Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/273

 CH. X.] And however much it may fall in with the political theories of certain statesmen and jurists, to deny the existence of a common law belonging to, and applicable to the nation in ordinary cases, no one has as yet been bold enough to assert, that the power of impeachment is limited to offences positively defined in the statute book of the Union, as impeachable high crimes and misdemeanours.

§ 796. The doctrine, indeed, would be truly alarming, that the common law did not regulate, interpret, and control the powers and duties of the court of impeachment. What, otherwise, would become of the rules of evidence, the legal notions of crimes, and the application of principles of public or municipal jurisprudence to the charges against the accused? It would be a most extraordinary anomaly, that while every citizen of every state, originally composing the Union, would be entitled to the common law, as his birth-right, and at once his protector and guide; as a citizen of the Union, or an officer of the Union, he would be subjected to no law, to no principles, to no rules of evidence. It is the boast of English jurisprudence, and without it the power of impeachment would be an intolerable grievance, that in trials by impeachment the law differs not in essentials from criminal prosecutions before inferior courts. The same rules of evidence, the same legal notions of crimes and punishments prevail. For impeachments are not framed to alter the law; but to carry it into more effectual execution, where it might be obstructed by the influence of too powerful delinquents, or not easily discerned in the ordinary course of jurisdiction, by reason of the peculiar quality of the alleged crimes. Those, who 34