people against one form of tyrannical abuse of power; and they intended to secure them effectually against all injury from abuses of another sort, by holding the President responsible for his “misdemeanors,” — using the broadest term. They guarded carefully against all danger of popular excesses, and any injustice to the accused, by withholding the general power of punishment. This term “misdemeanor,” therefore, should be liberally construed, for the same reason that treason should not be extended by construction. It is not better for the state that traitors should remain in office than that innocent men should be expelled. Besides, it is true in relation to this procedure, that the higher the post the higher the crime.
What, then, is the meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” for which a President may be removed? Neither the Constitution nor the statutes have determined. It follows, therefore, that the House must judge for what offences it will present articles, and the Senate decide for what it will convict. And from the very nature of the wrongs for which impeachment is the sole adequate remedy, as well as from the fact that the office of President and all its duties and relations are new, it is essential that they should be undefined; otherwise there could be no security for the state. But it does not by any means follow that therefore either the House or the Senate can act arbitrarily, or that there are not rules for the guidance of their conduct. The terms “high crimes and misdemeanors,” like many other terms and phrases used in the Constitution, as, for instance, “pardon,” “habeas corpus,” “ex post facto,” and the term “impeachment” itself, had a settled meaning at the time of the establishment of the Constitution. There was no need of definition, for it was left to the House as exhibitors, and the Chief Justice and the Senate as judges of the articles, to apply well-understood terms, mutatis mutandis , to new circumstances, as the exigencies of state, and the ends for which the Constitution was established, should require. The subject-matter was new; the President was a new officer of state; his duties, his relations to the various branches of government and to the people, his powers, his oath, functions, duties, responsibilities, were all new. In some respects, old customs and laws were a guide. In others, there was neither precedent nor analogy. But the common-law principle was to be applied to the new matters according to their exigency, as the common law of contracts and of carriers is applied to carriage by steamboats and railroads, to corporations and expresses, which have come into existence centuries since the law was established.
Impeachment, “the presentment of the most solemn grand inquest of the whole kingdom” had been in use from the earliest days of the English Constitution and government. The terms “high crimes and misdemeanors,” in their natural sense, embrace a very large field of actions. They are broad enough to cover all criminal misconduct of the President, — all acts of commission or omission forbidden by the Constitution and the laws. To the word “misdemeanor,” indeed, is naturally attached a yet broader signification, which would embrace personal character and behavior as well as the proprieties of official conduct. Nor was, nor is, there any just reason why it should be restricted in this direction; for, in establishing a permanent national government, to insure purity and dignity, to secure the confidence of its own people and command the respect of foreign powers, it is not unfit that civil officers, and most especially the highest of all, the head of the people, should be answerable for personal demeanor.
The term “misdemeanor” was likewise used to designate all legal offences lower than felonies, — all the minor transgressions, all public wrongs, not felonious in character. The common law punished whatever acts were productive of disturbance to the public peace, or tended to incite to the commission of crime, or to injure the health
