IMPALEMENT IMPEACHMENT. 



lieved to b* enjoy*-.! in the after life, whether tliis 

 perfection were skill in hunting, ur the intellectual 

 enjoyment of knowledge. It was also natural, that 

 the after life should be considered as standing in 

 connexion with this ; and thus morality, as well as 

 l!i.- IH-. 1 1 in ti:r j:i-iuv of the Kulcr of man's il.'Stiny , 

 created the belief of a retribution ufler death, winch 

 has also been considered, according to the state of 

 civiliiation, in all possible gradations, from the 

 coarsest bodily pain to the intellectual pain of ex- 

 clusion from the presence of God ; hence naturally 

 arose the idea of places where this retribution was 

 accomplished hell and heaven. This idea of a state 

 of retribution, seems to have given rise to the notion 

 cf the resurrection of the body. Connected with the 

 belief in the immortality of the soul, is the belief in a 

 state where souls are purified after death, as existing 

 among the Egyptians and the Catholics. (See Pur- 

 gatory.) No religion teaches so pure a state of the 

 soul after this life, as the Christian, according to the 

 fBaaaL 



Of the many works which have treated of this im- 

 portant subject, we may mention one by an eminent 

 Herman naturalist, J. H. F. von Autenrieth, Uber 

 den Menschen und seine Hqffnung einer Fortdauer 

 vom StandpunJcte des Naturforschers (On Man and 

 his flope of Immortality, as deduced from the Light 

 of Nature) (Tubingen, 1815). 



The Pentateuch, as many theologians believe, con- 

 tains nothing relative to a future lire. The rewards 

 and punishments which Moses proposed, are all 

 temporal, and the latter, he threatens, will be ex- 

 tended even to the third and fourth generations, but 

 not to a future state. The writings of the Old Tes- 

 tament seem to show that the Jews had no belief in 

 the immortality of the soul, until after they had 

 become acquainted with the doctrines of the East in 

 the Babylonish captivity, previous to which they 

 seem either not to have believed in it at all, or to 

 have held the return of the soul to the Supreme 

 Spirit, as Solomon, for instance, teaches. The Py- 

 tliagoreans and Stoics held this doctrine, as likewise 

 several fathers of the church. In Maccabees, writ- 

 ten long after the Babylonish captivity, the belief in 

 the immortality of the soul, and a state of retribu- 

 tion, is expressed in positive terms. The transmi- 

 gration of the soul, believed by the Pythagoreans, 

 was not adopted by the Stoics. Epictetus says, 

 " You do not go to a place of pain : you return to 

 the source from which you came to a delightful re- 

 union with your primitive elements : there is no 

 Acheron, no Tartarus, no Cocytus, no Phlegethon." 

 Seneca, Epicurus, and Democritns, also teach the 

 same. The Peripatetics adopted the same doctrine, 

 but their founder considered death in a less consoling 

 light. " Death," says Aristotle, " is the most ter- 

 rible of all things ; it is the end of our existence, 

 and after it, man has neither to expect good nor to 

 fear evil." In 1794, the French people passed a 

 decree, acknowledging the immortality of the soul, 

 and the existence of a Supreme Being. 



IMPALEMENT (from palus, Latin, a stake); the 

 putting to death by thrusting a stake through the 

 body, the victim being left to perish by lingering 

 torments, which sometimes last for days, and are 

 aggravated by a feverish thirst. This manner of in- 

 flicting death was known to the Romans, though not 

 practised by them. It is used by the Turks, as a 

 punishment for Christians who say any thing against 

 the law of the prophet, who intrigue with a Moham- 

 medan woman, or who enter a mosque. Soleyman, 

 a young Mussulman, the assassin of general Kleber, 

 in Egypt, was impaled in the presence of the French 

 nnny. He died, after several days of the most hor- 

 rible torments, and not until after the birds of prey 



had already torn the flesh from his body. The hor 

 rors of this scene exceeded even the fearful descrip- 

 tion of impalement in the Corsair. 



IMPANNEL. See Jury. 



IMPEACHMENT. An impeachment is an accu- 

 sation and prosecution for a crime or misdemeanor ; 

 but is distinguished from other criminal prosecutions, 

 either by the tribunal before which the proceedings 

 take place, the rank or office of the party accused, 

 or the offence alleged, or by all these circumstances ; 

 for the constitutions and usages vary in different 

 states in regard to the offences which are the subjects 

 of an impeachment, as well as in regard to the de- 

 scriptions of persons who are subject to this kind of 

 prosecution, and the constitution of the tribunal 

 having this jurisdiction. The term impeachment is 

 usually applied to prosecutions of judicial and execu- 

 tive officers for misdemeanors involving an abuse of 

 their official functions, or immediately connected 

 with those functions. The necessity of some tri- 

 bunal, distinct from the ordinary courts, for the trial 

 of certain offences, or for any high misdemeanor in 

 certain officers, is apparent, since the judges of the 

 highest courts cannot, in all cases, safely be intrusted 

 with the trial of each other ; and if they could be so 

 trusted, the duty of persons, who are, in the ordinary 

 course of administration, associated together in the 

 exercise of their public functions, to try their fellows 

 for offences involving not only reputation, but life, 

 would be most ungrateful, and too painful to impose, 

 even if it could be supposed that justice would always 

 be strictly administered ; and, besides, the ordinary 

 judicial tribunals are not so constituted, in all states, 

 as effectually to secure them against the influence 

 and power of the officers of the state. The first 

 object, then, in trials of this description, is to bring 

 them before a tribunal sufficient in authority to over- 

 awe any individual, however high or powerful. In 

 countries governed by absolute monarchs, or those 

 whose prerogatives overbear all other powers in the 

 state, the practice is, either for the sovereign himself 

 to give decisions in those cases which are usually the 

 subjects of impeachment, or to constitute tribunals 

 for this purpose by special commission, which is, in 

 effect, equivalent to the direct exercise of those 

 judicial functions by the sovereign himself; for if he 

 has any strong bias in the particular case, lie will be 

 influenced by it in the appointment of the judges, as 

 much as he would be in the decision, were he to act as 

 judge himself. But in every free government, that is, 

 in every government under which each citizen knows 

 no absolute sovereign but the law itself, and every 

 one, whether ruler or ruled, is constrained to an un- 

 qualified submission to its sovereignty, there must be 

 a permanent tribunal established by the fundamental 

 constitution, for the application of the sovereign law 

 to try the judicial and executive officers, in respect 

 to acts done by them in their respective branches 

 of the administration of the government. This is 

 one of the indispensable parts of a well constituted 

 government, since it guarantees the sovereignty, and 

 the faithful administration of the laws. It is there- 

 fore a part of the government in which the whole 

 people are as directly interested as in the establish- 

 ment of the ordinary tribunals. 



The charter of the French government, granted at 

 the restoration of the Bourbons, follows the British 

 constitution in lodging this judicial power in the 

 house of peers. The powers and jurisdiction of the 

 British house of peers are very extensive in respect 

 to impeachments, and, at the same time, not very 

 precisely defined. It does not appear distinctly what 

 persons or what misdemeanours are exempted from 

 this jurisdiction ; but it is, in practice, usually exer- 

 cised in respect to misdemeanours of an important 



