pp. 770, 1,124, 1,190).
The proposition that the president should be elected directly by
the people, instead of by the national congress, received but one
vote, while the proposition that he should be appointed by the
State legislatures received two votes (2 Madison Papers, p. 1,124).
The most cursory examination of the debates will, I think, convince
any mind that it was to the _organized_ legislature of the State,
and not to the people of a State, that the framers of the
constitution intended to commit the power of determining how the
presidential electors should be chosen. It seems, both from the
debates and the plan adopted, to have been their studied effort to
prevent the people from acting in the choice of their chief
magistrate otherwise than through their representatives, and in no
single step of the process are the people directly required or
authorized by the national constitution to act, but in every
instance the duty and the authority are devolved upon their
representatives. For these reasons I think it clear that it was
intended to invest the organized State legislatures with the power
of determining how the presidential electors should be chosen, and
that the discretion thus lodged in the legislature cannot be
limited or controlled by a State constitution.

W. DE WITT WALLACE.

[C.]

In 1868, the Indiana (Friends) Yearly Meeting appointed Mrs. Sarah
J. Smith of Indianapolis, and Mrs. Rhoda M. Coffin of Richmond, to
visit the prisons of the State, with a view to ascertain the spirit
of the management of these institutions, and the moral condition of
their inmates. In obedience to this appointment the two ladies
visited both of the State prisons of Indiana, and made a
particularly thorough examination of the condition of the Southern
prison (at Jeffersonville) where all our women convicts were kept.
Here they found the vilest immoralities being practiced; they
discovered that the rumors which had induced their appointment were
far surpassed by the revolting facts.

They visited Gov. Conrad Baker and urged him to recommend the
General Assembly to make an appropriation for a separate prison for
women. With the full sympathy of Governor Baker, who was not only a
most honorable gentleman, but a sincere believer in the equal
political rights of women, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Coffin appeared
before the legislature of 1869, and by an unvarnished account of
what the