ble impulse
to the vindictive passions of parties. If political judges in the United
States cannot inflict such heavy penalties as those of Europe, there is
the less chance of their acquitting a prisoner; and the conviction,
if it is less formidable, is more certain. The principal object of the
political tribunals of Europe is to punish the offender; the purpose
of those in America is to deprive him of his authority. A political
condemnation in the United States may, therefore, be looked upon as a
preventive measure; and there is no reason for restricting the judges to
the exact definitions of criminal law. Nothing can be more alarming than
the excessive latitude with which political offences are described in
the laws of America. Article II., Section 4, of the Constitution of the
United States runs thus:--"The President, Vice-President, and all
civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on
impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high
crimes and misdemeanors." Many of the Constitutions of the States
are even less explicit. "Public officers," says the Constitution
of Massachusetts, *b "shall be impeached for misconduct or
maladministration;" the Constitution of Virginia declares that all
the civil officers who shall have offended against the State, by
maladministration, corruption, or other high crimes, may be impeached by
the House of Delegates; in some constitutions no offences are
specified, in order to subject the public functionaries to an unlimited
responsibility. *c But I will venture to affirm that it is precisely
their mildness which renders the American laws most formidable in this
respect. We have shown that in Europe the removal of a functionary and
his political interdiction are the consequences of the penalty he is
to undergo, and that in America they constitute the penalty itself.
The consequence is that in Europe political tribunals are invested with
rights which they are afraid to use, and that the fear of punishing too
much hinders them from punishing at all. But in America no one hesitates
to inflict a penalty from which humanity does not recoil. To condemn a
political opponent to death, in order to deprive him of his power, is
to commit what all the world would execrate as a horrible assassination;
but to declare that opponent unworthy to exercise that authority, to
deprive him of it, and to leave him uninjured in life and limb, may be
judged to be the fair i