These changes and alternations in the position of public men are by no means unknown to political life in the United States, but in the case under consideration the actors were conspicuous, and for that reason their reversal of position was the more marked.
An interesting and important case, relating to the mode of electing United-States senators, came up for decision at this session and led to a prolonged debate, which was accompanied with much personal feeling and no little acrimony .-- In the winter and spring of 1865 the Legislature of New Jersey was engaged in the duty of choosing a senator of the United States to succeed John C.Ten Eyck, whose term was about to expire.

After many efforts at election it had been found that no candidate was able to secure "a majority of the votes of all the members elected to both Houses of the Legislature," which was described in the rule adopted by the joint convention of the two Houses as the requisite to election.

On the 15th of March the convention rescinded this stringent rule and declared that "any candidate receiving a plurality of votes of the members present shall be declared duly elected." The Legislature was composed of a Senate with twenty-one members and an Assembly with sixty members.

The resolution giving to a plurality the power to elect was carried in the joint convention by a majority of one--forty-one to forty.

In this vote eleven senators were in the affirmative and ten in the negative, and of the members of the House thirty were in the affirmative and thirty in the negative.
It was therefore numerically demonstrated that the resolution could not have been carried with the two Houses acting separately.