“Or at least so prove it, That the probation bear no hinge nor loop To hang a doubt on.” Anything short of this is to trifle with the Republic and its transcendent fortunes. It is by insisting upon doubts that the apologists of the President, at the bar and in the Senate, seek to save him. For myself, I see none such; but assuming that they exist, then should they be marshalled for our country. This is not a criminal trial, where the rule prevails. Better the escape of many guilty than that one innocent should suffer. This rule, so proper in its place, is not applicable to a proceeding for expulsion from office; and who will undertake to say that any claim of office can be set against the public safety? In this just rule of evidence I find little more than time-honored maxims of jurisprudence, requiring interpretation always in favor of Liberty. Early in the Common Law we were told that he is to be adjudged impious and cruel who does not favor Liberty: _Impius et crudelis judicandus est qui Libertati non favet_.[190] Blackstone, whose personal sympathies were with power, is constrained to confess that “the law is always ready to catch at anything in favor of Liberty.”[191] But Liberty and all else are contained in the public safety; they depend on the rescue of the country from a Presidential usurper. Therefore should we now, in the name of the law, “catch at anything” to save the Republic. 2. There is another rule of evidence, which, though of common acceptance in the courts, has peculiar value in this case, where it must exercise a decisive influence. It is this: Courts will take judicial cognizance of certain matters without any special proof on the trial. Some of these are of general knowledge, and others are within the special knowledge of the court. Among these, according to express decision, are the frame of government, and the public officers administering it; the accession of the Chief Executive; the sitting of Congress, and its usual course of proceeding; the customary course of travel; the ebbs and flows of the tide; _also whatever ought to be generally known within the limits of the jurisdiction, including the history of the country_. Besides these matters of general knowledge, a court will take notice of its own records, the conduct of its own officers, and whatever passes in its own presence or under its own eyes. For all this I cite no authority; it is superfluous. I add a single illustration from the great English commentator: “If the contempt be committed in the face of the court, the offender may be instantly apprehended and imprisoned, at the discretion of the judges, without any further proof or examination.”[192]