It will be a matter of much importance to the nation that the next Vice-President should stand for some settled policy. It is an unhealthy thing to have the Vice-President and President represented by principles so far apart that the succession of one to the place of the other means a change as radical as any possible party overturn. The straining and dislocation of our governmental institutions was very great when Tyler succeeded Harrison and Johnson succeeded Lincoln. In each case the majority of the party that had won the victory felt that it had been treated with scandalous treachery, for Tyler grew to be as repulsive to the Whigs as Polk himself, and the Republicans could scarcely have hated Seymour more than they hated Johnson. The Vice-President has a three-fold relation. First to the administration; next as presiding officer in the Senate, where he should be a man of dignity and force; and third in his social position, for socially he ranks second to the President alone. Mr. Morton was in every way an admirable Vice-President under General Harrison, and had he succeeded to the presidential chair there would have been no break in the great policies which were being pushed forward by the administration. But during Mr. Cleveland’s two incumbencies Messrs. Hendricks and Stevenson have represented, not merely hostile factions, but principles and interests from which he was sundered by a gulf quite as great as that which divided him from his normal party foes. Mr. Sewall would make a colorless Vice-President, and were he at any time to succeed Mr. Bryan in the White House would travel Mr. Bryan’s path only with extreme reluctance and under duress. Mr. Watson would be a more startling, more attractive, and more dangerous figure, for if he got the chance he would lash the nation with a whip of scorpions, while Mr. Bryan would be content with the torture of ordinary thongs. Finally, Mr. Hobart would typify as strongly as Mr. McKinley himself what was best in the Republican party and in the nation, and would stand as one of the known champions of his party on the very questions at issue in the present election. He is a man whose advice would be sought by all who are prominent in the administration. In short, he would be the kind of man whom the electors are certain to choose as Vice-President if they exercise their choice rationally.