Their distrust of Democracy induced them to construct the electoral college for the choice of a President, the original idea being that the people should elect their best and wisest men who in turn should, untrammeled by outside pressure, elect a President. As a matter of fact the functions of the electorate have now by time and custom become of little more importance than those of so many letter-carriers. They deliver the electoral votes of their states just as a letter-carrier delivers his mail. But in the presidential contest this year it may be we shall see a partial return to the ideals of the men of 1789; for some of the electors on the Bryan-Sewall-Watson ticket may exercise a choice between the vice-presidential candidates. The distrust felt by the founders of the constitution for party government took shape in the scheme to provide that the majority party should have the foremost place, and the minority party the second place, in the national executive. The man who received the greatest number of electoral votes was made President, and the man who received the second greatest number was made Vice-President, on a theory somewhat akin to that by which certain reformers hope to revolutionize our system of voting at the present day. In the early days under the present constitution this system resulted in the choice of Adams for President and of his anti-type Jefferson as Vice-President, the combination being about as incongruous as if we should now see McKinley President and either Bryan or Watson Vice-President. Even in theory such an arrangement is very bad, because under it the Vice-President might readily be, and as a matter of fact was, a man utterly opposed to all the principles to which the President was devoted, so that the arrangement provided in the event of the death of the President, not for a succession, but for a revolution. The system was very soon dropped, and each party nominated its own candidates for both positions. But it was many years before all the members of the electoral college of one party felt obliged to cast the same votes for both President and Vice-President, and consequently there was a good deal of scrambling and shifting in taking the vote. When, however, the parties had crystallized into Democratic and Whig, a score of years after the disappearance of the Federalists, the system of party voting also crystallized. Each party then as a rule nominated one man for President and one for Vice-President, these being voted for throughout the nation. This system in turn speedily produced strange results, some of which remain to this day. There are and must be in every party factions. The victorious faction may crush out and destroy the others, or it may try to propitiate at least its most formidable rival. In consequence, the custom grew of offering the vice-presidency as a consolation prize, to be given in many cases to the very men who were most bitterly opposed to the nomination of the successful