appointment of the electors by a popular vote? _Second_--If so, can
a State constitution thus limit the discretion which the
Constitution of the United States directs shall be exercised by the
legislature? I shall consider the last question first.

While the legislature is created by the State, all its powers are
not derived from, nor are all its duties enjoined by the State. The
moment the State brings the legislature into being, that moment
certain duties enjoined, and certain powers conferred, by the
nation, attach to it. Among the powers and duties of the
legislature, which spring from the national constitution, is the
power and duty of determining how the State shall appoint
presidential electors. The Constitution of the United States
declares in the most explicit terms that the State shall do this
"in such manner as the legislature may direct." In the case of
_Ex-Parte_ Henry E. Hayne, _et al._, reported in volume 9, at page
106, of the Chicago Legal News, the Circuit Court of the United
States for the district of South Carolina, in speaking of the
authority upon which a State legislature acts in providing for the
appointment of presidential electors, says:

Section 1, article 2 of the constitution provides that electors
shall be appointed in such manner as the legislature of each State
may direct. When the legislature of a State, in obedience to that
provision, has, by law, directed the manner of appointment of the
electors, that law has its authorities solely from the Constitution
of the United States. It is a law passed in pursuance of the
constitution.

Hon. James A. Garfield, who was a member of the Electoral
Commission, in discussing before that body the source of the power
to appoint electors, said:

The constitution prescribes that States only shall choose
electors. * * * To speak more accurately, I should say that the
power is placed in the legislatures of the States; for if the
constitution of any State were silent upon the subject, its
legislature is none the less armed with plenary authority
conferred upon it directly by the national
constitution.--[Electoral Commission, p. 242.

That this section of the national constitution has always been
understood to lodge an absolute discretion in the legislature, is
proved by the practice in the different States. Chief Justice
Story, in his "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United
States," in speaking of this s