I should not at this time have entered into this discussion, if I had not listened to objections on the other side which seem to me founded, I will not say in error, for that would be bold when we are discussing a question of so much novelty, but I will say founded in a reading of history which I have not been able to verify. Senator after Senator on the other side, all distinguished by ability and learning, have informed us that the Constitution intended to prevent a person who might become President from presiding at the trial of the President. I would ask learned Senators who have announced this proposition, where they find it in the Constitution. The Constitution says:-- “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” This is all; and yet on this simple text the superstructure of Senators has been reared. The Constitution does not proceed to say why the Chief Justice shall preside; not at all; nothing of the kind. Senators supply the reason, and then undertake to apply it to the actual President of the Senate. Where, Sir, do they find the reason? They cannot find the reason which they now assign in any of the contemporary authorities illustrating the Constitution; they cannot find it in the debates of the National Convention reported by Madison, or in any of the debates in the States at that time; nor can they find it in the “Federalist.” When does that reason first come on the scene? Others may be more fortunate than I; but I have not been able to find it earlier than 1825, nearly forty years after the formation of the Constitution, in the Commentaries of William Rawle. We all know the character of this work,--one of great respectability, and which most of us in our early days have read and studied. How does he speak of it? As follows:-- “The Vice-President, being the President of the Senate, presides on the trial, except when the President of the United States is tried. As the Vice-President succeeds to the functions and emoluments of the President of the United States, whenever a vacancy happens in the latter office, it would be inconsistent with the implied purity of a judge that a person under a probable bias of such a nature should participate in the trial, and it would follow that he should wholly retire from the court.”[90] Those are the words of a commentator on the Constitution. They next appear eight years later, in the Commentaries of Mr. Justice Story. After citing the provision, “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside,” the learned commentator proceeds:-- “The reason of this clause has been already adverted to. It was to preclude the Vice-President, who might be supposed to have a natural desire to succeed to the office, from being instrumental in procuring the conviction of the Chief Magistrate.”[91]