You also find in the sixth section of the act of 1792 that Congress exercised its regulating power and declared “that in case there shall be no President of the Senate at the seat of government on the arrival of the persons intrusted with the lists of votes of the electors, then such persons shall deliver the lists of votes in their custody into the office of the Secretary of State to be safely kept and delivered over as soon as may be to the President of the Senate.”

What does this signify?  That it was a simple question of custody, of safe and convenient custody, and there is just as much reason to say that the Secretary of State being the recipient of those votes had a right to count them as to say that the other officer designated as the recipient of the votes, the President of the Senate, had a right to count them.

Now, here is another fact a denial of which cannot be safely challenged.  Take the history of these debates upon the formation of the Federal Constitution from beginning to end, search them, and no line or word can be discovered that even suggests any power whatever in any one man over the subject, much less in the President of the Senate, in the control of the election of the President or the Vice-President.  Why, sir, there is the invariable rule of construction in regard to which there can be no dispute, that the express grant of one thing excludes any other.  Here you have the direction to the President of the Senate that be shall receive these certificates, or if absent that another custodian shall receive them, hold them during his absence and pass them over to him as soon as may be, and that then he shall in the presence of the two houses of Congress “open all the certificates.”  There is his full measure of duty; it is clearly expressed; and then after that follows the totally distinct duty, not confided to him, that “the votes shall then be counted.”

I doubt very much whether any instrument not written by an inspired hand was more clear, terse, frugal of all words except those necessary to express its precise meaning, than the Constitution of the United States.  It would require the greatest ingenuity to discover where fewer words could be used to accomplish a plain end.  How shall it be that in this closely considered charter, where every word, every punctuation was carefully weighed and canvassed, they should employ seven words out of place when two words in place would have fulfilled their end?  If it had been intended to give this officer the power to count, how easy to read, “The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open and count the votes.”  Why resort to this other, strained, awkward, ungrammatical, unreasonable transposition of additional words to grant one power distinctly and leave the other to be grafted upon it by an unjust implication?  No, Mr. President, if it were a deed of bargain and sale, or any question