candidate for President. Sometimes this consolation prize was awarded for geographical reasons, sometimes to bring into the party men who on points of principle might split away because of the principles of the presidential candidate himself, and at other times it was awarded for merely factional reasons to some faction which did not differ in the least from the dominant faction in matters of principles, but had very decided views on the question of offices. The presidency being all important, and the vice-presidency of comparatively little note, the entire strength of the contending factions is spent in the conflict over the first, and very often a man who is most anxious to take the first place will not take the second, preferring some other political position. It has thus frequently happened that the two candidates have been totally dissimilar in character and even in party principle, though both running on the same ticket. Very odd results have followed in more than one instance. A striking illustration of the evils sometimes springing from this system is afforded by what befell the Whigs after the election and death of the elder Harrison. Translated into the terms of the politics of continental Europe of to-day, Harrison’s adherents represented a union between the right and the extreme left against the centre. That is, the regular Whigs who formed the bulk of his supporters were supplemented by a small body of extremists who in their political principles were even more alien to the Whigs than were the bulk of the regular Democrats, but who themselves hated these regular Democrats with the peculiar ferocity so often felt by the extremist for the man who goes far, but not quite far enough. In consequence, the President represented Whig principles, the Vice-President represented a rather extreme form of the very principles to which the Whigs were most opposed. The result was that when Harrison died the presidency fell into the hands of a man who had but a corporal’s guard of supporters in the nation, and who proceeded to oppose all the measures of the immense majority of those who elected him.