The managers then put forward their best pleaders; for they had need of all their strength. Nicholson began by disavowing the idea that impeachment was a mere inquest of office; this impeachment was, he said, a criminal prosecution intended not merely to remove, but to punish, the offender. On the other hand, he maintained that since judges held their commissions during good behavior, and could be removed only by impeachment, the Constitution must have intended that any act of misbehavior should be considered a misdemeanor. He showed the absurdities which would rise from construing the Constitution in a legal sense. His argument, though vigorous and earnest, and offering the advantages of a plausible compromise between two extreme and impracticable doctrines, yet evidently strained the language of the Constitution and disregarded law. As Nicholson himself said, he discarded legal usage: “In my judgment the Constitution of the United States ought to be expounded upon its own principles, and foreign aid ought never to be called in. Our Constitution was fashioned after none other in the known world; and if we understand the language in which it is written, we require no assistance in giving it a true exposition.” He wanted a construction “purely and entirely American.” In the mouth of a strict constructionist this substitution of the will of Congress for the settled rules of law had as strange a sound as Luther Martin could have wished, and offered another example of the instinct, so striking in the Louisiana debate, which not even Nicholson, Randolph, or Jefferson himself could always resist. Rodney, the same day, followed Nicholson; and as though not satisfied with his colleague’s theory, did what Nicholson, in the name of all the managers, had a few hours before expressly disclaimed,--he adopted and pressed Giles’s theory of impeachment with all the precision of language he could command. Nicholson seemed content to assume impeachment as limited to “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors;” but in his view misbehavior might be construed as a misdemeanor in a “purely and entirely American” sense. Rodney was not satisfied with this argument, and insisted that the Constitution imposed no limit on impeachment. “Is there a word in the whole sentence,” he asked, “which expresses an idea, or from which any fair inference can be drawn, that no person shall be impeached but for ‘treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors?’... From the most cursory and transient view of this passage I submit with due deference that it must appear very manifest that there are other cases than those here specified for which an impeachment will lie and is the proper remedy.”