One final illustration will support the proposition of a funda

mental difference between our system and the English and a clear

recognition that our system sought to prevent any branch from achieving absolute power, as occurred with English parliamentary supremacy.

In The Federalist No. 48, Madison wrote:

But in a representative republic, where the
executive magistracy is carefully limited;
both in the extent and the duration of its
power; and where the legislative power is
exercised by an assembly, which is inspired,
by a supposed influence over the people, with
an intrepid confidence in its own strength; which
is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions
which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous
as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its
passions, by means which reason prescribes; it
is against the enterprising ambition of this depart-
ment that the people ought to indulge all their
jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.

The legislative department derives a superiority
in our governments from other circumstances.
Its constitutional powers being at once more
extensive, and less susceptible of precise limits,
it can, with the greater facility, mask, under
complicated and indirect measures, the encroach-
ments which it makes on the co-ordinate departments.
It is not unfrequently a question of real nicety in legis-
lative bodies, whether the operation of a particular
measure will, or will not, extend beyond the legislative
sphere. The Federalist No. 48 339-340 (M. Walter Dunn
ed., 1901) (J. Madison).

As was stated earlier, while the great English political and

constitutional struggle centered on Who should make governmental

decisions the American focus was on How these decisions should be

made. In doing away with the Articles of Confederation, with their single branch of weak powers, the Framers opted for a finely

balanced system of separated powers where ultimate sovereignty could be had by no one branch. The Framers opted as much against the absolutism of Parliament as that of the King.

C. The English Impeachments

What then can we say of the role of impeachment in the English system and its relevance to the American Constitution? There are three points to be made. First, the actual role of the impeachment process in the English system must be considered. Second, we must look to the constitutional constraints placed by the American system on the language and context of the impeachment clause. And third, we must then focus on what the Framers meant when they used the words of the English impeachments, "high crimes and misdemeanors, " in defining impeachable offenses. With this approach we can understand the real influence and significance of

the English practice in interpreting the Framers' meaning of that term.

1. Actual Role of English Impeachments

What role did impeachment play in the English system of

government?

In answering this we must keep in mind that the English system as we know it began with a conquest in 1066 that placed a politically absolute monarch upon the throne. Parliament was in its origins a feudal institution representing the advice of the King's chief feudal tenants. The great struggles of the years between 1066 and the early part of the 18th century were not concerned with constitutional principles per se but with which "side" should exercise such and such a power. Given this context of an intense struggle for power rather than liberty we should look at impeachment as both a process

and at times a weapon.

In his monumental history of the English law Sir William Holdsworth begins a section on impeachment with this sentence: "An impeachment is a criminal proceeding initiated by the House of Commons against any person." W. Holdsworth, 1 A History of English Law 379 (Methuen & Co. Ltd. 6th ed. rev., 1938) (emphasis added). The first English impeachment occurred in 1376. Lord Latimer at that time was impeached for criminal conduct and the term "high crimes and misdemeanors" was used according to the 19th century English historian Henry Hallam. I. Brant, Impeachment 10 (Knopf, 1972).