As the record now stands, whilst
the resolution plainly charges upon the President at least one act of
usurpation in "the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public
revenue," and is so framed that those Senators who believed that one
such act, and only one, had been committed could assent to it, its
language is yet broad enough to include several such acts, and so it
may have been regarded by some of those who voted for it. But though
the accusation is thus comprehensive in the censures it implies, there
is no such certainty of time, place, or circumstance as to exhibit the
particular conclusion of fact or law which induced any one Senator to
vote for it; and it may well have happened that whilst one Senator
believed that some particular act embraced in the resolution was an
arbitrary and unconstitutional assumption of power, others of the
majority may have deemed that very act both constitutional and
expedient, or, if not expedient, yet still within the pale of the
Constitution; and thus a majority of the Senators may have been enabled
to concur in a vague and undefined accusation that the President, in
the course of "the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public
revenue," had violated the Constitution and laws, whilst if a separate
vote had been taken in respect to each particular act included within
the general terms the accusers of the President might on any such vote
have been found in the minority.
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