QuoteImpeachment is an ancient relic, a rusty legal instrument and political weapon first wielded by the English Parliament, in 1376, to wrest power from the King by charging his ministers with abuses of power, convicting them, removing them from office, and throwing them in prison. Some four hundred years later, impeachment had all but vanished from English practice when American delegates to the Constitutional Convention provided for it in Article II, Section 4: "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

It's one thing to know this power exists. It's another to use it. In one view, nicely expressed by an English solicitor general in 1691, "The power of impeachment ought to be, like Goliath's sword, kept in the temple, and not used but on great occasions." Yet this autumn, in the third year of the Presidency of Donald J. Trump, House Democrats have unsheathed that terrible, mighty sword. Has time dulled its blade?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/28/the-invention-and-reinvention-of-impeachment