Vermont Watchman And State Journal

The friends of the President are seriously disturbed by the threats of impeachment, of which he is now and then the subject. Mr. Johnson himself is said to be uneasy on this point and inquires rather anxiously what Congress will do in case it is sustained by the people at the election this fall, as now appears certain. It is violently objected that impeachment would be little short of a revolutionary measure, that it would bring matters to extremity between the President and Congress, and could only be resorted to by a party bent upon taking possession of the government at any cost.

The President's friends may be right in saying that, in one sense at any rate, the process of impeachment would be revolutionary. That is to say, although it is the Constitutional method of trying a question of misdemeanor in the Executive office, it might be difficult as affairs now stand to resort to it without danger of a conflict which might bring revolutionary results in its train. But it is not for the President or his supporters to threaten resistance which shall bring matters to such a pass as this, when an appeal to the judicature of the Constitution is proposed. If this tone is assumed with reference to such a proposition, it is the best reason we have yet heard for thinking it time to try the strength of our government in this respect.

But we wish particularly to point out that it ill becomes the President's party to complain of a suggestion of impeachment, when they threaten unequivocally to organize the Fortieth Congress in a certain event by a coup d'etat, and when some of their nominees for that Congress shamelessly avow that they will abet such a proceeding. Men who handle edge-tools must not complain if their fingers are cut. If the body which is stigmatized as "hanging upon the verge of the government" has to pass through an excited struggle like the present to save itself from being ejected from its own halls by the Executive, it is not for those who thus threaten it to complain if its members sometimes think of striking back. It is deplorable enough that the struggle between the President and Congress should ever have reached this point of reciprocal menace; but the President's friends do not appear to have discovered the unpleasant nature of such a proceeding until it was found that, so far from his carrying matters with a high hand, the next Congress is likely to be stronger in its opposition to him than the present. If they are now satisfied that it is undesirable to have the two great departments of the government thus wrestling in a life and death struggle, perhaps it may not yet be too late for them to recognize the fact that the Congress of the United States holds and must continue to hold its existence and organization in entire independence of the will of the President.—Boston Advertiser