central authority with any approach to the success which has been gained by the principle of local self-government. Commencing our political existence as a group of separate sovereignties, we evolved out of our weakness a limited national sovereignty, and made it consistent with the preservation of the separate authority of each state over its domestic concerns. It will be seen hereafter what were the perils encountered by this system when an abnormal assertion of state sovereignty became inconsistent with the central authority of the national government; how far the exertions of the latter in defence of its just supremacy tended to endanger the former, and how we recovered from the hazards which this conflict brought about.

The Constitution had provided that the legislature of each state should elect two senators for a term of six years; and if it had made no other provision in respect to the tenure of the office, the whole Senate would have been changed, or would have been liable to be changed, in the year 1799, and so on at the expiration of every term of six years. But to obviate the inconvenience of such a possible simultaneous change in the whole body, by which there would have been a loss of accumulated experience and familiarity with the duties, the Constitution had directed that the first Senate should be divided as equally as might be into three classes, and that the seats of the senators of the respective classes should be vacated at the expiration of the second, fourth, and sixth years of their respective terms, so that one third of the whole body might be chosen every second year.' The classification of the senators was made on the 14th of May. At the first assembling of a quorum, on the 6th of April, there were but twelve members present. On the 13th of April six more members had appeared and taken their seats. On the 14th of May the classification was made for twenty members, including, along with the eighteen who were present, Pierce Butler, of South Carolina, and William Grayson, of Virginia, who had not taken their seats, but who were known to have been elected. The classification was so made as not to place both the senators of the same

1 Art. I. § 3, cl. 2.

Mr. Grayson took his seat on the 21st of May, and Mr. Butler on the 6th of June.

state in the same class; and it was provided that when senators should appear from states which had not yet made appointments they should be placed by lot in the classes, but so as to keep the classes as nearly equal as might be in numbers. The first distribution placed seven senators in the first, seven in the second, and six in the third class.

CHAPTER V.

WASHINGTON'S ACCEPTANCE OF THE FIRST PRESIDENCY.-EARLIEST PRECEDENT OF COUNTING THE ELECTORAL VOTES.-INAUGURATION OF THE PRESIDENT AND VICE-PRESIDENT.-POWER OF REMOVAL FROM OFFICE.-PRESIDENT'S SALARY.-QUESTION OF A TITLE FOR THE PRESIDENT.

THE time and place appointed for the meeting of the First Congress under the Constitution were the city of New York and the 4th of March, 1789; but a quorum of the House of Representatives was not assembled until the 1st of April, and a quorum of the senators did not appear until the 6th. The House was organized on the 1st by the election of a speaker and a clerk.' On the 6th the Senate elected a president "for the sole purpose of opening the certificates and counting the votes of the electors of the several states in the choice of a President and Vice-President of the United States."

The House was then informed by a message that the Senate was ready to proceed, in the presence of the House, to the discharge of this duty, and that the Senate had appointed one of its members to sit at the clerk's table and make a list of the votes as they should be declared. In the House, before proceeding to the Senate chamber, two members were appointed for the like purpose of sitting at the clerk's table with the member of the Senate and making a list of the votes. The speaker and the members of the House then entered the Senate chamber, and it was announced that the two bodies were "in presence," according to the requirement of the first section of Article II. of the Constitution. The Constitution had directed that the electoral certificates, or lists of the electoral votes, signed, certified, and sealed

1 Frederick Augustus Muhlenburg, of Pennsylvania, was chosen speaker, and John Beckley, of Virginia, clerk.

up by the electors of the several states, be transmitted to the seat of government of the United States, and directed to the president of the Senate. As, at the time of the first election of a president and vice-president, and the making of the electoral certificates, there was no president of the Senate, the precedent had to be framed by the appointment of a president of the Senate for the special and sole purpose of opening the certificates and counting the votes. The mandate of the Constitution, which required the president of the Senate to open all the certificates, declared that "the votes shall then be counted." The opening of the votes," in the presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives," was an act to be performed by the presiding officer of the Senate. The context left it somewhat indeterminate whether the counting of the votes was to be an act to be performed by that officer; but the form of the proceeding, in the shaping of the first precedent, shows what was then assumed to be the meaning of the Constitution. One member of the Senate and two members of the House, as organs of the respective bodies, were placed at the clerk's table, for the purpose of making a list of the votes as they should be announced. The presiding officer of the Senate then declared that he, in the presence of the two houses, had opened and counted the votes of the electors for President and Vice-President of the United States. As the presiding officer of the Senate read off the votes from the electoral certificates, lists were made at the clerk's table for the official information of both bodies. When the representatives had returned to their chamber, their two members, appointed for this purpose, delivered in at the clerk's table a list of the votes of the electors, as the same were declared by the president of the Senate in the presence of the Senate and of the House, and the list was entered on the journal. The Senate was informed of the results shown by the certificates through the declaration of its presiding officer; and the list of all the electoral votes being entered on its journal, it appeared officially to both houses that George Washington was elected President and that John Adams was elected Vice-President of the United States.

But this precedent is not to be deemed to have settled anything more, in respect to the duty and function of the presiding officer of the Senate, than what was necessary to be settled on that occasion. It determined that the two acts of opening and

counting the electoral votes must be performed in the presence of both houses. It determined that the act of opening the electoral certificates was an act to be performed by the presiding officer of the Senate. It did not determine what the act of "counting" involved, or whether, in case there should be two certificates purporting to come from the same state, it rested with the presiding officer to decide which of them should be received as the official evidence of the electoral votes of that state. These questions could not arise upon a state of the electoral certificates which exhibited no conflict, and which gave the whole number of the electoral votes to one person, thirty-four votes to another person, and the remaining thirty-five to ten different persons. It appears that on this occasion all the "counting" that was performed by the presiding officer of the Senate consisted in reading or declaring the contents of the electoral certificates in the presence of the two houses; and as there could be no question or dispute arising out of conflicting certificates, "counting" was not required in any other sense than an enumeration of the results appearing on the face of papers which were not challenged by any one. The ceremonies to be observed in the inauguration of the President and Vice-President of the United States related to the administration of the oath of office, the induction into their respective positions, and the titles by which they were severally to be addressed. Neither General Washington nor Mr. Adams had arrived in New York when the electoral votes were counted and declared. On the 15th of April both houses of Congress adopted a report providing for a temporary residence of the President of the United States at the house of Mr. Osgood, which had been formerly occupied by the president of Congress, and also providing for a joint committee of both houses to receive the president-elect at the place where he was to embark from New Jersey to the city of New York, and to conduct him, without form, to the temporary official residence. Another joint committee was appointed to wait upon the vice-president on his arrival in the city, and to congratulate him in the name of the Congress of the United States. Mr. Adams duly arrived in New York, and, in order to complete at once the organization of the Senate, he was conducted into the Senate chamber by a committee, on the 21st of April, and was met on the floor by Mr. Langdon, the temporary presiding officer,