re few: "The President of the Senate shall, in the
presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the
certificates, and the votes shall then be counted." What would one
take to be the meaning of these words, reading them for the first
time? It is, that somebody besides the President of the Senate is to
count, because, if he was to be the counting officer, the language
would naturally have been that _the President of the Senate shall open
all the certificates and count the votes_. There must have been a
reason for this change of phraseology. It should seem to follow, from
these words alone, that, whoever is to count, it is not the President
of the Senate. It should seem also to follow, that the counting is to
be done, not in the presence of Senators and Representatives as
individuals, but in the presence of the two Houses as organized
bodies. If their attendance as spectators merely was intended, the
expression would naturally have been, in the presence of the Senators
and Representatives or so many of them as may choose to attend. The
presence of the Senate and House means their presence as the two
Houses of Congress, with a quorum of each, in the plenitude of their
power, as the coordinate branches of the legislative department of the
Government. And inasmuch as no authorities are required to be present
other than the President of the Senate and the two Houses, if the
former is not to count the votes, the two Houses must.

The meaning which is thus supposed to be the natural one has been
sanctioned by the legislative and executive departments of the
Government, and established by a usage, virtually unbroken, from the
foundation of the Government to the present year.

The exhaustive publication on the Presidential Counts, just made by
the Messrs. Appleton, leaves little to be said on this head.

The sole exception suggested, in respect to the usage, is the
resolution of 1789, but that is not really an exception. We have not
the text of the resolution. We know, however, that there was nothing
to be done but adding a few figures. There was no dispute about a
single vote, as all the world knew. But taking the resolution to have
been what the references to it in the proceedings of the two Houses
would imply, it meant only that a President should be chosen for that
occasion only. The purpose was not to define the functions of any
officer or body, but to go through the _ceremony_ of announcing what
was alrea