cause exists for removing a public officer from office_”; and he adds, that such cause of removal “may exist where no offence against positive law has been committed,--as where the individual has, from immorality, or imbecility, _or maladministration, become unfit to exercise the office_.”[162] Here again the power of the Senate over Andrew Johnson is vindicated so as to make all doubt or question absurd. I close this question of impeachable offences by asking you to consider that all the cases which have occurred in our history are in conformity with the rule which so many commentators have announced. The several trials of Pickering, Chase, Peck, and Humphreys exhibit its latitude in different forms. Official misconduct, including in the cases of Chase and Humphreys offensive utterances, constituted the high crimes and misdemeanors for which they were respectively arraigned. These are precedents. Add still further, that Madison, in debate on the power of removal, at the very beginning of our Government, said: “I contend that _the wanton removal of meritorious officers_ would subject the President to impeachment and removal from his own high trust.”[163] But Andrew Johnson, standing before a crowd, said of meritorious officers that he would “kick them out,”[164] and forthwith proceeded to execute his foul-mouthed menace. How small was all that Madison imagined, how small was all that was spread out in the successive impeachments of our history, if gathered into one case, compared with the terrible mass now before us! From all these concurring authorities, English and American, it is plain that impeachment is a power broad as the National Constitution itself, and applicable to the President, Vice-President, and all civil officers through whom the Republic suffers or is in any way imperilled. Show me an act of evil example or influence committed by a President, and I show you an impeachable offence, great in proportion to the scale on which it is done, and the consequences menaced. The Republic must receive no detriment; and impeachment is a power by which this sovereign rule is maintained. UNTECHNICAL FORM OF PROCEDURE. The form of procedure has been noticed in considering the political character of impeachment; but it deserves further treatment by itself. Here we meet the same latitude. It is natural that the trial of political offences, before a political body, with a political judgment only, should have less of form than a trial at Common Law; and yet this obvious distinction is constantly disregarded. The authorities, whether English or American, do not leave the question open to doubt.