CH. X.]
THE SENATE.
209
the necessity of providing for the case of a vacancy in the office of president doubtless gave rise to the creation of that officer; and for want of something else for him to do, whilst there is a president in office, he seems to have been placed, with no very great propriety, in the chair of the senate.[2]
§ 734. The propriety of creating the office of vice president will be reserved for future consideration, when, in the progress of these commentaries, the constitution of the executive department comes under review.[3] The reasons, why he was authorized to preside in the senate, belong appropriately to this place.
§ 735. There is no novelty in the appointment of a person to preside, as speaker, who is not a constituent member of the body, over which he is to preside. In the house of lords in England the presiding officer is the lord chancellor, or lord keeper of the great seal,- ↑ 2 Elliot's Debates, 359, 361; 3 Elliot's Debates, 37, 38.
- ↑ 1 Tucker's Black. Comm. Appx., 324; id. 199, 200.—It is a somewhat curious circumstance in the history of congress, that the exercise of the power of the vice president in defeating a bill for the apportionment of representatives in 1792, has been censured, because such a bill seemed (if any) almost exclusively fit for the house of representatives to decide upon;[a 1] and that a like bill, to which the senate interposed a strong- opposition, in 1832, has been deemed by some of the states so exceptionable, that this resistance has been thought worthy of high praise. There is some danger in drawing conclusions from a single exercise of any power against its general utility or policy.
- ↑ See 2 Amer. Museum, 557; The Federalist, No. 68.
- ↑ 1 Tuck. Black. Comm. App. 199, 200, 225.
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