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 already known, and to set the government going. No decisions between existing parties were to be made; no selection of true votes from false votes, but only an addition of numbers. Individual members of Congress have undoubtedly in a few instances expressed different views, but these members have been few, and they have always been in a hopeless minority. If any one can read the debates, the bills passed at different times through one House or the other, the joint resolutions adopted, and the accounts of the votes from time to time received or rejected, and doubt that the two Houses of Congress have asserted and maintained, from 1793 until now, their right to accept or reject the votes of States, and of individual electors of States, all that I can say is, that he must have a marvelous capacity of doubting. He must ignore uniform practice as an exponent of constitutions, and set up his individual misreading of words, reasonably plain in themselves, against the opinions of almost all who have gone before him. The joint resolution of 1865 is of itself decisive, if a solemn determination of the two Houses of Congress, approved by the President, can decide anything. That resolution was in these words: "_Whereas_, The inhabitants and local authorities of the States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Tennessee, rebelled against the Government of the United States, and were in such condition on the 8th day of November, 1864, that no valid election of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, according to the Constitution and laws thereof, was held therein on said day: therefore--