Removal can always be effected during the session of the Senate by the nomination and confirmation of a successor, while provision can be made for the recess by an Act of Congress.

I wish I could stop there; but I am obliged to go further, and say that it is not only incomplete, but it is, in certainly one of its features, to which I shall call attention, mischievous.

Sound financial authorities unite in declaring, that, if the Government resumes specie payments, the banks of New York can resume; and when the banks of New York resume, the whole country can resume.

Such a Congressional construction must have a controlling influence, and the fact that it reversed the practice of eighty years and overcame the disposition to stand on the ancient ways would seem to increase rather than diminish its…

The Tenure-of-Office Act was a new Congressional construction, overruling the first, and entitled to equal, if not superior weight.

If, on the other hand, this Act is constitutional, the prerogative of removal is not in the President, and he violated the National Constitution when he assumed to exercise it.

The Tenure-of-Office Act cannot be treated otherwise than as constitutional,--certainly not in the Senate, where some among the apologists of the President voted for it.

The long practice which grew up under a mere reading of the National Constitution has been declared erroneous.

To my mind we must lessen the demand obligations of the Government, while the Secretary of the Treasury at the same time strengthens the reserves in the national vaults.

To this extent the National Constitution has been amended, and it is as absurd to plead the practice under the first reading, in order to justify an offence under the second, as to plead the existence of Slavery before the Constitutional…

Thus, under color of a statute, he practically set the National Constitution at defiance.

Any other conclusion gives to the President the power under the National Constitution to vacate all national offices, and leaves the Republic the wretched victim of tyranny, with a ruler who is not even a constitutional monarch, but a king…

The apologies are a strange compound, enlarging rather than diminishing the offences proved.

Following these is a swarm of technicalities, devices, and quibbles, utterly unworthy of the Senate, and to be reprobated by all who love justice.

In the light of all that has occurred, with the volume of history open before us, with the records of the Senate in our hands, and with the evidence at the bar not utterly forgotten, it is inconceivable that such an apology can be put…

But if the trespasser is an old offender, who from the beginning has broken fences, ruined trees, and trampled down the garden, and now defiantly comes upon the field of grass, insisting upon absolute ownership, then it is vain to set up…

The antecedent transgressions, ending in claim of title, enter into the present trespass, and make it a question whether the rightful owner or the trespasser shall hold possession.

Here the rightful owner is the people of the United States, and the trespasser is Andrew Johnson.

Therefore in the name of the people is he impeached.

Mere technical violation of statute or of Constitution, without antecedents and without consequents, would not justify impeachment.

From violation of statute or of Constitution the law ordinarily infers evil intent, and, where such a case is submitted to judgment, it throws upon the violator the burden of exculpation.

This is a trial of impeachment, and not a criminal case in a county court.

It is a proceeding for expulsion from office on account of political offences, and not a suit at law.

When the offender sets up good intentions, he challenges inquisition, according to the latitude of such proceeding.

You cannot shut it out; you cannot refuse to look at it.