the Cabinet, and of all other persons in authority, that that mere statement does not strike them as a grave offense, needing the interposition of this special jurisdiction. Removal from office is not with the people. and especially those engaged in politics, a terror or a disagreeable subject.

Indeed, it may be said that it makes a great part of the political forces of the country; that removal from office is a thing in the Constitution and in the habit of its administration. I remember to have heard it said that an old lady once summed up an earnest detense of the seven dogmas of Calvinism by saying that if you took away her total depravity you took away all her religion. (Laughter.) And there are a good many people in this country of whom it may be said, if you took away removal from office, you took away all their politics. (Laughter.) So that on that mere statement it does not strike them either as an unprecedented occurrence or as one involving no great danger to the State.

Well, but how comes it to be a crime? they inquire. Why, Congress passed a law, for the first time in the history of the government, understood to control this removal from office, and provided that if the President should violate it it should be a crime, or rather a misdemeanor; and that now he has removed, or undertaken to remove a member of his Cabinet, and is to be removed himself for that canse. He undertook to make an ad interim Secretary of War, and you are to have made for you an ad interim President in consequence.

Now, that seems the situation. Was the Secretary removed, they inquire. No, he was not removed, he is still Secretary, still in the possession of the department. Was force used, was violence meditated. attempted, or applied? No, it was all on paper, and all went no further than making the official attitude out of which a judgment of the Supreme Court could be got, and here Congress interrupting again, this great authority of the goverument is inter.posed the procedure of trial and impeachment of the President to settle by its own authority this question between it and the Executive. The people see and the people feel that under this attitude of Congress there seems to be a claim of right to the exercise of what is supposed to be a duty to prevent the Supreme Court of the United States from interposing the severe judgment in the collisions of the government and of the laws affecting either the framework of the government or the liberties of the citizen, and they are not slow to understand, without the aid of the arguments of the honorable managers, that it is a question between the omnipotence of Congress and the supremacy of the Constitution of the United States. That is an issue on which the people have no doubt. From the beginning of their liberties they have had had a clear opinion that tyranny was as likely to be exercised by the Parliament as by the King or anybody else. The honorable managers have directed your notice to the principles and the trials of the American Revolution as having shows a determination to overthrow the tyranny of the king, and they told us that this people will not bend their necks to the usurpations of the President. The people will not bend their necks to the usurpations of anybody. But they know that their fathers went to war against the tyranny of Parliament, and that, under the necessity of finally securing their liberties, they severed their connections with the mother country. If any honorable member of either house will peruse the work in the convention which framed the Constitution of the Uniied States, he will discover that, of all the powers which might grow up, the tyranny of Congress was more provided against than any other extravagance which the workings of our government might be supposed possible to produce. Our people, then, are unwilling that our government hould be changed. They are unwilling that the doctrine of Congressional supremacy should be fixed. They are unwilling that any department shall grow too strong or shall claim to be too strong for the restraints of the Conetitution. And if men are wise they will attend to what was sagaciously said by an English statesman, which, if obeyed in England, might have saved great political shocks, and which is true for our guidance and for the

adoption by our people now as it was then for the people of England. Said Lord Bacon to Buckingham, the arbitrary minister of James I.:-"So far as it may be in you. let no arbitrary power be inaugurated. The people of this kingdom love the laws thereof, and nothing will oblige them more than a confidence in the free enjoyment of them."

What the nobles once said in Parliament, volumus leges Anglia mutari, is imprinted in the hearts of all the people, and in the hands of all the people of this country. The supremacy of the Constitution, and obedience to it, are imprinted. Whatever progress new ideas of parliamentary government instead of executive authority dependent on the direct suffrage of the people, may have made with prophets and with statesmen, it has made no advanco whatever in the hearts or in the heads of the people of this country

Now, I know there are a good many people who believe that a written Constitution for this country, as for every other nation, is only for the nascent state, and not for the prime and vigor of manhood. I know that it is spoken of as swathing bands, which may support and strengthen the puny limbs of infancy, but which shame and encumber the maturity of vigor. This I know, and in either House I imagine sentiments of that kind have been held during the debates of the past two Congresses.

But that is not the feeling or judgment of the people, and this is in their eyes, in the eyes of foreign nations, and in the eyes of the enlightened thinkers, a trial of the Constitution not merely in that inferior sense of a deter mination whether its powers accorded to one branch or other of the government have this or that scope, impres sion and force, but whether a government of a written Constitution can maintain itself in the forces prescribed and attributed to its various departments, or whether the immense passions of a wealthy and powerful and populous nation will force asunder all the bonds of the Constitution, and whether in a struggle of strength and wealth the natural forces, uncurbed by the supreme reason of the State, will determine the success of one and the subjection of the other.

Now, Senators. let us see to it that in this trial and in this controversy, that we understand what is its extent and what is to be determined. Let us see to it that we play our part as it should be played, from the motives and interests which should control statesmen and judges. If it be that the guardian of liberty is at last to loosen her zone, and her stern monitor, law, debauched and drunken with that new wine of opinion which is crushed daily from ten thousand presses throughout this land, is to ignore its guardianship, let us at least be found among those who, with averted eye and reverend step backward, seek to veil the shameless rivalry, and not with those who exult and jeer at its success.

Let us so act as that what we do, and what we propose, and what we wish, shall be to build up the States, to give new stability to the forces of the government, and curb the rash passions of the people. Thus acting, doubt not that the result shall be in accord with those high aspirations, and those noble impulses, and those exalted views. And whether or no the forces of this government shall feel the shock of this special jurisdiction, in obedience to law, to evidence, to justice, to duty, you will have built up the government, amplified its authority, and taught the people renewed homage to all branches of it.

And this brings me, Mr. Chief Justice and Senators, to an inquiry as to a theory of this case, which was discussed with emphasis, with force, and with learning, and that is. whether this is a court? I must admit that I have heard defenders argue that they were coram non judice, before somebody who was not a judge, but I never yet heard, until now, of a plaintiff or a prosecutor coming in and arguing that there was not any court, that this case was coram non judice.

Nobody is wiser than the intrepid manager who assumed the first assault on this court, and he knew the only way he could prevent his case from being turned out of court was to turn the court out of his case. (Laughter.) the expedient succeeds, his wisdom may be justified, think, and yet it will be a novelty. Now, it is said thereis no word in the Constitution which gives the slightest coloring to the ida that this is a court, except that in this case the Chief Justice must preside. So that the Chief Justice's gown is the only shred or patch of justice that there is within these halls. But it is only accidentally that that is here, owing to the character of the inculpated defender.

This, we are told, is a Senate to hold an inquest of office on Andrew Johnson. But we have not observed in your rules that each Senator is to rise in his place, and say:"Office found," or "office not found." Probably every Senator does not expect to find it. [Laughter.] Your rules, your Constitution, your habit, your etiquette, all assume that there is a procedure here of judicial nature, and we found out finally on our side of the controversy that it was so much of a court at least that you could not put a leading question, and that is about the extreme exercise of the character of a court which we always ha bitually discover.

Now the Constitution, as has been pointed out to you, makes this a court. It makes this a trial, and it assigns a judgment; it accords a power of punishment to its procedure, and it provides that a jury in all judicial proceedings of a criminal nature shall be necessary, except in this court and under this form of procedure. We must assume, then, that so far as words go, it is a court, and nothing but a court. But it is a question, as the honorable manager says, of substance and not of form, and he concedes that

if it be a count, you must find upon evidence something to make out the guilt of the offender to secure a judgment.

He argues against its being a court, not from any nice criticism of words, but, as he expresses it, for the substance. He has endeavored by many references, and by an interesting and learned brief appended to his opening speech, of English precedents and authorities to show that it is almost anything but a court. But, perhaps, during the hundreds of years in which the instrument of impeachment was used as a political engine, if you look only to the judgments and the reasons of the judgments you would not think it was really a very judicial proceeding, but that through all English history it was a proceeding in a court controlled by the rules of a court, as a coart cannot be doubted.

Indeed, as we all know, though the learned manager has not insisted upon it, the trial, under the peculiar procedure and jurisdiction of impeachment in the House of Lords. was a part of the general jurisdiction of the House of Lords, as the great court of the Kingdom in all matters, civil and criminal. One of the favorite titles of the lords of Parliament in these early days was judges of Parliament; and now the House of Lords in England is the su preme court of that country as distinctly as ever the great tribunal of that name is in this country. But one page of British sound authority will put to flight all those dreamy, misty notions about a law and a procedure of Parliament in this country and in this trial that is to supersede the Constitution and the laws of our country, And now I will show you what Lord Thurlow thought of that suggestion, as prevalent or expected to prevail in England in the trial of Warren Hastings. Lord Thurlow said:

"My lords, with reference to the laws and usages of Par liament, I utterly disclaim all knowledge of such laws; they have no existence. True, it is, in times of despotism and popular fury, when they impeached an individual and wished to crush him by the strong hand of power, of tumult or of violence, the laws and usages of Parliament were arrested in order to justify the most iniquitous or atrocious acts; but in these days of light and of constitu tional government, I trust that no man will be tried except by the law of the land, a system admirably calcn. lated to protect innocence, and fo punish crime." And after showing that in all the State trials under the Stuart reign, and even down to that of Sacheverell, were to be found the strongest marks of tyranny, oppression, and injustice, lord Thurlow continued:

"I trust your lordships will not depart from the recognized established law of the land. The Commons may impeach. Your lordships are to try the case, and the same rules of evidence, and the same legal forms that ob tain in courts of law will, I am confident, be observed in this Assembly."

But the learned manager did not tell us what this was if it was not a court. It is true, he said it was a Senate, but that conveys no idea. It is not a Senate conducting legislative business; it is not a Senate acting on executive business; it is not a Senate acting in Congress on political forces; and the question remains, If it is not a Senate. what is it? If this is not an altar of justice; what is it if we are not all ministers of justice here to feel its sacred flame? What is the altar, and what is it that we do here about it? It is an altar of sacrifice, if it is not an altar of justice, and to what divinity is that altar erected but to to the divinity of party hate and party rage.

What, then, is the altar about which you are to minister? Now, our learned managers, representing the House of Representatives do not seem to have been at all at pains to conceal the party spirit and the party hate which displayed itself in the haste, record, and maintenance of this impeachment; and to show you what progress we may make in the course of thirty years in the true idea of the Constitution and of the nature of impeachment, let me read to you what the managers of the impeachment of Judge Peck had to say in that behalf. The managers on that occasion consisted of Judge Ambrose Spencer, of New York; Mr. Henry A. Stories, of New York: Mr. McDiff and Mr. Pinckney, of South Carolina, and Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky, a pretty solid body of managers.

Ambrose Spencer, as stern a politician as he was an upright judge, upon the case, let me ask attention to what he said. "There is, however." said he, "one cheering and consolatory reflection-the House of Representatives, after a patient and full examination, came to the result to impeach Judge Peck by a very large majority, and the record will show the absence of all party feeling. Could I believe that that appeal for influence had mingled itself with a predominating power in that vote, no earthly consideration could prevail over me as one of the prosecutors of this impeachment. I have no words to express the abhorrence of my soul at the indulgence of such unhallowed feeling upon such a solemn procedure."

Now, Mr. Manager Butler talked to you many hours. Did he say anything wiser or juster or safer for the repub'lic than that. Judge Spencer knew what it was to be a judge as well as a politician for twenty years. While on the bench in New York, a great judicial light in the common law jurisprudence of that State, he was the head and leader of a political party, and earnest and unflinching in support of its measures and its discipline, and yet no lawyer, no suitor, no critic, ever ventured to say, to think, or to feel that Judge Spencer, on the bench, was the politician, or earried any trait or trace of party feeling on it. Judge Spencer was a politician. In the House of Representatives Judge Spencer, in the management of an im peachment, could only say that, if party feeling mingled in it he would have nothing to do with it; from his soul he abhorred it in reference to so solemn a procedure. Yes, indeed, this divinity of party hate, when it possesses a man,

throws him now into the fire and now into the water, and he is unsuitable to be a judge until he can come again clothed and in his right mind. But, to come down to the words of our English history and experience, if this is not a court it is a scaffold as the honorable manager (Mr. Stevens) yesterday told you. Each of you brandishes now, according to him, a cord and axe, having tried the offender on the night of the 21st of February last. Now, I would not introduce those bold words which should make this a scaffold in the eyes of the people of the country, and that shorld make your headsmen brandish your acts. The honorable manager has done so, and I have no difficulty in saying to you that if you are not a court, then you are that which he describes, and nothing else.

Is it true, that on the 21st of February, for a crime committed by the President at midday of that day, and on im peachment already moving forward to this Chamber from the House of Representatives, you did hold a court and did condemn him? If so, then you are here vindicating about the scaffold of execution, and the part which you are to play is only the part assigned you by the honorable manager, and he warned you to hold true fealty to your own judgment, and not to blanch at the sight of blood. Now, to what end is this precedent offered? To expel from this tribunal all ideas of a court and of justice? What is it but a bold, reckless, rash and foolish avowal that if it be a court, there is no case here which, upon judicial reason, or judicial scrutiny, or judicial weighing and balanoing of facts and of law, could result in a judgment.

Alas! to what ends are the wisdom and the conrage of civil prudence and the knowledge of history which our ancestors brought to the framing of the Constitution? Of what service those wise, those honest framers of the Con stitution on ex post facto laws and bills of attainder? What is a bill of attainder? What is a bill of pains and penal ties in the experience, the learning of English jurisprudence and Parliamentary history? Why, it is a proceeding by a Legislature as a Legislature-an act, trial, sen tence and punishment all in one. Certainly, if you do not sit under the law to examine evidence, to be impartial, and to regard it as a question of personal guilt, to be fol lowed by personal punishment and personal consequence to the alleged delinquent.

The counsel and the wisdom of our fathers all pass for nothing now. Our ancestors were brave and wise, but they were not indifferent to the dangers which attended this tribunal. They had no resources where they could so well fix this necessary duty in a free government, to ser vante amenable to public justice unless they devolved it on the Senate. But let me show you within the brief compass of the debate as it appears on the journal of the convention which framed the Constitution, how the fears and the doubts predominated. Mr. Madison objected to the trial of the President by the Senate, and especially as he was to be impeached by the other branch of the Legis lature, and for any act which might be called a misde meanor. The President, under these circumstances, was made, improperly, dependent upon Congress. He would prefer the Supreme Court for the trial of impeachment, or rather a tribunal of which that might form a part.

Mr. Gouverneur Morris thought that no other tribunal than the Senate could be trusted. The Supreme Court was too few in number, and might be warped or corrupted. He was against the dependen e of the executive on the legis lature, considering legislative tyranny the greatest danger to be apprehended; but there could be no danger that what the Senate would say on a trial. on their oaths, that the President was guilty of crimes of facts, especially as in four years he could be turned out. That was Gouverneur Mor ria's wisdom as to the extent to which the Senate might be trusted under the sanction and the obligations of their judicial oaths.

But Mr. Pinckney disapproved of making the Senate a Court of Impeachment, as rendering the President too dependent on the Legislature. If he opposes a primary law the two Houses would combine against him, and under the influence of hate and faction, throw him out of office. Now, there is the sum and substance of the wisdom which our ancestors could bring to this subject, as to whether this was to be a court. Is is undoubtedly a very great burden, and a very exhaustive test on a political body, to turn it into a court for the trial of an Executive. I may hereafter point out to you the very peculiar, the very comprehensive and aggressive concurrence and combination of circumstances combined in this trial, which require of you to brace yourselves on all the virtue that belongs to you, and to hold on to that oath for the Divine aid which may support you under these most extreme tests of human conduct to which our Constitution subjects you.

Now, what does the Constitution do for us? A few little words, that is all. Truth, justice, oath, duty; and what does the whole scope of our moral nature, and what sup port we may hope for, higher and extend to in any of our affairs of life than this. Truth, justice, oath, duty are the ideas which the Constitution has foreed upon your souls to-day

You receive them, or you neglect them; whichever way you turn you cannot be the same men afterwards that yon were; accept them, embrace, obey, and you are noble, and stronger, and better. Spurn and reject them, and you are worse, and bager, and weaker, and wickeder than before. It is this, that a free government must be always held to the power of duty, to the maintenance of its authority, and to the prevalence of its own strength for its perpetual existence. They are little words, but they have a great power. Truth is to the moral world what gravitation is to the material world. It is the principle on which it is established and coheres. The adaptation of truth

to the affairs of men is in human life what the mechanism of the heavens is to the principle which sustains the forces of the globe, duty is acceptance of obedience to those ideas, and this once gained secures the operation that was intended. When, then, you have been submissive to that oath, that faith among men which, as Burke says, holds the moral elements of the world together, and that faith in God which binds the world to His throne, subdues you to the service of truth and jus tice. The purity of the family and the sanctity of justice have ever been cared for and will ever be cared for by the ever-living guardian of human rights and interests, who does not neglect what is essential to the preservation of the human race and its advance.

The faries in old mythology had charge of the sanctity of an oath. The imaginations of the prophets of the world have sanctified the solemnity of an oath, and have peopled the places of punishment with oath-breakers. All the tortures and torments of history are applied to public servants, who, in betrayal of sworn trusts, have disobeyed this high, this necessitous obligation, without which the whole fabric of societylls into pieces. Now, I do not know why or how it is that we are so constituted, but so it is-the moral world has it laws as well as the material world-why a point of steel lifted over a temple or hut should draw the thunderbolt and speed it safely into the ground.

I know not how, in our moral constitution, an oath lifted to Heaven can draw from the great swollen cloud of passion, and of interest, and of hate, its charge; I know not, but so it is, and be sure that loud and long as these honorable managers may talk, although they speak in the voice of all the people of the United States, with their bold persua Bione, that you shall not obey a judicial oath, I can bring against it but a single sentence and a single voice, but that sentence is a commandment, and that voice speaks with awe:-"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain."

The moth may consume the ermine of that Supreme Court whose robes you wear, rust may corrode, Senators, the centre of your power, nay, Messrs. managers, time even shall devour the people whose presence, beating against the door of their Senate, you so much love to taunt and menace, but as to the word which I have spoken heaven and earth may pass away, but no jot or title of it will fail.

At this point Mr. Evarts yielded to a motion to adjourn, and the court, at 4, adjourned until 12 o'clock to-morrow.

PROCEEDINGS OF WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29.

The court was opened in due form. Despite the unfavorable weather, the desire to hear Mr. Evarts had filled the galleries at an earlier hour than usual

Mr. Nelson's Challenge.

Mr. SUMNER submitted an order reciting that Mr. Nelson, of the counsel for the President, having used disorderly words directed to one of the managers, namely:-" So far as any questions that the gentleman desires to make of a personal character with me is concerned, this is not the place to make them. Let him make it elsewhere, if he desires to do it ;" and that language being discreditable to these proceedings, and apparently intended to provoke a duel, therefore that gentleman justly deserves the disapprobation of the Senate.

Mr. NELSON-Mr. Chief Justice and Senators-Mr. SUMNER-I must object unless it is in direct explanation.

Mr. NELSON-All I derire to say this morningMr. SHERMAN-I object to the consideration of the order.

Mr. NELSON-All that I desire to do is to read the letters as I suggested to the Senate ou yesterday. The Chief Justice-The order offered by the Senator from Massachusetts is not before the Senate if objected to.

Mr. BUTLER-I trust, so far as I am concerned, that on anything that arose yesterday—any language toward me-no further action will be taken. As to the reading of the letters, I object to them until they can be proved.

Mr. JOHNSON-I move to lay the resolution offered by the Senator from Massachusetts on the table. The Chief Justice-It is not before the Senate. Mr. NELSON again endeavored to get the attention of the Senate.

Mr. SUMNER-I must object to any person proceeding who has used the language in this Chamber used by that gentleman.

The Chief Justice-The Chief Justice thinks the Senate can undoubtedly give leave to the counsel to proceed if they see fit. If any objection is made, the question must be submitted to the Senate.

Mr. TRUMBULL--After what has occurred, and the statement having been received from them, I think it is proper that the counsel should also have permission to make a statement in explanation, and I move that he have leave.

Mr. SUMNER-I wish to understand the motion made by the Senator from Illinois. Is it that the counsel have leave to explain his language of yesterday?

Mr. JOHNSON-Debate is not in order.
The Chief Justice-No debate is in order.

Mr. TRUMBULL-My motion is, that he have leave to make his explanation. Inasmuch as one of the managers has made an explanation, I think it due to the counsel.

The motion was decided in the affirmative without a division.

Apology.

Mr. NELSON-Mr. Chief Justice and Senators, I hope you will allow me before I make an explanation to say a single word in answer to the resolution of the Senator. My remarks were made in the heat of what I esteemed to be very great provocation. I intended no offense to the Senate in what I said, and if anything is to be done with the resolution, I trust the Senate will permit me to defend myself against the imputation. As the honorable managers desire that this thing should end here, however, I meet it. in the same way. So far as I am concerned I have nothing more to say of a personal nature. I will read the letters as part of my explanation.

Senator HOWE and others objected.

The Disputed Letters.

The Chief Justice-The Chief Justice is of the impres sion that the leave does not extend to the reading of the letters. If any Senator makes the motion it can be done. Senator DAVIS-I rise to a point of order. After the Senate has permitted one of the counsel to make an explanation, I make the question whether a manager has any right to interpose an objection? I think a Senator may have such right, but I deny that the manager has any such right.

The Chief Justice-The Chief Justice understood the motion of the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Trumbull, to be confined to an explanation of the personal matter which arose yesterday, and as it did not extend to the reading of the letters, it is a question to be submitted to the Senate; leave can be given if the Senate sees fit.

Senator HOWARD-I beg leave respectfully to object to the reading of the letters proposed to be read by the counsel.

The Chief Justice-No debate is in order.

Senator HOWARD-I raise an objection to the letters being read until after they have been submitted to the manage rs for examination.

Senator HENDRICKS-I move that the counsel be allowed to read so much of the letters as will show what date they bear.

Senator TIPTON-I call for the regular order of of the morning, the defense of the President.

The Chief Justice-The regular order is the motion of the the Senator from Indiana, Mr Hendricks.

Senator HOWE called for a restatement of the motion. Senator HENDRICKS-The motion I made is, that the attorneys for the President be allowed to read so much of the letter as will show its date and the place at which it was written.

The motion was agreed to.

Mr. NELSON-The first letter to which I alluded is the letter bearing date March 9th, 1868, addressed by Feaj. F. Butler to Col. J. W. Shaffer, Washington, D. C.

Senator JOHNSON-Is that the original letter, or a copy? Mr. NELSON-I understand it to be an original letter. My understanding is tha these are the genuine signatures of Benj. F. Butler, Mr. Logan and Mr. Garfield. I am not acquainted with the handwriting and only speak from information. The Senate will allow me to read it. It is a very short one. I do not meanSenators HOWARD and HOWE ok ected.

The Chiet Justice-The counsel cannot read it under the order made.

Mr. NELSON-The fact that I want to call attention to, is that this letter on the caption bears date on the 9th of March, 1868. It is signed by Benj. F. Butler. Below the signature, 46 I concur in the opinion above expressed by words." and I signed John. A. Garfield. Mr. Butler," signed John A. Logan. Below that are the There is no other date of that title except the 9th of March, 1868. Senator JOHNSON-Is the handwriting of the date the same as the signature?

Mr. NELSON-The handwriting and the date are in pre

cisely the same handwriting as the address. The body of the letter above the signature, as I take it, is in a different handwriting. On the 16th of March, 1868, Mr. Chauncey F. Black addressed a letter to the President stating that he inclosed the copy of the letter which I just referred to, and in order that the Senate may understand it, you will observe that the copy is, as I believe, identical with the original letter which I have produced here.

Senator HOWE objected to any argument, and the Chief Justice cautioned the counsel.

Mr. NELSON-If your Honor please, I cannot explain the matter without explaining this fact. I am not trying to make any_argument.

Senator HENDRICKS-My motion was that the counsel should be permitted to read so much as would show the date, not to go further, except so far as may be in direct explanation to the argument of Manager Butler.

Mr. NELSON-I cannot explain about the date of this copy, unless I tell you the difference about those papers which I have read. It is impossible for me to explain the date, All that I can say is that this copy bears the same date as the original, and bears the additional signatures of Messrs. Koontz, Stevens, Moorhead, Blaine and Bingham, and that there is no other date to this letter except the caption of the letter, and you will see that the copy is precisely like the original down to the words, "And I, John A. Garfield," and then come the words, "I concur,' signed by Messrs. Koontz, Stevens, Moorhead, Blaine and Bingham, and on that paper there is no date.

Senator TIPTON-I move that the gentleman be permitted to proceed for one hour.

The Chief Justice-The counsel for the President (Mr. Evarts) will proceed.

Mr. Butler, walking over to the desk of the President's counsel, extended his hand for the letters and Mr. Nelson. after saying something in an inaudible tone, handed them to him, but Mr. Butler thereon turned away seemingly irritated by the accompanying remark.

Senator CAMERON offered the following:

Ordered, That the Senate, sitting as a court of impeachment, shall hereafter hold night sessions, commencing at eight o'clock P. M. to-day, and continuing until eleven o'clock, until the arguments of the counsel for the President and the managers on the part of the House of Representatives shall be concluded.

Senator JOHNSON objected, and the order went over. Mr. BUTLER-Mr. President, shall these orders which have been read be placed on the record.

The Chief Justice The Chief Justice is unable to answer that question. He takes it for granted that no arrangement can be made without the consent of the Senate.

Mr. NELSON-All that i desire to do was this:-I told the honorable manager he could have them, provided he would return the original to me. I am perfectly willing that he should take them with that understanding.

The counsel then sent the letters to Mr. Butler by a page. Mr. BUTLER-(Drawing back indignantly), No, sir. Mr. NELSON-I will deposit them with the Secretary, sir, for the present.

Mr. BUTLER-Let the originals go on file.

Mr. Evarts Resumes his Argument.

Mr. EVARTS then took the floor in continuation of his argument. He said:-Mr. Chief Justice and Senatore, if, indeed, we have arrived at a settlement or conclusion that this is a court; that it is governed by the law; that it is to confine its attention to facts applicable to the law, and regarded solely as supposed facts, to be embraced within the testimony of witnesses or documents produced in court. we have made some progress in separating, at least from your further consideration, much that has been pressed upon your attention heretofore. If the idea of power and will is driven from this assembly; if the President is here no longer exposed to attacks on the same principle that men claim to huat the lion and harpoon the whale, then, indeed, much that has been said by the honorable managers, and much that has been urged upon your attention from so many quarters, falls harmless in your midst. It cannot be said in this Senate, "fertur rumeris legis solutis," that it is caused by numbers and unrestrained by law.

On the contrary, right here is life and power, and as it is a servant in this investigation, you are here. It follows from this, that the President is to be tried on charges which are. produced here, and not on common fame. Least of all, is he to be tried, in your judgment, as he has been arraigned, hour after hour in argument, upon charges which the impeaching authority, the House of Representatives, deliberately throw out as unworthy of impeachment, and unsuitable for trial. We at least, when we have an indictment brought into court, and another indictment ignored and thrown out, are to be tried on the former, and not on the latter. And if on the 9th of December last, the House of Representatives, with which by the Constitution rests the sole impeaching power under this government, by a vote of 107 to 57, threw out all the pics which make up the inflammatory addresses of the managers, it is enough for me to say that for reasons satisfactory to that authority, the House of Representatives, those charges were thrown out, sp. too, if this be a trial on a public prosecution, and with the ends of public justice alone in view, the ordinary rules for the resisting of prosecuting authorities apply here; and I do not hesitate to say that this trial to be in in our annals the most conspicuous in our history; to be scrutinized by more professional eyes; by the attention of more scholars at home and abroad; to be preserved in more libraries; to be judged of as a national trial, a national scale, and a national criterion forever--presents the

unexampled spectacle of a prosecution which overreaches judgment from the very beginning, and invades, impugus and oppresses, at every stage, the victim which it pursues. Now, the duty of constraint upon a prosecuting authority, under a government of law pursuing only public justice, is scarcely less strict and severe than that which rests upon the judge himself.

To select evidence that is not pertinent, to exclude evi dence knowing that it bears upon the inquiry, to restrict evidence knowing that the field is thus closed against the true point of justice, is no part of a prosecuting an thority's duty or power. Whatever may be permitted in the contest of the forum and the zeal of contending lawyers for contending clients, there is no such authority, no such duty, no such permission for a public prosecutor, much less when the proofs have been thus kept narrowed. When the charges are thus precise and technical, is it permissable for a prosecuting authority to enlarge the area of declamation and invective. Much less is it suitable for a public prosecutor to inspire in the minds of the court prejudice and extravagant jurisdiction.

Now it has usually been supposed, that on an actual trial, involving serious consequences, forensic discussion was the true method of dealing with the subject; and we lawyers appearing for the President, being, as Mr. Ma nager Butler has been polite enough to say, "attorneys whose practice in the law had sharpened but not enlarged their intellect," have confined ourselves to this method of forensic discussion. But we have learned here that there is another method of forensic controversy, which may be called the method of concussion. Now I understand the method of concussion to be to make a demonstration in the vicinity of the object of attack, whereas the method of discussion is to penetrate the position, and, if successful, capture it. The Chinese method of warfare is the method of concussion, and consists of a great bray ing of trumpets. sounding of gongs, and shouts and shrieks in the neighborhood of the opposing forces. When all this rolls away, and the air is freer, the effect is to be watched for. But it has been reserved to us in our modern warfare as illustrated here-in the Rebellion-to present a more singular and not able instance of the method of war. fare by concussion than ever has been known before. A fort impregnable by the methods of discussion, "that is, penetrating and capturing it," has been, on a large scale, attempted to be captured by the method of concussion, and some hundreds of tons of gunpowder placed in a vessel near the walls of the fort, has been made the means to the concussion of this vast experiment.

Unsatisfied with that trial and its result, the honorable manager who opened this case seems to have repeated the experiment in the vicinity of the Senate. (Laughter). While the air was filled with epithets, the dome shook with invective. Wretchedness, misery, suffering and blood were made the means of this explosive mixture, and here we are surviving the concussion, and, after all, reduced to the humble and homely method of discussion which be longs to "attorneys whose intellects have been sharpened, not enlarged by the practice of law." (General and con tinuous laughter.). In approaching the consideration of what constitutes impeachable offenses within the true method and duty of this solemn and unusual procedure, and within the Constitution, we see that the effort of the managers was to make this an inquest of office, instead of a trial of personal and constitutional guilt. If it is an inquest of office, "Crowner's quest law" will do throughout for us, instead of the more solemn precedents and more diguified authorities and duties which belong to solemn trials. Mr. Manager Butler has given us a very thorough and well-considered suggestion of what constitutes an impeachable offense. Let me ask your at tention to it. We define, therefore, an impeachable high crime or misdemeanor to be one, in its nature or conse quences,subversive of some fundamental or essential prin ciple of government, or highly prejudicial to the public interest, and they may consist of a violation of the Constitution, of law, of an official oath, or of duty, by an act committed or omitted. or without violating a positive law, by the abuse of discretionary powers, from improper motives, or for any improper purpose. Now, what large elements are included in that section?

The act must be subversive of some fundamental or es sential principle of government, or highly prejudicial to the public interest, and must proceed from improper mo tives, or for an improper purpose. Now that was intended in the generality of its terms, to avoid the necessity of ac tual and positive crime. But it has given us in one regard everything that was needed to show what an impeachable offense must be. Now the fallacy of these general qualify. ing terms is in making them the substance of the crime, instead of the condition of the peccadility. You must have the crime defined under the law and Constitution, and even then it is not impeachable, unless you affect it with some of those public, general and important qualities which are indicated in this definition by the learned and honorable manager. Now let us look at a statement made by a committee of managers of the House of Representa tives in the case of the impeachment of Judge Peck.

Mr. Evarts read an extract from the remarks of Mr. Buchanan, chairman of the managers in the case of Judge Peck, to the effect that the managers were bound to prove that the respondent had violated the Constitution or some known law of the land, and had committed misbehavior in office. He also read from Burke's invective in the case of Warren Hastings, to show that the charges against Hast ings were not for errors or mistakes, such as wise and good men might fall into, and which might produce very pernicious effects without being, in fact, great offenses, and that a large allowance ought to be made for human in