Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/275

 CH. X.], as applicable to the powers, rights, and privileges of the people, or the obligations, and duties, and powers of the departments of the national government. If the common law has no existence, as to the Union, as a rule or guide, the whole proceedings are completely at the arbitrary pleasure of the government, and its functionaries in all its departments.

§ 797. Congress have unhesitatingly adopted the conclusion, that no previous statute is necessary to authorize an impeachment for any official misconduct; and the rules of proceeding, and the rules of evidence, as well as the principles of decision, have been uniformly regulated by the known doctrines of the common law and parliamentary usage. In the few cases of impeachment, which have hitherto been tried, no one of the charges has rested upon any statutable misdemeanours. It seems, then, to be the settled doctrine of the high court of impeachment, that though the common law cannot be a foundation of a jurisdiction not given by the constitution, or laws, that jurisdiction, when given, attaches, and is to be exercised according to the rules of the common law; and that, what are, and what are not high crimes and misdemeanours, is to be ascertained by a recurrence to that great basis of American jurisprudence. The reasoning, by which the