Such a person, whose mere presence in the executive chair of a constitutional country is itself "a high crime and misdemeanor," is of course the natural prey of demagogues, and he now appears to be surrounded by demagogues of the most desperate class. His advisers are conspirators, and they have so wrought on his vulgar and malignant nature that the question of his impeachment has now come to be merged in the more momentous question whether he will submit to be impeached. Constitutionally, there is no limit to the power of Congress in this respect but that which Congress may itself impose. The power is plain, and there can be no revision of the judgment of the Senate by any other power in the government. But Mr. Johnson thinks, or says he thinks, that Congress itself, as at present constituted, is unconstitutional. He believes, or says he believes, that the defeated Rebel States whose representatives Congress now excludes are as much States in the Union, and as much entitled to representation, as New York or Ohio. As he specially represents the defeated Rebel States, it is hardly to be supposed that he will consent to be punished for crimes committed in their behalf by a Congress from which their representatives are excluded; and it is also to be presumed that the measures he is now taking to obstruct the operation of the laws of Congress relating to reconstruction are but preliminary to a design to resist Congress itself.
The madness of such a scheme leads judicious people to disbelieve in its possibility; but in respect to Mr. Johnson it has been found that the only way to prevent the occurrence of mischief is to diffuse extensively among the people the suspicion that it is meditated. Judicious and dispassionate persons are often poor judges of what men of fierce passions and distempered minds will do; for they unconsciously attribute to such men some of their own ideas of honesty, propriety, and regard for the public welfare. The legislators whom Louis Napoleon outwitted were overthrown, because, bad as their opinion of him was, it was not so bad as events proved it ought to have been. In the case of Mr. Johnson, there is not the same excuse for misconception, since his cunning is utterly divorced from sagacity, and he has not the intelligence to conceal what his impulses prompt him to attempt. The kind of man he is would seem to be obvious to the most superficial observer; the natural inference is, therefore, that he will act after his kind; but this is an inference which dispassionate statesmen have hesitated fully to draw. They have been continually surprised at acts which they should have foreseen. They were surprised that, during the months he was left to his own devices and to the counsels of Southern politicians, he matured his policy of reconstruction. They were surprised that he would not abandon his policy rather than break with the Republican party. They were surprised when they learned that he meditated a _coup d'état_ on the assembling of the Fortieth Congress. They were surprised when they found that no law could be made which would bind him according to its intent. They were surprised when, as soon as Congress adjourned, he began to take measures which can have no other intelligible purpose than that of making him master of Congress when it reassembles. And to crown all, though it has been apparent since February, 1866, that he was the enemy of the country, they have still had technical reasons for retaining him as the proper executive of its laws.