cusation" refers the case to the "Cour d'assises." 1 The commentators do not speak positively upon this point, and I regard my own conclusion as conjectural. 3. The constitution limits the jurisdiction of this court, in the case of the President, to the trial of charges of the commission of high treason; 2 in the case of the ministers, to that of charges of the commission of any crime in the exercise of their public functions; and in the case of all persons, except the President, to that of charges of the commission of any attack upon the security of the state. Crime in general, and treason in particular, are tolerably fixed concepts in French law, though they are not defined in the constitution. The Senate would probably be constrained to adopt the ordinary legal significance of these terms; but in the interpretation of the phrase "attentats commis contre la sûreté de l'état," it has an open field with no fixed boundaries. It may consider peaceable agitation to secure by constitutional amendment a change of the form of government such an "attentat." It probably would do so. It may even be claimed that it has done so. It is a court badly constituted for the trial of such a question. Its judgments are more likely to be dominated by politics than by law and justice. The constitution furthermore declares that the rules of procedure in the court of senators shall be determined by a law, i.e. by an act of the legislature.5 As to the sentence and penalty which it may impose, however, this court is unlimited. It may condemn to exile or death as well as to dismissal from office. The power to fix the city or town, and the locality therein, where the court shall sit is also accorded by law to the Senate.6 1 Loi constitutionnelle du 16 juillet, 1875, Art. 12, § 4. 2 Loi constitutionelle du 25 février, 1875, Art. 6, § 2. 8 Loi constitutionnelle du 16 juillet, 1875, Art. 12, § 2. 6 Loi du 22 juillet, 1879, Art. 3, § 3. 4. Lastly, the constitution makes the jurisdiction of this court exclusive only for the trial of the President for the commission of high treason.1 We should conclude, therefore, that its jurisdiction is merely concurrent with that of the ordinary courts in all other cases concerning which it may act, unless otherwise provided by an act of the legislature. 1 Loi constitutionnelle du 16 juillet, 1875, Art. 12, § 1. CHAPTER V. COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE JUDICIARY. The two great questions of public jurisprudence upon which we seek enlightenment by the comparison of these four judicial systems are, the judicial power of the upper houses of the respective legislatures, and the position of the ordinary judiciary over against the other departments of the government. I. The constitutions do not agree, apparently, in their solutions of the first question. In all of them, indeed, a power to hear and settle cases between parties is acknowledged to the upper houses of the respective legislatures; but the extent of the jurisdiction, both as to parties and subjects, and the character of the penalties which may be imposed, vary widely. It is difficult to find any scientific reason for vesting judicial powers in either branch of the legislature, except so far as is necessary to preserve the rules of discipline and procedure in the respective houses. The reasons why such powers are vested in the upper houses are historical; and an examination of these reasons will show, I think, that under modern conditions there is no longer the same necessity, as formerly, for the maintenance of these powers. It is easy to understand how the gradual development of all the parts of the English governmental system out of the Crown and the Magnum Concilium resulted, at first, in a partition of the judicial powers between the two; how, in earlier times, the inability of the Crown's judicial agents to deal with great offenders made it needful that the Parliament should retain a criminal jurisdiction over them; how the upper house, consisting of permanent members for the most part, many of whom were deeply learned in the law, should have come to exercise these judicial powers in the place of the whole Parliament; and how the Parliament, in its inability to make the independent Crown responsible, should have sought to hold the ministers through the fear of an impeachment. At present, the conditions requiring these relations have largely passed away. The judicial department has received a careful and full development. The ordinary courts have sufficient power and prestige to deal with any offender, excepting only the person who wears the crown. The Ministry holds at the will of the House of Commons, or, ultimately, at the will of the electorate. In consequence of these changed conditions we see that no impeachment trials. now occur; that the trial of a peer for the commission of felony is exceedingly rare; and that the highest court of appeals, while nominally still the House of Lords, consists really of the Lord Chancellor, who may be a commoner, and of two, eventually four, Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, who are appointed by the Crown from among the men most learned in the law, for the purpose of discharging judicial service, and who hold their membership in the House of Lords as the accident, so to speak, of their judicial positions, that membership terminating, ipso facto, when they cease to discharge their judicial functions. It is comprehensible, also, from the historical point of view, that the framers of the constitution of the United States, with the English precedents so distinctly before them, should have imitated the English practice, in some respects, at least, upon this question of the judicial power of the upper house of the legislature. The wonder is that they did not follow English precedents more completely. They certainly manifested a very discriminating sense of the difference of condi tions existing in the two countries. They could not think, indeed, of making the Senate a criminal court for the trial of any noble class, since no such class existed in the United States; but would it have been a far-fetched idea to have made the Senate the highest Court of Appeals in law? It was to be expected that the best legal talent of the country would be found in the Senate, and the Senate represented, according to the prevalent view, the commonwealths in what was then termed their sovereign capacities. In the adjustment of disputes between commonwealths, between the United States and commonwealths, and between the different branches of the United States government itself, what more august body could be devised than the Senate? It is remarkable, all things considered, that the framers did not think seriously of following the English example upon this point. They were undoubtedly preserved from it by the doctrine of the French philosophy regarding the separation of the departments. It seems to me that their solution of the question of the judicial power of the Senate is a most happy one. The limitation of this power to the trial of officers of the government for the commission of offences indictable under statutes of the United States or under the common law; the restriction of the penalty to be imposed by this tribunal to dismissal from office and disqualification to hold United States office in the future; the relegation to the ordinary courts of all further proceedings against the person sentenced by the Senate and thus deprived of any defence by virtue of official character-all this is most natural and necessary. Wisely applied, the judicial power of the Senate secures the responsibility of the executive and judicial organs without impairing their independence, and without trenching upon the sphere of the ordinary judiciary. It can be used, of course, in such a manner as to destroy the co-ordinate independence of the executive and judicial departments. In the earliest trials the Senate seemed to take a |