Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/252

1805. resource of the profession was used with energy and skill.

The managers then put forward their best pleaders; for they had need of all their strength. Nicholson began by disavowing the idea that impeachment was a mere inquest of office; this impeachment was, he said, a criminal prosecution intended not merely to remove, but to punish, the offender. On the other hand, he maintained that since judges held their commissions during good behavior, and could be removed only by impeachment, the Constitution must have intended that any act of misbehavior should be considered a misdemeanor. He showed the absurdities which would rise from construing the Constitution in a legal sense. His argument, though vigorous and earnest, and offering the advantages of a plausible compromise between two extreme and impracticable doctrines, yet evidently strained the language of the Constitution and disregarded law. As Nicholson himself said, he discarded legal usage: "In my judgment the Constitution of the United States ought to be expounded upon its own principles, and foreign aid ought never to be called in.  Our Constitution was fashioned after none other in the known world; and if we understand the language in which it is written, we require no assistance in giving it a true exposition." He wanted a construction "purely and entirely American." In the mouth of a strict constructionist this substitution of the will of Congress for the settled rules of law had as strange a sound as Luther Martin