Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/263

244 was still intact, for it was not avowedly applied to the case. The theory of Judge Chase's counsel—that an impeachable offence must be also indictable, or even a violation of some known statute of the United States—was overthrown neither by the argument nor by the judgment. So far as Constitutional law was concerned, President Jefferson himself might still be impeached, according to the dictum of Madison, for the arbitrary removal of a useful tide-waiter, and Chief-Justice Marshall might be driven from the bench, as Giles wished, for declaring the Constitution to be above the authority of a statute; but although the acquittal of Chase decided no point of law except his innocence of high crimes and misdemeanors, as charged in the indictment, it proved impeachment to be "an impracticable thing" for partisan purposes, and it decided the permanence of those lines of Constitutional development which were a reflection of the common law. Henceforward the legal profession had its own way in expounding the principles and expanding the powers of the central government through the Judiciary.