Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/228

 220 and useful. Now, some of these functions constitute a sound reason for the investment of the power in this branch. The offences, which the power of impeachment is designed principally to reach, are those of a political, or of a judicial character. They are not those, which lie within the scope of the ordinary municipal jurisprudence of a country. They are founded on different principles; are governed by different maxims; are directed to different objects; and require different remedies from those, which ordinarily apply to crimes. So far as they are of a judicial character, it is obviously more safe to the public to confide them to the senate, than to a mere court of law. The senate may be presumed always to contain a number of distinguished lawyers, and probably some persons, who have held judicial stations. At the same time they will not have any undue and immediate sympathy with the accused from that common professional, or corporation spirit, which is apt to pervade those, who are engaged in similar pursuits and duties.

§ 748. In regard to political offences, the selection of the senators has some positive advantages. In the first place, they may be fairly presumed to have a more enlarged knowledge, than persons in other situations, of political functions, and their difficulties, and embarrassments; of the nature of diplomatic rights and duties; of the extent, limits, and variety of executive powers and operations; and of the sources of involuntary error, and undesigned excess, as contradistinguished from those of meditated and violent disregard of duty and right. On the one hand, this very experience and knowledge will bring them to the trial with a spirit of candour and intelligence, and an ability to comprehend,