Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/257

 CH. X.] guilt of a public officer cannot be established to the satisfaction of two thirds of a body of high talents and acquirements, which sympathizes with the people, and represents the states, after a full investigation of the facts, it must be, that the evidence is too infirm, and too loose to justify a conviction. Under such circumstances, it would be far more consonant to the notions of justice in a republic, that a guilty person should escape, than that an innocent person should become the victim of injustice from popular odium, or party combinations.

§ 778. At the distance of forty years, we may look back upon this reasoning with entire satisfaction. The senate has been found a safe and effective depositary of the trial of impeachments. During that period but four cases have occurred, requiring this high remedy. In three there have been acquittals; and in one a conviction. Whatever may have been the opinions of zealous partisans at the times of their occurrence, the sober judgment of the nation sanctioned these results, at least, on the side of the acquittals, as soon as they became matters of history, removed from the immediate influences of the prosecutions. The unanimity of the awards of public opinion, in its final action on these controversies, has been as great, and as satisfactory, as can be attributed to any, which involve real doubt, or enlist warm prejudices and predilections on either side. No reproach has ever reached the senate for its unfaithful discharge of these high functions; and the voice of a 32