THE CLOSING APPEAL TO THE SENATE OF MASSACHUSETTS, IN MR. WEBSTER'S
"ARGUMENT ON THE IMPEACHMENT OF JAMES PRESCOTT," APRIL 24TH, 1821.
Mr. President, the case is closed! The fate of the respondent is in your
hands. It is for you now to say, whether, from the law and the facts as
they have appeared before you, you will proceed to disgrace and
disfranchise him. If your duty calls on you to convict him, let justice
be done, and convict him; but, I adjure you, let it be a clear,
undoubted case. Let it be so for his sake, for you are robbing him of
that for which, with all your high powers, you can yield him no
compensation; let it be so for your own sakes, for the responsibility of
this day's judgment is one which you must carry with you through life.
For myself, I am willing here to relinquish the character of an
advocate, and to express opinions by which I am prepared to be bound as
a citizen and a man. And I say upon my honor and conscience, that I see
not how, with the law and constitution for your guides, you can
pronounce the respondent guilty. I declare that I have seen no case of
wilful and corrupt official misconduct, set forth according to the
requisitions of the constitution, and proved according to the common
rules of evidence. I see many things imprudent and ill-judged; many
things that I could wish had been otherwise; but corruption and crime I
do not see.
Sir, the prejudices of the day will soon be forgotten; the passions, if
any there be, which have excited or favored this prosecution will
subside; but the consequence of the judgment you are about to render
will outlive both them and you. The respondent is now brought, a single,
unprotected individual, to this formidable bar of judgment, to stand
against the power and authority of the State. I know you can crush him,
as he stands before you, and clothed as you are with the sovereignty of
the State. You have the power "to change his countenance and to send him
away." Nor do I remind you, that your judgment is to be rejudged by the
community; and, as you have summoned him for trial to this high
tribunal, that you are soon to descend yourselves from these seats of
justice, and stand before the higher tribunal of the world. I would not
fail so much in respect to this honorable court as to hint that it could
pronounce a sentence which the community will reverse. No, Sir, it is
not the world's revision which I would call on you to regard; but that
of your own consciences, when years have gone by and you shall look back
on the sentence you are about to render. If you send away the
respondent, condemned and sentenced, from your bar, you are yet to meet
him in the world on which you cast him out. You will be called to behold
him a disgrace to his family, a sorrow and a shame to his children, a
living fountain of grief and agony to himself.
If you shall then be able to behold him only as an unjust judge, whom
vengeance has overtaken and justice has blasted, you will be able to
look upon him, not without pity, but yet without remorse. But if, on the
other hand, you shall see, whenever and wherever you meet him, a victim
of prejudice or of passion, a sacrifice to a transient excitement; if
you shall see in him a man for whose condemnation any provision of the
constitution has been violated or any principle of law broken down, then
will he be able, humble and low as may be his condition, then will he be
able to turn the current of compassion backward, and to look with pity
on those who have been his judges. If you are about to visit this
respondent with a judgment which shall blast his house; if the bosoms of
the innocent and the amiable are to be made to bleed under your
infliction, I beseech you to be able to state clear and strong grounds
for your proceeding. Prejudice and excitement are transitory, and will
pass away. Political expediency, in matters of judicature, is a false
and hollow principle, and will never satisfy the conscience of him who
is fearful that he may have given a hasty judgment. I earnestly entreat
you, for your own sakes, to possess yourselves of solid reasons, founded
in truth and justice, for the judgment you pronounce, which you can
carry with you till you go down into your graves; reasons which it will
require no argument to revive, no sophistry, no excitement, no regard to
popular favor, to render satisfactory to your consciences; reasons which
you can appeal to in every crisis of your lives, and which shall be able
to assure you, in your own great extremity, that you have not judged a
fellow-creature without mercy.
Sir, I have done with the case of this individual, and now leave it in
your hands. But I would yet once more appeal to you as public men; as
statesmen; as men of enlightened minds, capable of a large view of
things, and of foreseeing the remote consequences of important
transactions; and, as such, I would most earnestly implore you to
consider fully of the judgment you may pronounce. You are about to give
a construction to constitutional provisions which may adhere to that
instrument for ages, either for good or evil. I may perhaps overrate the
importance of this occasion to the public welfare; but I confess it does
appear to me that, if this body give its sanction to some of the
principles which have been advanced on this occasion, then there is a
power in the State above the constitution and the law; a power
essentially arbitrary and despotic, the exercise of which may be most
dangerous. If impeachment be not under the rule of the constitution and
the laws, then may we tremble, not only for those who may be impeached,
but for all others. If the full benefit of every constitutional
provision be not extended to the respondent, his case becomes the case
of all the people of the Commonwealth. The constitution is their
constitution. They have made it for their own protection, and for his
among the rest. They are not eager for his conviction. They desire not
his ruin. If he be condemned, without having his offences set forth in
the manner which they, by their constitution, have prescribed, and in
the manner which they, by their laws, have ordained, then not only is he
condemned unjustly, but the rights of the whole people are disregarded.
For the sake of the people themselves, therefore, I would resist all
attempts to convict by straining the laws or getting over their
prohibitions. I hold up before him the broad shield of the
constitution; if through that he be pierced and fall, he will be but one
sufferer in a common catastrophe.