globe. Bayard Taylor no apologist for slavery-speaks but the testimony of history when he writes from Nubia, in Upper Egypt, that—

"The only negro features represented in Egyptian sculpture are those of slaves and captives taken in Ethiopian wars of the Pharaohs; and the temples and pyramids throughout Nubia, as far as Daref and Abyssinia, all bear the hieroglyphy of monarchs; and there is no evidence in all the valley of the Nile, that the negro race ever attained a higher degree of civilization than is at present exhibited in Congo and Ashantee.'

Sir, no wise people will ever in any manner encourage the attempt to elevate such a race to social or political equality. And if the question of law were here doubtful, I might well demand upon these high motives of public policy, that the doubt should be resolved against the race. Above all I would urge these great considerations now and in future, against this same spurious and mongrel issue, in whose behalf a relaxation of the policy is demanded. Look to Spanish America. Look at Mexico. The blood of the conquerors was lost in the veins of inferior and outcast races, and Mexico has no "people" to-day. With no tyrant strong enough to bind her down, and no yeomanry fit for self-government, she is the sport of faction, and the prey of anarchy and bloodshed; and today the spirit of the murdered Guatemozin, wandering three centuries through the halls of the Montezumas, gluts itself with revenge.

Sir, it is this same spurious and mongrel race who constitute your "free negroes," North and South. They will not be slaves, and they are not fit for freemen. And when this Government shall be broken up, and the fanaticism of the age shall have culminated in the North in Red Republicanism and negro equality, and the South shall have driven out her free negroes upon you, and you shall have stolen away her slaves, then your troubles with this race, which already has plagued America for a century, will but have begun. They are your petty thieves now; they rob your larders and your sheep-cotes; they do fill up your penitentiaries, and they would fill up your hospitals and your alms-houses, if you would let them. Then they will be your highwaymen ; your banditti; they will make up your mobs. With just enough of intelligence, derived from a white ancestry, to know, and enough of brutishness, inherited from the old African stock, to avenge, in any form, the ignominy and degradation of four thousand years; with fetish ideas of religion and fanatic notions of politics, they are the sans culotte, who, led on by the worst of white men, will make your revolutions and overturn your governments. Sir, such things have already occurred in history. They are not the baseless fabrics of a vision. No wonder the States of the Northwest have begun to erect constitutional barriers stronger than ever against a negro population. In all this there is eminent wisdom and a statesmanlike foresight.

But I have no time to pursue this subject farther. I thank the House now for the courtesy and attention with which they have heard me throughout, and regret only that I have been obliged to appear, for the first time in this Hall, in the character of a contestant.

REMARKS ON IMPEACHMENTS,

In the House of Representatives, December 14, 1858.*

MR. SPEAKER:—I do not rise to speak upon the facts of this case, nor, indeed, to discuss any thing; but rather to state briefly the conclusions at which I have arrived, and the reasons which control my vote.

I begin just where the gentleman from New York (Mr. C. B. COCHRANE) began. Before inquiry into the facts in any case, it is essential first to comprehend clearly the law or the principles to which they are to be applied. By what law, then, are we governed? Upon what principle ought this House to proceed in ordering an impeachment? In what scale shall we weigh, by what rule shall we measure, the facts in this case? What, sir, is an impeachment under the Constitution of the United States, and by the House of Representatives? Sir, this case has been heard and argued all along as though it were a trial, and a trial by criminal law, under a penal statute, and it has just been so argued by the gentleman from New York. Certainly the mistake is most natural; and the course pursued by the committee-I speak it most deferentially— a course sustained by but one precedent, and that not in the United States-has, in my judgment, caused all this embarrassment. They have heard the whole case; have examined witnesses in full and at length on behalf of the accused, and have reported not only the whole testimony before them, but elaborate arguments in defence of the conclusions at which they have severally arrived. But all this does not change the nature of an impeachment; nor the duty of the House.

And here, șir, at the very threshold, it becomes us to lay aside old habits and associations. Whoever hears of an impeachment, thinks involuntarily of great orators and great criminals; of Cicero and Verres, of Burke and Hastings; splendid visions rise up before him. Every lawyer, too, turns at once to Hale's Pleas of the Crown, or Chitty's Criminal Law, for the rule and practice governing impeachments. Now, sir, against all this, I maintain that impeachment with us is not a criminal

These remarks were made on the resolution to impeach Judge WATROUS, of Texas.

proceeding at all. We are not a grand inquest; we are not a grand jury ; and all analogies drawn from them, tend only to mislead and confuse. Impeachments in England and the United States are two essentially dif ferent things. They differ in the persons who may be impeached; they differ in the object of the impeachment; they differ in the nature and jurisdiction of the tribunal, and in the punishment that follows upon conviction. In England, the high court of Parliament is strictly a criminal court, and a court of public and general jurisdiction. It is so treated in all the books; and it is as much, and as closely bound by the rules of law and evidence, as is the Court of King's Bench. All persons-Lords and Commons, officers and private persons—may alike be tried by it; they may be tried for any offence, and may be put under arrest pending the trial.

The punishment is the same as upon conviction, in any other court, extending even to the death penalty; and the nature and the purpose of the tribunal is the punishment or suppression of crime.

Not so under our Constitution. The Senate of the United States is not a criminal court established for any such purpose. It has no criminal jurisdiction. It exercises no judicial power other than impeachment; and even here its power is not strictly judicial. None but civil officers are subject to impeachment, and the judgment—not the punishment, for that word is not used-extends no further than removal from office and political disability. The accused is not liable to arrest, and the case may proceed, though he should refuse to appear. There can be no conviction unless two-thirds of the Senate concur; and neither life, liberty, nor estate is affected by it. Though the offender were the President of the United States, a great State criminal, convicted of treason, hatched and consummated here within the very capital; yet could not a hair of his head be touched. You could not even put him under arrest pending the trial, and more than this, neither conviction nor acquittal by the Senate can be plead in bar of an indictment for the same offence, pending in a court of ordinary criminal jurisdiction; nor can the judgment of the Senate be given in evidence on such trial.

These incidents, sir, all indicate unmistakably that impeachment with us is not a criminal proceeding, and that we are not to look for the rules and practice which govern it to the common law of England, nor yet even to the usages of Parliament, but only to the Constitution of the United States and our own practice under it. By that instrument it is limited and defined; and we are as much bound to respect the definitions and limitations as any other part of the Constitution.

What, then, palpably, are the objects of impeachment under our Government? I answer, first, restraint upon public officers; and secondly, the removal of such as shall in any manner misdemean. Except, indeed,

so far as it may be regarded as a restraint upon those who hold office for a fixed term, it is of value only or chiefly to offices held for life. These are the judges of our Federal Courts, and they are answerable before no other tribunal; they are subject to no other check; our Constitution has exacted no other security for their good behavior, and even this is not imperative to its full extent upon the Senate. Political disability does not necessarily follow upon conviction, since the Senate may do no more than remove from office. Impeachment, sir, is no engine of oppression here. There is no danger of its abuse. Indeed, the difficulties which attend upon its successful prosecution render it of little value even as a restraint. Tyranny is always simple in its appliances, and will never resort to such cumbrous machinery as impeachment.

What, I inquire next, are the offences for which impeachment lies under our Constitution? Gentlemen have argued as though some great crime must be charged, in order to justify it. Not so; treason, bribery, and high crimes, are indeed enumerated; but that is not all. Misdemeanors, also, are included. Whoso shall misdemean himself in any civil office, shall be liable to impeachment, and this is especially so in the case of the judges of our Federal Courts. They hold office "during good behavior.” Misdemeanor is misbehavior. It is so in lexicography, and it is so in law. I read from Blackstone:

"In common usage, the word 'crime' is made to denote such offences as are of a deeper and more atrocious dye; while smaller faults and omissions of less consequence, are comprised under the gentler name of misdemeanors only."

What, then, is judicial misbehavior or misdemeanor? That, sir, depends wholly upon the standard which you shall fix for judicial character and conduct. Mine, I confess, is the highest. I would have both as pure as the "fann'd snow, that's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er," and as spotless as the ermine which was once the emblem of judicial purity. The integrity of the judge ought to be above suspicion in his great office. I would have him the sanctissimus judex of the Romans; for to the litigant in his court he stands in the place of God. Save impeachment, he is subject to no responsibility except an enlightened conscience, and a religious sense of duty. Theoretically, indeed, the judiciary is in every country, to a great extent, of necessity an arbitrary power. Even when hedged in by law, there yet remains the vast field of "judicial discretion;" and beyond all that lies the boundless ocean of the "interpretation of Laws"—the great business of the judge. Sir, there are ten thousand ways in which a corrupt, a weak, or a prejudiced judge—a judge hostile or friendly to the litigant, or what is more common, the lawyer, may pervert justice, pollute its pure fountains, and do foul wrong in the cause; and yet none but he

who has suffered know it. These are the false weights which it is so easy, unperceived, to throw into the scales of justice. Add now, to all this, that the judicial power, like the invisible and impalpable air which surrounds, penetrates everywhere and affects every relation of life; that it extends even to life itself, to liberty, to property in all its infinite complications; to marriage, divorce, parentage, master and servant, and finally pursues us even after death in the distribution of estates; nay, that the very monuments of the dead, the dull, cold marble in which they sleep, are the subjects of its destroying or protecting hand.

There is no department of the Government, therefore, which is so liable to abuse as the judiciary; but, to the honor of America and human nature be it said, there is none where so little abuse prevails. In seventy years this is the first example of the impeachment of a judge demanded because of alleged corruption in office for private gain. Arbitrary and dissolute judges have indeed been impeached, though but in two or three instances during that long period; yet none for corruption. But if infrequent, it is nevertheless the most atrocious, and in its consequences to the judiciary and to the public the most dangerous crime which a judge can commit: for "there is no happiness, there is no liberty, there is no enjoyment of life, unless a man can say, when he rises in the morning, I shall be subject to the decision of no unjust judge to-day."

We

What, I inquire next, is the province of the House of Representatives here? The Constitution defines it. You have the sole power of impeachment. What is it to impeach? Certainly not to try; that is the sole right of the Senate. To impeach is simply to accuse. do not try, we have no right to try, the question of the guilt or the innocence of the accused. I have not in this case made up my mind definitely upon that point, because I am not willing to usurp the province nor anticipate the judgment of the Senate.

We are not judges; we are not grand jurors; we do not act under special oath; we are not here exercising judicial power; we are not acting in our representative capacity. Our province is to accuse to prosecute; and when your Committee shall appear at the bar of the Senate, they will impeach or accuse in the name of the House of Representatives. In that high court of impeachment, also, we sit during the trial as accusers. We are bound, therefore, by no mere technical rules of law and evidence. We are under no obligation other than that highest of obligations-a sense of duty alike to the people and the accused. Into our hands the Constitution has committed the guardianship-and in the case of offices held for life, the sole guardianship-of the rights of the many who do not hold office against the few who do. Certainly, sir, no man ought to be lightly accused of even official mis