Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/239

 CH. X.] trial. Are all the confidence, all the firmness, and all the impartiality of that court, supposed to be concentred in the chief justice, and to reside in his breast only? If that court could not be relied on for the trial of impeachments, much less would it seem worthy of reliance for the determination of any question between the United States and a particular state; much less to decide upon the life and death of a person, whose crimes might subject him to impeachment, but whose influence might avert a conviction. Yet the courts of the United States, are by the constitution regarded, as the proper tribunals, where a party, convicted upon an impeachment, may receive that condign punishment, which the nature of his crimes may require; for it must not be forgotten, that a person, convicted upon an impeachment, will nevertheless be liable to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment according to law, &c. The question, then, might be retorted; can it be supposed, that the senate, a part of whom must have been either particeps criminis with the person impeached, by advising the measure, for which he is to be tried, or must have joined the opposition to that measure, when proposed and debated in the senate, would be a more independent, or a more unprejudiced tribunal, than a court, composed of judges, holding their offices during good behaviour; and w ho could neither be presumed to have participated in the crime, nor to have prejudged the criminal?

§ 759. This reasoning also has much force in it; but in candour also it must be admitted to be not wholly unexceptionable. That part, which is addressed to the circumstance of the chief justice's presiding at the trial of the president of the United States, was (as