Friday, May 14.
The Senate proceeded to consider the report of the joint committee, appointed the 28th of April, which is as follows:
The committee of the Senate, to join with a committee appointed by the House of Representatives, to consider and report their opinion on the question, when, according to the Constitution, the terms for which the President, Vice President, Senators, and Representatives, have been respectively chosen, shall be deemed to have commenced; and, also, to consider of, and report their opinion on, such other matters as they should conceive to have relation to this question, report, as the opinion of the said joint committee:
That the terms for which the President, Vice President, Senators, and Representatives, of the United States, were respectively chosen, did, according to the constitution, commence on the 4th day of March, 1789; and so the Senators of the first class, and the Representatives, will not, according to the constitution, be entitled, by virtue of the same election by which they hold seats in the present Congress, to seats in the next Congress, which will be assembled after the 3d day of March, 1791; and further, that, whenever a vacancy shall happen in the Senate or House of Representatives, and an election to fill such vacancy, the person elected will not, according to the constitution, be entitled, by virtue of such election, to hold a seat beyond the time for which the Senator or Representative in whose stead such person shall have been so elected, would, if the vacancy had not happened, have been entitled to hold a seat.
That it will be advisable for the Congress to pass a law or laws for determining, agreeable to the provision in the first section of the second article of the constitution, the time when the electors shall, in the year which will terminate on the 3d day of March, 1793, and so in every fourth year thereafter, be chosen, and the day on which they shall give their votes; for declaring what officer shall, in case of vacancy, both in the office of President and Vice President, act as President; for assigning a public office where the lists, mentioned in the second paragraph of the first section in the second article of the constitution, shall in case of vacancy in the office of President of the Senate, or his absence from the seat of Government, be, in the mean time, deposited; and for directing the mode in which such lists shall be transmitted: whereupon,
Resolved, That the Senate do agree to this report.