Likewise in 1824 the same instruction is afforded.  If we find the Senate of the United States without division pass bills which, although not passed by the co-ordinate branch of Congress, are received by them and reported back from the proper committees after examination and 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 were according to unbroken usage and established precedent.