Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 2.djvu/473

Rh and have not made myself as familiar with their details as others; but mainly because I consider those precedents by no means conclusive, when we have before us a document which gives us all the law we need; and that is the Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution provides in the first place that the Senate, as well as the House of Representatives, shall have the discretionary power to expel a member by a two-thirds vote. That power is not limited to this or that offense; but it is vested in the discretion of each house of Congress, and it has already been demonstrated with irrefutable arguments that although an act of bribery by which a person lifted himself into one of these seats was indeed antecedent to his becoming a Senator, nevertheless that act of bribery, being the very stepping-stone upon which he rose into his legislative office, is so intimately connected with his becoming and being a Senator that the two things cannot be separated; that therefore this power to expel a member must necessarily apply. This is so clear, so self-evident, that not a word more is required.

But the Constitution of the United States provides also that “each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members”; and in discussing that clause I shall give particular attention to the remarks submitted to us to-day by the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. ].

It strikes me that in this discussion one thing, with regard to the meaning of the Constitutional clause just quoted, has been overlooked; and that is the very important fact that this clause of the Constitution applies to both houses of Congress exactly alike; that its meaning for both houses of Congress must be exactly the same; for it reads that “each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members.” No difference is made between the two.