Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/230

dinary cases, where a superiour power, acting for the whole people, is put into operation to protect their rights, and to rescue their liberties from violation. Such a power cannot, if its actual exercise is properly guarded, in the hands of functionaries, responsible and wise, be justly said to be unsafe or dangerous; unless we are to say, that no power, which is liable to abuse, should be, under any circumstances, delegated. The senators cannot be presumed in ordinary decency, not to be a body of sufficient wisdom to be capable of executing the power; and their responsibility arises from the moderate duration of their office, and their general stake in the interests of the community, as well as their own sense of duty and reputation. If, passing from theory, resort is had to the history of other governments, there is no reason to suppose, that the possession of the power of trying impeachments has ever been a source of undue aristocratical authority, or of dangerous influence. The history of Great Britain has not established, that the house of lords has become a dangerous depositary of influence of any sort from its being a high court of impeachments. If the power of impeachment has ever been abused, it has not trampled upon popular rights. If it has struck down high victims, it has followed, rather than led, the popular opinion. If it has been an instrument of injustice, it has been from yielding too much, and not too little. If it has sometimes suffered an offender to escape, it has far more frequently purified the fountains of justice, and brought down the favourite of courts, and the perverter of patronage to public humiliation and disgrace. And to bring the case home to our own state governments, the power in our state senates has hitherto been without danger, though certainly not without efficiency.