Gentlemen seemed exceedingly anxious to preserve and maintain the honor and dignity of the Senate.
Was this to be done by trying an obscure adventurer for attempting to trap a Senator into bribing him?
Or would not the truer way be to find out whether the Senator was capable of being entrapped into so shameless an act, and then try him?
Why, of course.

Now the whole idea of the Senate seemed to be to shield the Senator and turn inquiry away from him.
The true way to uphold the honor of the Senate was to have none but honorable men in its body.

If this Senator had yielded to temptation and had offered a bribe, he was a soiled man and ought to be instantly expelled; therefore he wanted the Senator tried, and not in the usual namby-pamby way, but in good earnest.

He wanted to know the truth of this matter.

For himself, he believed that the guilt of Senator Dilworthy was established beyond the shadow of a doubt; and he considered that in trifling with his case and shirking it the Senate was doing a shameful and cowardly thing--a thing which suggested that in its willingness to sit longer in the company of such a man, it was acknowledging that it was itself of a kind with him and was therefore not dishonored by his presence.