Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/252

 244 would be very serious, not only from the considerations already urged, but from the difficulty of impaneling a suitable jury for such purposes. From what state or states is such a jury to be drawn? How is it to be selected, or composed? What are to be the qualifications of the jurors? Would it be safe to entrust the political interests of a whole people to a common panel? Would any jury in times of party excitement by found sufficiently firm to give a true verdict, unaffected by the popularity or odium of the measure, when the nation was the accuser? These questions are more easily put, than they can be satisfactorily answered. And, indeed, the very circumstance, that the example of Virginia has found little favour in other states, furnishes decisive proof, that it is not deemed better than others, to which the national constitution bears the closest analogy.

§ 772 When the subject was before the state conventions, although here and there an objection was started against the plan, three states only formally proposed any amendment. Virginia and North-Carolina recommended, "that some tribunal, other than the senate, be provided for trying impeachments of senators," leaving the provision in all other respects, as it stood. New-York alone recommended an amendment, that the senate, the judges of the Supreme Court, and the first or senior judge of the highest state court of general or ordinary common law jurisdiction in each state should constitute a court for the trial of impeachments. This recommendation does not change the posture of a single objection. It received no support elsewhere; and the subject has since silently slept without any effort to revive it.