without amendment to the committee of the whole House, we may learn
with equal authority what was conceded by those houses as to the
question of power over the subject. In a compilation made at the
present session by order of the House Committee, co-ordinate with
the Senate Committee, will be found at page 129 a debate containing
expressions by the leading men of both parties in 1857 of the
lawfulness of the exercise of the legislative power of Congress over
this subject. I venture to read here from the remarks of
Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, one of the most respected and conservative
minds of his day in the Congress of the United States:--

The Constitution evidently contemplated a provision to be made by
law to regulate the details and the mode of counting the votes for
President and Vice-President of the United States. 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. By whom, and how to be counted, the Constitution does
not say. But Congress has power to make all laws which shall be
necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing
powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the
government of the United States, or in any department or officer
thereof. Congress, therefore, has the power to regulate by law the
details of the mode in which the votes are to be counted. As yet,
no such law has been found necessary. The cases, happily, have been
rare in which difficulties have occurred in the count of the
electoral votes. All difficulties of this sort have been managed
heretofore by the consent of the two houses--a consent either
implied at the time or declared by joint resolutions adopted by the
houses on the recommendation of the joint committee which is usually
raised to prescribe the mode in which the count is to be made. In
the absence of law, the will of the two houses thus declared has
prescribed the rule under which the President of the Senate and the
tellers have acted. It was by this authority, as I understand it,
that the President of the Senate acted yesterday. The joint
resolution of the two bouses prescribed the mode in which the
tellers were to make the count and also required him to declare the
result, which he did. It was under the authority, therefore, and by
the direction of the two houses that he acted. The resolutions by
which the authority was given we