"A YANKEE" ON THE IMPEACHMENT.
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
New York, March 7, 1868. PRESIDENT Jonlesole is impeached, but he will not be found guilty. He has done what heretofore he carefully avoided doing— he has disregarded one of the laws passed by Congress over his veto. He did it, there seems to be no reason to doubt, merely in defence of the constitutional rights of the office of which he is the temporary occupant. But still he broke the law (if it is a law) ; and not only so, but his manner of doing it made it seem much like a slap in the face. As the Evening Post (Mr. Bryant's paper) said, he defends the Constitution like a tigress defending her cubs. There is, however, one peculiarity about this Tenure of Office Law ; it is made for only one person in the whole country, it applies to but one—the President of the United States. Consequently, the law, which is at war with all previous construction of the Con- stitution and all precedent from the beginning of our national existence, must either be submitted to without a question, or the President of the United States for the time being, now or hereafter, must disregard it, and submit his action to the judgment of the Supreme Court. President Johnson's past course and present action having been what they were, the majority in Congress fretting under the utter failure of their reconstruction Acts consequent upon inherent defects, they could not refrain from impeaching him, unless they were willing not only to surrender, but to be trodden under foot. They were stung into sharp resentment, and carried impeachment through with all the haste and violence of peevishness and passion. They will press the trial on also, hoping to reach a conviction before the Supreme Court renders a decision upon the question which is now before it upon the action of General Thomas, whom President Johnson appointed Secretary of War ad interim. And in another case—the McArdle case—the question of the validity of the whole reconstruction legislation is also before the Court, Mr. David Dudley Field (known to your Social Science Congress as one of its Vice-Presidents, also to your lawyers as the chief codifier of the laws of the State of New York, and here as a prominent Republican politician during the war and the years preceding it), being the principal counsel against the validity of the Acts.
But even should the Senate condemn the President, it will settle nothing—except Mr. Johnson. For our Government was not framed so owlishly as to allow the Legislature, which is bound by a written Constitution, to decide as a Court of last resort the constitutionality of its own acts, by resolving itself in the House into accuser, and in the Senate into judge. If Congress were not responsible to the Constitution, that would do very well ; but being so responsible, to allow it to decide the validity of its own action would be farcical. That can be determined by a high tribunal, entirely independent of Congress, the President, and the people. Such a tribunal is the Supreme Court ; which is not above the law or the Constitution, but merely the last and highest expounder. The Senate may find Mr. Johnson guilty or innocent, it will make little matter, and will decide nothing. But they will not find him guilty. The charge of conspiracy because he said to General Emory that a certain act in relation to the Army was unconstitutional, General Emory himself having brought up the subject, is absurd; and that of having spoken disrespectfully of Con- gress is so ridiculous, considering how Congress has spoken of him, that it only provokes a laugh and a cry, "six of one and half-a-dozen of the other." There remains only his disregard of the Tenure of Office Law ; and if the Senate, looking at that in the light of his explanatory message in regard to it, decide that it is such a high crime and misdemeanour as the framers of the Constitution classed with treason and bribery (the words are " treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanours "), I shall then have made a mistake in my judgments as to the future of events in this country. There is, however, one dreadful temptation before the majority in
the Senate. This impeachment is a strictly party measure, brought on a strict party vote ; and on all sides it is conceded that with its failure comes the ruin of the party by which it has been adopted as the last scheme for its salvation. The temptation, consequently, " for the good of the country," to remove President Johnson, put in a Radical temporary President, and use the whole
power of the Government for nine or eight months to control the next Presidential election, is one that might even move a politician who
has scruples. But he would be tempted in vain. For whatever the issue of the impeachment, whether Mr. Johnson or Mr. Wade be President for the next year, the end will be the same. The Repub- lican party, with which I have laboured and for which I have fought so many yeats, has dashed itself blindly back and forth against constitutional government and pride of race, and is shivered into fragments, never again to be united. As to this view and my other views of politics in this country, whether they are less " sane " than those I held in past years can be told with certainty
[Our correspondent pledged his prophetic insight that Mr. Johnson would never be impeached. Now, he is driven back to his second line of defences, and prophesies that he will be acquitted. Our correspondent has also made a great blunder as to the articles of impeachment. The most important of them (Art. 3) does not affect the Tenure of Office Act at all. The charge is for a violation of the Constitution in appointing General Thomas without the consent of the Senate.—En. Spectator.]
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