Impeachment

With great solemnity, violent denunciation and impassioned infinitive-splitting by the prosecutors, the Massachusetts House of Representatives last week voted 196 to 18 the impeachment of Massachusetts' Attorney General, Arthur K. Reading. It was the first time in 148 years that the Commonwealth had found out a corrupt public officer and affixed censure. Mr. Reading, guilty of at least two blatant indiscretions, speedily resigned. But the legislature sought precedent for declining the resignation and pushing the case through the Massachusetts Senate. If tried and convicted there, Mr. Reading would be ineligible for public office in his State forever more.

He had ostensibly set out to investigate a "wholesale buying" corporation called the Decimo Club, Inc., and had told his State the Decimo Club was perfectly legal after receiving from it covertly a $25,000 fee. Other queer firms that Mr. Reading kept out of the hands of the law paid him $35,000 more.

The following epithets were used by Representative George F. James of Norwood, Mass., in referring to Mr. Reading: betrayal, deliberate, prostituted, profligate, seductive, contaminated. . . .