American Civil Liberties Union, in its "First Pamphlet Proposing the Creation of Committees of Correspondence to Redeem the Constitution of the United States by Causing the Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon," cites Edmund Burke's opinion on impeachment: "It is by this tribunal, that statesmen, who abuse their power, are accused by statesmen, and tried by statesmen, not upon the niceties of a narrow jurisprudence, but upon the enlarged and solid principles of state morality. It is here, that those, who by the abuse of power have violated the spirit of law, can never hope for protection from any of its forms: -- it is here, that those, who have refused to conform themselves to its perfections, can never hope to escape through any of its defects" (at <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aclunixon.html>). The original spirit of impeachment was to address a matter of principle, especially an injury to the nation, rather than trouble with "legal niceties." What is very interesting, the English apparently held impeachment trials extremely frequently at the dawn of modernity: "More than fifty impeachments were brought to trial in England between 1621 and 1787, when the framers of the American Constitution began their work" (American Civil Liberties Union, "The First Pamphlet Proposing the Creation of Committees of Correspondence to Redeem the Constitution of the United States by Causing the Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, October 24, 1973," <http:// mrzine.monthlyreview.org/aclunixon.html>).
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>