nd the Emperor Alexander, or our
excellent neighbor the Governor-General of Canada, to appoint the
thirty-five presidential electors to which New York is entitled in the
sum total of the electoral colleges, and the electors thus appointed
were to receive the certificate of the Governor of New York, and to
meet, vote, and transmit their certificates to Washington, the votes
might be lawfully rejected. Such an occurrence is in the highest
degree improbable; but stranger things than that have happened. The
Empress Catharine intervened in the election of the kings of Poland,
and the interference led to the downfall of the government and the
blotting of the country from the map of Europe. Indeed, I venture to
express my belief, that such an intervention of foreign influence
in our elections would have been hardly more startling to the
imaginations of our fathers than the spectacle which our own eyes have
seen; federal soldiers removing representatives from the Capitol of
one State, and stationed at the doors of another, to inspect the
certificates of members elected to its Legislature.

Not to go abroad, however, for illustrations, let us suppose that the
General Court convened in the State-House at Boston were to depute the
State of New York or the State of Virginia to appoint electors for the
State of Massachusetts, no man would be wild enough to pronounce such
a deputation valid. It should seem to be certain, for a reason hardly
less satisfactory, that the Legislature of Massachusetts could not
authorize the Mayor of Boston or the town council of Worcester to
appoint her electors; and, if that be so, and the rule is to prevail
that, in law, what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly,
it should follow that the State could not delegate to any other agency
the power of appointment. If a body called a returning board be so
constituted as that, in certain contingencies, it may depart from the
inquiry what votes have been cast, and cast the votes itself, or by
_any sort of contrivance_ do the same thing under a different name, or
by a roundabout process, it is, to that extent, an unlawful body under
the Federal Constitution. Assuming, then, that a returning board has
among its functions that of rejecting the votes in particular
districts, for the reason either that they were affected by undue
influence, or that other voters were led by like influence to refrain
from voting, can such a function be valid under the Con