To the Editor: I read William F. Buckley Jr.'s observations on the Watergate affair (“Impeach the speech, not the Presi dent,” May 20) with sym pathy; I read his conclusions with incredulity. Can it be that the authoritarian mind cannot comprehend the mean ing and the value of the rule of law under the Constitution of the United States?

Most incredible of all is the Chappaquiddick anal ogy. It need only be pointed out that Senator Kennedy is one of 100 Senators and one of 535 members of the Congress of the United States. Thus Senator Kennedy can hardly be compared with the President in his power to corrupt and destroy our in stitutions. It is further pointed out that Senator Kennedy is subject to the censure of the Senate and the more impor tant censure of the ballot box. What will hold Mr. Nixon, if guilty of malfeasance, within the legal bounds of his office in his remaining term under the Buckley prescription? Surely if he can beat a rap because of “permissive judges” (ironic isn't it?) he will have been placed above the law. Let us ponder this as we contemplate the fate of this man in the coming weeks and months.

NORMAN S. DOUGLAS, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor,

University of Bridgeport

Bridgeport, Conn.

Regicide

To the Editor:

I disagree with Mr. Buck ley's conclusion, but must say that his article made many trenchant and appropriate observations about the Water gate mess and the impeach ment issue. However, I beg to point out that there is a non lapidary, indeed an egregious, distinction to be made be tween the impeachment of Andrew Johnson (admittedly one of the baser episodes in American legislative history) and “the same ugly energies that beheaded Charles I.” It is predictable that Mr. Buck ley's sympathies on this issue should be Royalist (I suppose that from his point of view the Protectorate is little more than a regrettable error), but he might tell his readers that the controversy and debate which led to the execution of Charles I—no matter how un justly the actual trial might have been conducted—played a great role in establishing the principle of the govern ment's ultimate accountability to the people. Mr. Nixon has not yet got around to pro claiming himself The Lord's Anointed, but I have often wished he could be made to read a few well‐chosen words by John Milton, the great regicide apologist, on the subject of a man who did think himself to stand in that role:

“For, indeed, none can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not free dom but license, which never hath more scope or more indulgence than under tyrants.

... And certainly if men, not to speak of heathen, both wise and religious, have done justice upon tyrants what way they could soonest, how much more mild and human then is it, to give them fair and open trial; to teach lawless kings, and all who so much adore them, that not mortal man, or his impious will, but jus tice, is the only true sovereign and supreme majesty upon earth?”