Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/242

 234 crimes of a strictly legal character fall within the scope of the power, (for, as we shall presently see, treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanours are expressly within it;) but that it has a more enlarged operation, and reaches, what are aptly termed, political offences, growing out of personal misconduct, or gross neglect, or usurpation, or habitual disregard of the public interests, in the discharge of the duties of political office. These are so various in their character, and so indefinable in their actual involutions, that it is almost impossible to provide systematically for them by positive law. They must be examined upon very broad and comprehensive principles of public policy and duty. They must be judged of by the habits, and rules, and principles of diplomacy, of departmental operations and arrangements, of parliamentary practice, of executive customs and negotiations, of foreign, as well as of domestic political movements; and in short, by a great variety of circumstances, as well those, which aggravate, as those, which extenuate, or justify the offensive acts, which do not properly belong to the judicial character in the ordinary administration of justice, and are far removed from the reach of municipal jurisprudence. They are duties, which are easily understood by statesmen, and are rarely known to judges. A tribunal, composed of the former, would therefore be far more competent, in point of intelligence and ability, than the latter, for the discharge of the functions, all other circumstances being equal. And surely, in such grave affairs, the competency of the tribunal to discharge the duties in the best manner is an indispensable qualification.

§ 763. In the next place, it is obvious, that the strictness of the forms of proceeding in cases of