It was due to both these considerations that
the impeaching power should be lodged in the hands of those who from
the mode of their election and the tenure of their offices would most
accurately express the popular will and at the same time be most
directly and speedily amenable to the people. The theory of these wise
and benignant intentions is in the present case effectually defeated by
the proceedings of the Senate. The members of that body represent not
the people, but the States; and though they are undoubtedly responsible
to the States, yet from their extended term of service the effect of
that responsibility during the whole period of that term must very much
depend upon their own impressions of its obligatory force. When a body
thus constituted expresses beforehand its opinion in a particular case,
and thus indirectly invites a prosecution, it not only assumes a power
intended for wise reasons to be confined to others, but it shields the
latter from that exclusive and personal responsibility under which it
was intended to be exercised, and reverses the whole scheme of this
part of the Constitution.
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