se or
fortunate protection of the stability of government does the people of
this country owe its escape from this great peril? Solely, I cannot
hesitate to think, to the potency--with a justice-loving, law-respecting
people--of the few decisive words of the Constitution which, to the
common apprehension, had impressed upon the transaction the solemn
character of trial and conviction, under the sanction of the oath to
bind the conscience, and not of the mere exercise of power, of which its
will should be its reason. In short, the Constitution had made the
procedure _judicial_, and not _political_. It was this sacred
interposition that stayed this plague of political resentments which,
with their less sober and intelligent populations, have thwarted so many
struggles for free government and equal institutions.

Over this scene, through all its long agitations, the Chief-Justice
presided, with firmness and prudence, with circumspect comprehension,
and sagacious forecast of the vast consequences which hung, not upon the
result of the trial as affecting any personal fortunes of the
President, but upon the maintenance of its character as a trial--upon
the prevalence of law, and the supremacy of justice, in its methods of
procedure, in the grounds and reasons of its conclusion. That his
authority was greatly influential in fixing the true constitutional
relations of the Chief-Justice to the Senate, and establishing a
precedent of procedure not easily to be subverted; that it was felt,
throughout the trial, with persuasive force, in the maintenance of the
judicial nature of the transaction; and that it never went a step beyond
the office which belonged to him--of presiding over the Senate trying an
impeachment--is not to be doubted.

The President was acquitted. The disappointment of the political
calculations which had been made upon, what was felt by the partisans of
impeachment to be, an assured result, was unbounded; and resentments,
rash and unreasoning, were visited upon the Chief-Justice, who had
influenced the Senate to be judicial, and had not himself been
political. No doubt, this impeachment trial permanently affected the
disposition of the leading managers of the Republican party toward the
Chief-Justice, and his attitude thereafter toward that party, in his
character of a citizen. But the people of the country never assumed any
share of the resentment of party feeling. The charge against him, if it
had any shape