So long as the court sat, it says, decency forbade the discussion of the issue elsewhere. It characterizes the articles of impeachment in groups and severally, and says Article XI "reads like a jest, in charging solemn official acts of 1868 as done in pursuance of an extreme and excited declaration, made to a crowd, in a political speech almost two years before...." Impertinent issues were constantly pressed upon the court from without. The New York _Tribune_ demanded conviction and removal for breaking the Tenure-of-Office Act, because, it said, the President was guilty of drunkenness, adultery, treason, and murder. The investigation is of a sudden changed in its nature by the advocates of conviction and becomes a matter of politics, and no longer a judicial concern. Senator Wilson leads off by violating an absolutely fundamental principle of the life and law of every free people, i.e., the principle that an accused man shall have the benefit of a doubt, and be believed innocent until proved guilty. Wilson says: "I shall give the benefit of whatever doubts have arisen to perplex and embarrass me to my country rather than to the Chief Magistrate." ... Here was a plain confession that to obtain conviction a "first principle of public law must be sacrificed; that one prominent judge, at least, would condemn the accused, however conscientiously, from other than judicial motives." It describes graphically the pressure brought to bear upon the court and its shameless character, and quotes from the New York _Tribune's_ flagrant attack upon Grimes, Trumbull, and Fessenden, "three of the most honored statesmen and tried patriots in the land." "Thus," it says, "a prominent party organ tries to instigate the passions of the multitude to drive the court to the judgment it desires." "In a meeting of the Republican Campaign Club on Tuesday evening," it continues, "Charles S. Spencer said that 'as a man of peace and one obedient to the laws, he would advise Senator Trumbull not to show himself on the streets in Chicago during the session of the National Republican Convention, for he feared that the representatives of an indignant people would hang him to the most convenient lamp-post.' And the meeting adopted and ordered to be sent to our Senators in Congress, a resolution, 'that any Senator of the United States elected by the votes of Union Republicans, who at this time blenches and betrays, is infamous, and should be dishonored and execrated while this free Government endures.'" The following is from the Chicago _Tribune_, May 14, 1868: IMPEACHMENT