The question may be properly asked, if this inquiry is to be conducted as in a court of justice, under all the restrictions and technical rules of judicial proceedings. Clearly not. Under the Constitution, the Senate, in a case like the present, is absolute judge, free to exercise its power according to its own enlightened discretion. It may justly declare a Senator unworthy of a seat in this body on evidence defective in form, or on evidence even which does not constitute positive crime. A Senator may deserve expulsion without deserving death; for in the one case the proceeding is to purge the Senate, while in the other it is punishment of crime. The motives in the two cases are widely different. This identical discretion has been already exercised at this very session, as well as the last, in the expulsion of several Senators. And the two early precedents--the first of William Blount, in 1797, and the second of John Smith, in 1807--both proceeded on the assumption that the Senate was at liberty to exercise a discretion unknown to a judicial tribunal. In the well-considered report of the Committee in the latter case, prepared by John Quincy Adams, at that time Senator, we find the following statement. “In examining the question, whether these forms of judicial proceedings or the rules of judicial evidence ought to be applied to the exercise of that censorial authority which the Senate of the United States possesses over the conduct of its members, let us assume, as the test of their application, either the dictates of unfettered reason, the letter and spirit of the Constitution, or precedents, domestic or foreign, and your Committee believe that the result will be the same: that the power of expelling a member must in its nature be discretionary, and in its exercise always more summary than the tardy process of judicial tribunals. The power of expelling a member for misconduct results, on the principles of common sense, from the interest of the nation that the high trust of legislation should be invested in pure hands.”[127] I do not stop to consider and illustrate a conclusion thus sustained by precedent as well as reason. It is obvious that the Senate may act on any evidence satisfactory to show that one of its members is unworthy of his seat, without bringing it to the test of any rule of law. It is true that the good name of the individual is in question; but so also is the good name of the Senate, not forgetting also the welfare of the country; and if there are generous presumptions of personal innocence, so also are there irresistible instincts of self-defence, compelling us to act vigorously, not only to preserve the good name of the Senate, but also to save the country menaced by traitors.