The term “misdemeanor” was likewise used to designate all legal offences lower than felonies, — all the minor transgressions, all public wrongs, not felonious in character. The common law punished whatever acts were productive of disturbance to the public peace, or tended to incite to the commission of crime, or to injure the health or morals of the people, — such as profanity, drunkenness, challenging to fight, soliciting to the commission of crime, carrying infection through the streets, — an endless variety of offences.
These terms, when used to describe political offences, have a signification coextensive with, or rather analogous to, but yet more extensive than their legal acceptation; for, as John Quincy Adams said, “the Legislature was vested with power of impeaching and removing for trivial transgressions beneath the cognizance of the law.” The sense in which they are used in the Constitution is rendered clearer and more precise by the long line of precedents of decided cases to be found in the State Trials and historical collections. Selden, in his “Judicature of Parliament,” and Coke, in his “Institutes,” refer to many of these, and Comyns names more than fifty impeachable offences. Amongst these are, subverting the fundamental laws and introducing arbitrary power; for an ambassador to give false information to the king; to make a treaty between two foreign powers without the knowledge of the king; to deliver up towns without consent of his colleagues; to incite the king to act against the advice of Parliament; to give the king evil counsel; for the Speaker of the House of Commons to refuse to proceed; for the Lord Chancellor to threaten the other judges to make them subscribe to his opinions.