This was an extraordinary proceeding. A proposition to impeach the President had till recently been pending in the House for nearly a year, and the ingenuity of the majority had been taxed to the utmost to find some basis for an indictment upon which a successful impeachment might be possible. There is ground for the suggestion that much was hoped for in that direction from the Tenure-of-Office Bill, at least so far as the House was concerned. That hoped for opportunity had now come--nor is it an unreasonable surmise, that this very extraordinary action of the Senate was forced by outside as well as inside influences for the purpose of testing the Senate, and committing it in advance and in anticipation of the preferment of another impeachment by the House.

As to the question of the guilt or innocence of the President of the commission of an impeachable offense, this vote of the Senate was in the nature of a vote of "guilty." It was therefore to a degree an impeachment and conviction combined by the Senate, prior to the bringing of an accusation by the House of Representatives, the constitutional body for the preferment of an impeachment of the President--and was an improper, and not far removed from an indecent proceeding on the part of the Senate. In effect, the President was thereby condemned by the Senate without trial, and his later arraignment was simply to receive sentence-it being solely upon the removal of Mr. Stanton that the impeachment was brought by the House.