have been considering, was meant the
whole people of the State in whom the legislative power originally
resides and not the organized legislative body which they may
create. We answer first that the language of the section will not
admit of this construction. It clearly recognizes a distinction
between the State or the people of the State, and its legislature.
The language is not "each State shall appoint in such manner as
_it_ may direct," etc., but it is, "each State shall appoint in
such manner as the _legislature_ thereof may direct," etc.

Again, it is a familiar canon of construction that in determining
the meaning of a statute, recourse may be had to the history of the
times in which it was enacted. When the Constitution of the United
States was framed, all of the States had organized legislatures, or
representative bodies who wielded the legislative power, and
without doing violence to language, we must suppose that it was to
_them_ the constitution referred. Again, the State legislatures are
referred to not less than ten times in the national constitution,
and in each instance the reference is such as to make it clear that
the organized representative bodies are intended, and in article 5
they are, in express terms, distinguished from conventions of the
States. Indeed, the fundamental idea of the American government is
that of a representative republic as opposed to a pure democracy,
and it may well be doubted whether a State government, without a
representative legislative body of some kind, would, in the
American sense, be republican in form.

Finally, it is apparent from the debates in the constitutional
convention which framed the constitution, and from the whole plan
devised for the election of president and vice-president, that it
was not intended by the framers of the constitution to commit
directly to the whole people of a State the authority to determine
how the presidential electors should be chosen. Nothing seems to
have given the convention more trouble than the mode of selecting a
president. Many plans were proposed. Chief among these were:
election by congress; election by the executives of the States;
election by the people; election by the State legislatures; and
election by electors. These were presented in many forms. The
convention decided not less than three times, and once by a
unanimous vote, in favor of election by the national congress, and
as often reconsidered it (2 Madison Papers,