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CONSTITUTION OF THE U. STATES.
[BOOK III.
believe, that the common law, so far as it is applicable, constitutes a part of the law of the United States in their sovereign character, as a nation, not as a source of jurisdiction, but as a guide, and check, and expositor in the administration of the rights, duties, and jurisdiction conferred by the constitution and laws, will find no difficulty in affirming the same doctrines to be applicable to the senate, as a court of impeachments. Those, who denounce the common law, as having any application or existence in regard to the national government, must be necessarily driven to maintain, that the power of impeachment is, until congress shall legislate, a mere nullity, or that it is despotic, both in its reach, and in its proceedings.
[1] It is remarkable, that the first congress, assembled in October, 1774, in their famous declaration of the rights of the colonies, asserted, "that the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England;" and "that they are entitled to the benefit of such of the English statutes, as existed at the time of their colonization, and which they have by experience respectively found to be applicable to their several local and other circumstances."
[2] It would be singular enough, if, in framing a national government, that common law, so justly dear to the colonies, as their guide and protection, should cease to have any
exist-
- ↑ It is not my design in this place to enter upon the discussion of the much controverted question, whether the common law constitutes apart of the national jurisprudence, in contradistinction to that of the states. The learned reader will find the subject amply discussed in the works, to which he has been already referred, viz. 1 Tuck. Black. Comm. App. Note E. p. 378, &c.; in the Report of the Virginia Legislature of 1799, 1800; in Rawle on the Constit. ch. 30, p. 258, &c., and in Duponceau on Jurisdiction, and the authorities there cited. 1 Kent. Comm. Lect. 16, p. 311 et seq.; North American Review, July, 1825; Mr. Bayard's Speech, Debate on the Judiciary in 1802, p. 372.
- ↑ 1 Journal of Congress, Oct. 1774, p. 29.
