If we go back to the Blue Book for 1820, which is now in my hands, we find the same title, and the same enumeration of Senators and Representatives. This Blue Book is still published, in pursuance of a joint resolution by Congress, originally adopted as long ago as 27th April, 1816, with the following title:-- “Resolution requiring the Secretary of State to compile and print, once in every two years, _a register of all officers and agents_, _civil_, military, and naval, in the service of the United States.” If Senators are properly included in such a register, it is only as belonging to the “_civil_ department of the public service,” which is precisely where they have been placed by the recent Act of Congress. The only apology for the objection urged from the beginning of this debate with so much pertinacity is founded on the case of Mr. Blount, the Senator expelled and afterwards impeached, at the close of the last century. I shall not take time to consider this case. It has been amply done by others. On former occasions I have done it at length. And yet I will not leave it without protesting again that it is absolutely inapplicable to the present occasion. If that case were out of the way, nobody would have suggested that a “Senator” was not an “_officer_ in the _civil_ department of the public service.” Now what did this case decide? Let another give the summary. I quote the words of Mr. Wharton, in the notes to his edition of the State Trials. “_In a legal point of view_, all that this case decides is, that a Senator of the United States, who has been expelled from his seat, is not, after such expulsion, subject to impeachment; and _perhaps_ from this the broader proposition may be drawn, that none are liable to impeachment except officers of the government, in the technical sense, excluding thereby members of the National Legislature.”[301] The case of Mr. Blount has no application to the present question. It is not an interpretation of the statute, and so far as it illustrates the Constitution it simply concerns the liability to impeachment. But even this case has often been drawn into doubt. And if we look into the proceedings of the time, we find that the decision, such as it was, encountered an able and earnest opposition. Among those who took a distinguished part on that occasion was James A. Bayard,[302] of Delaware, the eminent Representative who conducted the impeachment as Manager on the part of the House of Representatives. In his effective argument he has set forth the true signification of the Constitution. From the argument of the Senator from Delaware [Mr. BAYARD] in the present debate I confidently appeal to that of the earlier Mr. Bayard. Here is a passage.