may compel them to be obedient in all greater matters. In authority of rule Congress is made master, but in means of rule it is made mere magistrate. It commands the absolute lordship, but it can discipline for disobedience only slow and formal judicial process.
Upon Machiavelli’s declaration that “nothing is more important to the stability of the state than that facility should be given by its constitution for the accusation of those who are supposed to have committed any public wrong,” a writer in the “Westminster Review” makes this thoughtful comment: “The benefit of such a provision is twofold. First, the salutary fear of the probable coming of a day of account will restrain the evil pratices of some bad men and self-seekers; secondly, the legal outlet of accusation gives vent to peccant humors in the body politic, which, if checked and driven inward, would work to the utter ruin of the constitution; . . . the distinction is lost between accusation and calumny."[1] And of course it was these benefits which our federal Constitution was meant to secure by means of its machinery of impeachment. No servant of the state, not even the President himself, was to be beyond the reach of accusation by the House of Representatives and of trial by the Senate. But the processes
- ↑ Westminister Review, vol. lxvi., p. 193.
