Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1876-05-20
JUDICIARY FUNCTIONS OF LEGIS-
LATIYE BODIES.

BY the great kindness of our excel
lent Representative in Congress, the
Hon. John T. House, we are in posses
sion of the proceedings of the Senate in
regard to the impeachment Of Mr..
Beiknap down to the 9th inst, on
which day the subject was adjourned
to Monday, the 9th. The subject then
before the Senate was the competency
of that body to act upon the impeaeh-
ment of person who is accused of
misconduct while holding Office, at
period after he has ceased to hold
Office; those holding the negative
maintaining that impeachment can
only be prosecuted against persons still
holding Office under the government.
If there were no interest attaching to
this question beyond its relation to the
innocence or guilt of the defendant
Tor respondent as he is technically
called in such triaIs), we should scarce
ly deem a heightened report of the dis
eussion demanded in this paper. Mr..
Belknap's guilt is a foregone conclu-
sion both by his own confession and
by the damning exposures of the in
vestigating committee of the House,
and nobody cognizant of tbs facts
doubts of it on either side. But the
discussion has, we think, an important
bearing on the subject mooted in the
heading of this article--the expedi-
ency namely of entrusting judiciary
functions to bodies of men elected for
legislative purposes.
1t will be we'll to point out at the
commencement of this investigation,
that both houses of the British Parlia-
ment have OF late years been coming
round to adopt the negative response
to this question, and that both the
House of Peers and the House of
Commons have deliberately set to work
at divesting themselves of Judiciary
powers hitherto exercised by them,
either on the ground that they were
incompetent to take a dispassionate
and impartial cOgnizanee of the mat
tiers before them on account of party
feeling, or because legislative and ju-
dietary duties so clashed when excr-
cised in the same body that both were
impeded by the admixture
Thus not three years ago the British
House Of Commons abdicated its pre-
rogative of deciding the merits of dis
puted election cases, and a court of
elaborate constitution comprisingsome
of the highest legal talents in England
was established to sit in whatever
county or borough corrupt practices
had been alleged, and so supersede the
House in one of its prerogatives pre-
viously maintained with such jealousy,
the power, namely, of deciding upon
the qualifications of its own members.
And this it did avowedly because a
dispassionate conclusion could not
then be arrived at upon such questions
amid the excitement and eagerness of
party strife.
Will any one say who scrutinizes
with moderate attention the proceed
ings in the American Senate and
House of Representatives within the
last few years, that the time has not
arrived when considerations of COM
mon deccncy demand a similar abdi-
cation of this prerogative on the part
of both Senate and Representatives in
America? Who will need to be re-
minded of the high handed proceed
ings which characterized the disputed
election cases in the flush times of
Radicalism before the existence of
a Democratic House imposed some
check upon them? Who does not re-
member seeing Senator after Senator
and Representative after Representa-
tive sent back to their constituents
with scarcely pretext beyond that of
their being Democratic in politics?
Nay, even since those times, in the
present session of Congress on the
question of the admission of Pinch
back to a seat in the Senate, Mr.. Nor
ton, with an audaeity astonishing even
In him, protested again and again that
this was political question and that
votes on political, that is party eOnsid
erations, were expected; in other words,
Republicans were expected, as Repub
licans, to vote for his admission. 1t is
high time for questions like these to
be tried by a tribunal in which party
spirit runs not quite so high.
But the British House of Lords
also has now for two sessions been en-
gagged in the attempt to create spec
ial courqofrevisal to try those questions
of law on which appeals have come up
from the lower courts to the house of
Lords in judicial session. In other
words, the attempt is to abolish what
is called the appellate jurisdiction of
the House of Peers and establish
purely judiciary court as a substitute.
AS we have no parallel to this usage
in the American government We pass
it over, simply remarking that the
grounds of its abolition are chiefly the
obstacle to legislative business, pre-
scented by the necessity of frequently
assuming Judiciary functions.
We now proceed to the subject of
Impeachment as a function of legisla-
tive bodies in both England and Amer
lea, and here we would premise that
these illusions to the parallel cireum-
stances in the two countries are not only
not irrelevant, they are indispensable;
the provisions in the u. s. Constitu-
ton are rudimentary in the extreme,
being silent altogether on all details
of procedure, and so far as they go
are all founded upon the usages at
force in Great Britain at the time they
were adopted: So much so that, in
both the impeachment cases which
have arisen in our time, the jurists in
arguing the cases depended exclusive