A majority of the House of Representatives must think the
officer guilty before he can be charged. Two-thirds of the Senate must
pronounce him guilty or he is deemed to be innocent. Forty-six Senators
appear by the Journal to have been present when the vote on the
resolution was taken. If after all the solemnities of an impeachment
thirty of those Senators had voted that the President was guilty, yet
would he have been acquitted; but by the mode of proceeding adopted in
the present case a lasting record of conviction has been entered up by
the votes of twenty-six Senators without an impeachment or trial, whilst
the Constitution expressly declares that to the entry of such a judgment
an accusation by the House of Representatives, a trial by the Senate,
and a concurrence of two-thirds in the vote of guilty shall be
indispensable prerequisites.
Whether or not an impeachment was to be expected from the House of
Representatives was a point on which the Senate had no constitutional
right to speculate, and in respect to which, even had it possessed the
spirit of prophecy, its anticipations would have furnished no just
ground for this procedure.
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