We have been earnest advocates of Impeachment. It seems to us that
the President has deliberately violated the law, and under the circumstances it is clear
to us that no good intention can be inferred. The precedent of his offense is perilous,
and we think that the necessary facts are established that the President has committed the
offense which the Constitution contemplates in providing for impeachment, and that he
ought therefore to be removed.
But we are not the official
judgesour party is not the judgestill less are the official accusers the
judges. The Constitution provides the judges, and they take an especial oath. But they do
not sit as judges upon the Presidents political career. Their oath expressly forbids
them to do that by binding them to render a judgment according to the evidence offered
upon specific charges. If those charges are loosely drawn, if they are not sound in law,
if they are unsupported by evidence, it is the accusers not the judges who are
responsible. If the accusers have been too eager, if they have taken counsel of passion
instead of reason, it is they, not the judges, who have been in error.
That Andrew Johnson has betrayed the
party that elected him, that he has lamentably perplexed and delayed reconstruction, that
he is virtually in alliance with those who hope to defeat the legitimate consequences of
the war, and is, therefore, an enemy of peace and the Union, we have never doubted, and
have always steadily maintained. But the intelligence of the Republican party, although
acknowledging all this, yet held that impeachment upon the general fact of his delaying
and perplexing reconstruction was inexpedient. The House of Representatives, by an immense
Republican majority, ratified this view. But when the President attempted the removal of
Mr. Stanton it was felt that he had now committed such an act as would justify the
solemnity of Impeachment, and the same House, by a unanimous vote of the party, impeached.
But why did they wait until this
particular action? Because they knew that there was but one constitutional method of
removing the President, and that was by a judicial investigation of specific charges to be
supported by evidence; the Managers, upon the part of the House, being the prosecuting
counsel; the Presidents lawyers, the defense; and the Senate, with the Chief justice
presiding, "sitting" "to try" the impeachment. Is it not the Senate,
as a legislative or political body, that so sits, but the Senate as a court or judicial
body specially sworn to decide upon certain charges according to the evidence not
according to "statesmanship," not according to its conviction of the general
offenses of the President, not according to its view of party exigencies or of political
necessities, but according to the evidence. If, in the judgment of the Senators, the
evidence be insufficient, if the specific charges are not honestly proved, they are bound
by every consideration of justice and honor and the public peace to render a verdict
accordingly. If they should decide that although the evidence, according to which they
were sworn to judge, was insufficient, yet that they would find the President guilty
because he was bad enough to have done what was charged, they would be guilty of the
plainest perjury, and every public trust would be just as much imperiled in their hands as
in those of the President, whom they would convict against their oaths.
The theory that impeachment or conviction
is statesmanship, justice, and peace, assumes that perjury is a virtue. The removal of the
President may, indeed, be justice and peace. A Senator who is sworn to find according to
the evidence, but who disregards the evidence and convicts upon a general dissatisfaction
with the President, renders a false verdict, and removes him by unjust means; and if he
yields to the clamor of his party, and deliberately prostitutes his sincere conviction to
popular dictation, he not only fatally disgraces himself, and demoralizes the public
conscience, but he betrays civilization.
If the Constitution meant that a
two-thirds vote of the Senate should remove the President, it would say so. But when it
provides that he shall be removed only after proper trial and the presentation of evidence
upon distinct charges against which he may defend himself, it forbids his removal in any
other manner whatever. The moment, therefore, that party coercion of the Senate is
attempted, every man who believes that our system is in nothing wiser than in this very
point, will resist the attempt to overthrow it . The process of Impeachment is a foolish
and cumbrous farce if the Senate may remove the President without proved charges; and if
it can not, although party threats and the vilest vituperation may ruin a Senator
politically, and may even kill him by the mental struggle to which they subject him, yet
they can not make the evidence more conclusive, and they can not absolve him from his oath
to decide according to the evidence alone.