Suppose there shall be an interruption in the count, as has occurred in our history, can the President of the Senate do it?  Did he ever do it?  Is such an instance to be found?  Every interruption in the count comes from some Member of the House or of the Senate, and upon that the pleasure of the two houses is considered, the question put to them to withdraw if they desire, and the count is arrested until they shall order it to recommence.  The proceeding in the count, the commencement of the count is not in any degree under his control.  It is and ever was in the two houses, and in them alone.  They are not powerless spectators; they do not sit “state statues only,” but they are met as a legislature in organized bodies to insure a correct result of the popular election, to see to it that “the votes shall then be counted” agreeably to the Constitution.

In 1792 when some of the men who sat in the convention that framed the Constitution enacted into law the powers given in relation to the count of the electoral votes, they said, as I have read, that the certificates then received shall be opened and the votes counted, “and the persons to fill the offices of President and Vice-President ascertained agreeably to the Constitution,” and that direction is contained in the same section of the law that commands Congress to be in session on that day.  It is the law-making power of the nation, the legislature, that is to perform this solemn and important duty, and not a single person who is selected by one branch of Congress and who is removable at their will, according to a late decision of the Senate.

Yes, Mr. President, the power contended for by some Senators, that the President of the Senate can, in the contingency of a disagreement between the two houses, from the necessity of the case, open and count the vote, leads to this:  that upon every disputed vote and upon every decision a new President of the Senate could be elected; that one man could be selected in the present case to count the vote of Florida; another, of South Carolina; another, of Oregon; another, of Louisiana; and the Senate could fill those four offices with four different men, each chosen for that purpose, and when that purpose was over to be displaced by the same breath that set them up for the time being.

Now, sir, if, as has been claimed, the power of counting the votes is deposited equally in both houses, does not this admission exclude the idea of any power to count the votes being deposited in the presiding officer of one of those houses, who is, as I say, eligible and removable by a bare majority of the Senate, and at will?  If the presiding officer of the Senate can thus count the vote, the Senate can control him.  Then the Senate can control the count and, the Senate appointing their President, become the sole controllers of the vote in case of disagreement.  What then becomes of the equal measure of power in the two houses over this subject?  If the power may be said to exist only in case of disagreement, and then ex necessitate rei, all that remains for the Senate is to disagree, and they themselves have created the very contingency that gives them the power, through their President to have the vote counted or not counted, as they may desire.  Why, sir, such a statement destroys all idea of equality of power between the two houses in regard to this subject.