Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/269

 CH. X.] incline the other way. "The convention might with propriety," it is said, have mediated the punishment of the executive for a deviation from the instructions of the senate, or a want of integrity in the conduct of the negotiations committed to him. They might also have had in view the punishment of a few leading individuals in the senate, who should have prostituted their influence in that body, as the mercenary instruments of foreign corruption. But they could not with more, or with equal propriety, have contemplated the impeachment and punishment of two-thirds of the senate, consenting to an improper treaty, than of a majority of that, or of the other branch of the legislature, consenting to a pernicious or unconstitutional law; a principle, which I believe has never been admitted into any government, &c. And yet, what reason is there, that a majority of the house of representatives, sacrificing the interests of the society by an unjust and tyrannical act of legislation, should escape with impunity, more than two-thirds of the senate sacrificing the same interests in an injurious treaty with a foreign power? The truth is, that in all such cases, it is essential to the freedom, and to the necessary independence of the deliberations of the body, that the members of it should be exempt from punishment for acts done in a collective capacity; and the security to the society must depend on the care, which is taken, to confide the trust to proper hands; to make it their interest to execute it with fidelity; and to make it as difficult, as possible, for them to combine in any interest, opposite to that of the public good. And it is certain, that in some of the state conventions the members of congress were admitted by the friends of