IMP (O. Eng. impa, a graft, shoot; the verb impian is cognate with Ger. impfen, to graft, inoculate, and the Fr. enter; the ultimate origin is probably the Gr. ἐμφύειν, to implant, cf. ἔμφυτος, engrafted), originally a slip or shoot of a plant or tree used for grafting. This use is seen in Chaucer (Prologue to the Monk’s Tale, 68) “Of fieble trees ther comen wrecched ympes.” The verb “to imp” in the sense of “to graft” was especially used of the grafting of feathers on to the wing of a falcon or hawk to replace broken or damaged plumage, and is frequently used metaphorically. Like “scion,” “imp” was till the 17th century used of a member of a family, especially of high rank, hence often used as equivalent to “child.” The New English Dictionary quotes an epitaph (1584) in the Beauchamp chapel at Warwick, “Heere resteth the body of the noble Impe Robert of Dudley ... sonne of Robert Erle of Leycester.” The current use of the word for a small devil or mischievous sprite is due to the expressions “imp of Satan, or of the devil or of hell,” in the sense of “child of evil.” It was thus particularly applied to the demons supposed to be the “familiar” spirits of witches.
IMPATIENS, in botany, a genus of annual or biennial herbs, sometimes becoming shrubby, chiefly natives of the mountains of tropical Asia and Africa, but also found widely distributed in the north temperate zone and in South Africa. The flowers, which are purple, yellow, pink or white and often showy, are spurred and irregular in form and borne in the leaf-axils. The name is derived from the fact that the seed-pod when ripe discharges the seeds by the elastic separation and coiling of the valves. Impatiens Noli-me-tangere, touch-me-not, an annual succulent herb with yellow flowers, is probably wild in moist mountainous districts in north Wales, Lancashire and Westmorland. I. Roylei, a tall hardy succulent annual with rose-purple flowers, a Himalayan species, is common in England as a self-sown garden plant or garden escape. I. Balsamina, the common balsam of gardens, a well-known annual, is a native of India; it is one of the showiest of summer and autumn flowers and of comparatively easy cultivation. I. Sultani, a handsome plant, with scarlet flowers, a native of Zanzibar, is easily grown in a greenhouse throughout the summer, but requires warmth in winter.
IMPEACHMENT (O. Fr. empechement, empeschement, from empecher or empescher, to hinder, Late Lat. impedicare, to entangle, pedica, fetter, pes, foot), the English form of judicial parliamentary procedure against criminals, in which the House of Commons are the prosecutors and the House of Lords the judges. It differs from bills of attainder (q.v.) in being strictly judicial. When the House of Commons has accepted a motion for impeachment, the mover is ordered to proceed to the bar of the House of Lords, and there impeach the accused “in the name of the House of Commons, and of all the Commons of the United Kingdom.” The charges are formulated in articles, to each of which the accused may deliver a written answer. The prosecution must confine itself to the charges contained in the articles, though further articles may be adhibited from time to time. The Commons appoint managers to conduct the prosecution, but the whole House in committee attends the trial. The defendant may appear by counsel. The president of the House of Lords is the lord high steward, in the case of peers impeached for high treason; in other cases the lord chancellor. The hearing takes place as in an ordinary trial, the defence being allowed to call witnesses if necessary, and the prosecution having a right of reply. At the end of the case the president “puts to each peer, beginning with the junior baron, the questions upon the first article, whether the accused be guilty of the crimes charged therein. Each peer in succession rises in his place when the question is put, and standing uncovered, and laying his right hand upon his breast, answers, ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not guilty,’ as the case may be, ‘upon my honour.’ Each article is proceeded with separately in the same manner, the lord high steward giving his own opinion the last” (May’s Parliamentary Practice, c. xxiii.). Should the accused be found guilty, judgment follows if the Commons move for it, but not otherwise. The Commons thus retain the power of pardon in their own hands, and this right they have in several cases expressly claimed by resolution, declaring that it is not parliamentary for their lordships to give judgment “until the same be first demanded by this House.” Spiritual peers occupy an anomalous position in the trial of peers, as not being themselves ennobled in blood; on the impeachment of Danby it was declared by the Lords that Spiritual peers have the right to stay and sit during proceedings for impeachment, but it is customary for them to withdraw before judgment is given, entering a protest “saving to themselves and their successors all such rights in judicature as they have by law, and by right ought to have.” An impeachment, unlike other parliamentary proceedings, is not interrupted by prorogation, nor even by dissolution. Proceedings in the House of Commons preliminary to an impeachment are subject to the ordinary rules, and in the Warren Hastings case an act was passed to prevent the preliminary proceedings from discontinuance by prorogation and dissolution. A royal pardon cannot be pleaded in bar of an impeachment, though it is within the royal prerogative to pardon after the lords have pronounced judgment. The point was raised in the case of the earl of Danby in 1679, and the rule was finally settled by the Act of Settlement. Persons found guilty on impeachment may be reprieved or pardoned like other convicts. Impeachment will lie against all kinds of crimes and misdemeanours, and against offenders of all ranks. In the case of Simon de Beresford, tried before the House of Lords in 1330, the House declared “that the judgment be not drawn into example or consequence in time to come, whereby the said peers may be charged hereafter to judge others than their peers,” from which Blackstone and others have inferred that “a commoner cannot be impeached before the Lords for any capital offence, but only for high misdemeanours.” In the case of Edward Fitzharris in 1681, the House of Commons in answer to a resolution of the Lords suspending the impeachment, declared it to be their undoubted right “to impeach any peer or commoner for treason or any other crime or misdemeanour.” And the House of Lords has in practice recognized the right of the Commons to impeach whomsoever they will. The procedure has, however, been reserved for great political offenders whom the ordinary powers of the law might fail to reach. It has now fallen into desuetude. The last impeachments were those of Warren Hastings (1788-1795) and Lord Melville (1806), but an unsuccessful attempt was made by Thomas C. Anstey to impeach Lord Palmerston in 1848. The earliest recorded instances of impeachment are those of Lord Latimer in 1376 and of Pole, earl of Suffolk, in 1386. From the time of Edward IV. to Elizabeth it fell into disuse, “partly,” says Hallam, “from the loss of that control which the Commons had obtained under Richard II. and the Lancastrian kings, and partly from the preference the Tudor princes had given to bills of attainder or pains and penalties when they wished to turn the arm of parliament against an obnoxious subject.” Revived in the reign of James I., it became an instrument of parliamentary resistance to the crown, and it was not unfrequently resorted to in the first three reigns after the Revolution.
In the United States the procedure of impeachment both in the national and in almost all of the state governments is very similar to that described above. The national constitution prescribes that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole power of impeachment” and that “the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments.” The House appoints managers to conduct the prosecution at the bar of the Senate, and the vote of the Senate is taken by putting the question separately to each member, who, during the trial, must be on oath or affirmation. In ordinary cases the president or president pro tempore of the Senate presides, but when the president of the United States is on trial the presiding officer must be the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. A two-thirds vote is necessary for conviction. The president, vice-president or any civil officer of the United States may be impeached for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours,” and if convicted, is removed from office and may be disqualified for holding any office under the government in future. The officer after removal is also “liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.” The term “civil officers of the United States” has been construed as being inapplicable to members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The president’s pardoning power does not extend to officers convicted, on impeachment, of offences against the United States. Since the organization of the Federal government there have been only eight impeachment trials before the United States Senate, and of these only two—the trials of Judge John Pickering, a Federal District judge for the District of New Hampshire, in 1803, on a charge of making decisions contrary to law and of drunkenness and profanity on the bench, and of Judge W. H. Humphreys, Judge of the Federal District Court of Tennessee, in 1863, on a charge of making a secession speech and of accepting a judicial position under the Confederate Government—resulted in convictions. The two most famous cases are those of Justice Samuel Chase of the United States Supreme Court in 1805, and of President Andrew Johnson, the only chief of the executive who has been impeached, in 1868. There is a conflict of opinion with regard to the power of the House to impeach a Federal officer who has resigned his office, and also with regard to the kind of offences for which an officer can be impeached, some authorities maintaining that only indictable offences warrant impeachment, and others that impeachment is warranted by any act highly prejudicial to the public welfare or subversive of any essential principle of government. The latter view was adopted by the House of Representatives when it impeached President Johnson.
IMPERIAL CHAMBER (Reichskammergericht), the supreme judicial court of the Holy Roman Empire, during the period between 1495 and the dissolution of the Empire in 1806. From the early middle ages there had been a supreme court of justice for the Empire—the Hofgericht (or curia imperatoris, as it were), in which the emperor himself presided. By his side sat a body of assessors (Urtheilsfinder), who must be at least seven in number, and who might, in solemn cases, be far more numerous,[1] the assessors who acted varying from time to time and from case to case. The Hofgericht was connected with the person of the emperor; it ceased to act when he was abroad; it died with his death. Upon him it depended for its efficiency; and when, in the 15th century, the emperor ceased to command respect, his court lost the confidence of his subjects. The dreary reign of Frederick III. administered its deathblow and after 1450 it ceased to sit. Its place was taken by the Kammergericht, which appeared side by side with the Hofgericht from 1415, and after 1450 replaced it altogether. The king (or his deputy) still presided in the Kammergericht and it was still his personal court; but the members of the court were now officials—the consiliarii of the imperial aula (or Kammer, whence the name of the court). It was generally the legal members of the council who sat in the Kammergericht (see under [Aulic Council]); and as they were generally doctors of civil law, the court which they composed tended to act according to that law, and thus contributed to the “Reception” of Roman law into Germany towards the end of the 15th century. The old Hofgericht had been filled, as it were, by amateurs (provided they knew some law, and were peers of the person under trial), and it had acted by old customary law; the Kammergericht, on the contrary, was composed of lawyers, and it acted by the written law of Rome. Even the Kammergericht, however, fell into disuse in the later years of the reign of Frederick III.; and the creation of a new and efficient court became a matter of pressing necessity, and was one of the most urgent of the reforms which were mooted in the reign of Maximilian I.
This new court was eventually created in 1495; and it bore the name of Reichskammergericht, or Imperial Chamber. It was distinguished from the old Kammergericht by the essential fact that it was not the personal court of the emperor, but the official court of the Empire (or Reich—whence its name). This change was a natural result of the peculiar character of the movement of reform which was at this time attempted by the electors, under the guidance of Bertold, elector of Mainz. Their aim was to substitute for the old and personal council and court appointed and controlled by the emperor a new and official council, and a new and official court, appointed and controlled by the diet (or rather, in the ultimate resort, by the electors). The members of the Imperial Chamber, which was created by the diet in 1495 in order to serve as such a court,[2] were therefore the agents of the Empire, and not of the emperor. The emperor appointed the president; the Empire nominated the assessors, or judges.[3] There were originally sixteen assessors (afterwards, as a rule, eighteen): half of these were to be doctors of Roman law, while half were to be knights; but after 1555 it became necessary that the latter should be learned in Roman law, even if they had not actually taken their doctorate.
Thus the Empire at last was possessed of a court, a court resting on the enactment of the diet, and not on the emperor’s will; a court paid by the Empire, and not by the emperor; a court resident in a fixed place (until 1693, Spires, and afterwards, from 1693 to 1806, Wetzlar), and not attached to the emperor’s person. The original intention of the court was that it should repress private war (Fehde), and maintain the public peace (Landfriede). The great result which in the issue it served to achieve was the final “Reception” of Roman law as the common law of Germany. That the Imperial Chamber should itself administer Roman law was an inevitable result of its composition; and it was equally inevitable that the composition and procedure of the supreme imperial court should be imitated in the various states which composed the Empire, and that Roman law should thus become the local, as it was already the central, law of the land.