involve the lessening of Catholic influence and privilege; and, in December, 1845, this affiliation was converted into an armed league. In November, 1847, the Diet, in session at Bern, decreed the dissolution of the Sonderbund; but the allied cantons refused to obey, and only after a nineteen-day armed conflict was the obstructive league suppressed.1

The war was worth while, because the crisis produced by it afforded the liberals an opportunity to bring about the adoption of a wholly new constitution. For a time the outlook was darkened by the possibility of foreign intervention, but the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 at Paris effectually removed that danger,2 and in the end the upheaval through which Europe was passing proved rather favorable than otherwise to the cause. The upshot was that, through the agency of a Diet committee of fourteen, constituted, in fact, February 17, 1848 - one week prior to the overthrow of Louis Philippe- the nationalists incorporated the reforms they desired in a constitutional projet, and this instrument the Diet forthwith revised slightly and placed before the people for acceptance. By a vote of 15 cantons (with a population of 1,897,887) to 61 (with a population of 292,371), the new constitution was approved.

The adoption of this organic law was a distinct victory for the Liberal, or Centralist, party. During the next two decades this element kept complete control of the federal government and carried out many centralizing reforms. A federal postal system was created; the telegraphs were nationalized; a national coinage was instituted in 1850; uniform weights and measures were established; and a strong foreign policy was maintained. Finally, in 1872, the more radical wing of the party brought forward a new constitution confirming and extending this centralist bent. The first effort met with failure.3 A new draft, however, was prepared; and on April 19, 1874, by a vote of 14 cantons against 71⁄2, it was adopted. The popular vote was 340,199 to 198,013. Amended subsequently upon several occasions, the instrument of 1874 is the fundamental law of the Swiss federation to-day, although it is essential to observe that it represents only a re

4

1 A. Stern, "Zur Geschichte des Sonderbundes," in Historische Zeitschrift, 1879; W. B. Duffield, "The War of the Sonderbund," in Eng. Hist. Rev., Oct., 1895; and P. Matter, "Le Sonderbund," in Ann. de l'École Libre des Sci. Polit., Jan. 15, 1896.

2 Austria, Prussia, and France were inclined to intervene on behalf of the Sonderbund. Lord Palmerston, the British foreign secretary, exercised a restraining influence.

3 Borgeaud, Adoption and Amendment of Constitutions, 297-299.

4 For the methods of constitutional amendment see pp. 593-594.

vision of the constitution of 1848. As a recent writer has said, the one region on the continent to which the storms of 1848 brought immediate advantage was Switzerland, for to them it owes its transformation into a well-organized federal state."1

The text of the constitution as it stands to-day is arranged in three chapters, subdivided into 123 articles. Amendments are not listed at the end, as in the constitution of the United States, but are inserted at the appropriate places through the document.2 There is, however, an appendix containing a half-dozen articles of a temporary character. The first and longest chapter, under the title "general provisions," deals mainly with personal rights, citizenship, the structure and powers of the federation, and the status of the cantons. The second, entitled " federal authorities," provides for the structure and functions of the executive Federal Council, the Federal Court, and the two branches of the Federal Assembly. The third chapter sets forth the various methods by which the constitution can be amended. The document runs to almost twice the length of the constitution of the United States and abounds in provisions on subjects-hunting and fishing rights, qualifications for the professions, restraint of epidemics, suppression of gambling, and what not that are commonly left to be covered by ordinary legislation. In a few instances these provisions are of doubtful value or are plainly unnecessary. Thus an amendment of 1893 forbidding the killing of animals "without benumbing before the drawing of blood is admittedly an expression of anti-Jewish prejudice. In the main, however, the constitution's seeming diffuseness arises from the practical necessity, under a federal form of government, of defining the spheres and powers of the several authorities in a good deal of detail - a consideration impressed on Swiss statesmen not only by the earlier experience of their own country but by the well-known difficulties that had already arisen in the United States from the brevity of the federal organic law on more than one important subject. The same tendency to detail, if not prolixity, appears in the constitution of the former German

1 W. Oechsli, in Cambridge Modern History, XI, 234. A brief survey of the constitutional history of Switzerland from 1848 to 1874 is contained in Chap. viii of the volume mentioned (bibliography, pp. 914-918). Two excellent works are C. Hilty, Les constitutions fédérales de la confédération suisse; exposé historique (Neuchâtel, 1891), and T. Curti, Geschichte der Schweiz im XIX. Jahrhundert (Neuchâtel, 1902).

2 It is partly on this account that the Swiss constitution is less satisfactory in the arrangement of its contents than is the American. On the modes of amendment see p. 593.

Empire, although in that case certain other and special motives were involved.1

Nature of Federal Government. Switzerland is the first country that we have studied which has a federal form of government; and before proceeding to a description of its political system it will be well to consider briefly what federal government is. It goes without saying that in every state the powers of government are so numerous, complicated, and onerous that they can be carried out only by being intrusted to many different hands. Two main bases of distribution suggest themselves territorial and functional. Distribution is made territorially when the state is laid out in one or more sets of districts, and to each district, equipped with the requisite machinery, is assigned the exercise of certain powers. It is made functionally when legislative powers are confided to one authority or group of authorities, executive functions to another, judicial functions to a third, and so on. As a matter of fact, both forms of distribution are employed in practically all states.

Obviously, federal government springs from distribution on the territorial basis. But the precise manner in which it arises is not so generally understood. What we have in mind when we speak of a territorial distribution of governmental functions is, not the uniform exercise of a given power, such as the collection of customs duties, in a series of administrative districts by a set. of officials belonging to the central government, but the assignment of aggregates of governmental power to units or areas of a political nature, to be exercised largely or wholly at their discretion (and therefore not uniformly) and through organs that belong to them rather than to the central government. Such divisions are the states and counties of the United States, the counties and boroughs of England, the departments and communes of France, the cantons of Switzerland. The reasons for turning over governmental power to divisions of these kinds are not difficult to discover. One purpose is to relieve the central government of an intolerable burden of work and responsibility. But the main consideration is that many of the tasks of government relate exclusively to individual sections of the country, which can therefore logically be made to assume the main re

1 See p. 620. The text of the Swiss constitution will be found in Lowell, Governments and Parties, II, 405-531. English versions are printed in Dodd, Modern Constitutions, II, 257-200; McCrackan, Rise of the Swiss Republic, 373-403; Vincent, Government in Switzerland, 289-332; and Old South Leaflets, General Series, No. 18. A good collection of recent documents is P. Wolf, Die schweizerische Bundesgesetzebung (2d ed., Basel, 1905-08).

sponsibility for them and can see that they are exercised in accordance with variations of local conditions and needs.

The actual structure of a governmental system is determined mainly by the method employed in making this territorial distribution of powers. There are two ways of doing it. A scheme of distribution, stipulating what the divisional areas of government shall be and what functions they shall have, may be laid down in the constitution. In this case the distribution is made by the political sovereign, and the resulting governmental agencies, central and local, are coördinate in the sense that both derive their authority from direct grant of the sovereign and neither can encroach upon the field occupied by the other unless the sovereign gives its consent. On the other hand, the constitution may go no farther than to create a single organization, endowed with full governmental powers, to which is left the task of providing for such territorial distribution as may be deemed desirable. According as the one plan or the other is followed, the resulting form of government is federal or unitary. The distinction arises, not from the mere fact of a territorial distribution of powers, for there is such a distribution in all modern governments, nor yet from the amount or kinds of power delegated to the local areas, but from the authority by which the distribution is made. To be concrete, the government of the United States is federal, because the sovereign people have provided in the Constitution equally for the central, national government and for the governments of the principal divisional areas, i.e., the states; it is not at all for the central, federal agencies to say what powers or what organization the states shall have. On the other hand, the government of France is unitary, because there is but a single integral government, with its seat at Paris, a government which has created the departments, arrondissements, and other local political and administrative areas for its own purposes, and which is free to alter these subordinate districts in their organization or powers at any time, or even to abolish them altogether.

The relative advantages of the two types have been much debated. The federal plan offers a natural compromise between a complete surrender of local autonomy, on the one hand, and a loose, weak confederation on the other, such as Switzerland had unpleasant experience with in the eighteenth century and the United States in 1781-89; and where, as in both of these instances, the establishment of a true federation is as far as the component states can be induced to go, the superiority of a unitary system becomes merely an academic question. Furthermore,

federalism, as Bryce observes, allows experiments in local legislation and administration which could not safely be tried in a large country having a unitary system of government. At the same time, it supplies the best means of developing a new and vast country by allowing the particular localities to develop their special needs in the way they think best. On the other hand, federal government tends to be excessively complex, to lack unity, and to be not easily adaptable in powers and functions to changing social and economic conditions. On the whole, it is less in favor than formerly; and it is significant that both South Africa in 1900 and republican China in 1911 deliberately chose the unitary type, although in both instances the conditions were present which form the natural basis of a federal system.2

The Nation and the States. The government of Switzerland is a true example of the federal form. The sovereign is, as in the United States, the people, or at all events the electorate, considered as a whole. This sovereign people has superimposed, for certain ends, a national government upon a series of state, or cantonal, governments; it has allotted many functions to this national government and has left many others in the hands of the cantonal authorities; and national and cantonal governments alike rest immediately, as do the national and state governments in the United States, upon the people. In our own country there was long a deep-seated difference of opinion as to whether the states were "sovereign"; the Civil War resulted quite as much. from disputes upon this question as from disagreement on the

1 American Commonwealth, I, 351.

2 For a fuller presentation of the nature of federal government see Willoughby, Government of Modern States, Chap. x. Cf. R. G. Gettell, Introduction to Political Science (Boston, 1910), Chap. xiv, and W. W. Willoughby, The Nature of the State (New York, 1896), Chap. x.

The principal treatises on the Swiss constitutional system are J. J. Blumer, Handbuch des schweizerischen Bundesstaatsrechtes (2d ed., Schaffhausen, 187787); J. Schollenberger, Bundesverfassung der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (Berlin, 1905); ibid., Das Bundesstaatsrecht der Schweiz Geschichte und System (Berlin, 1902); and W. Burckhardt, Kommentar der schweizerischen Bundesverfassung (2d ed., Bern, 1914). Two excellent briefer treatises are N. Droz, Instruction civique (Lausanne, 1884), and A. von Orelli, Das Staatsrecht der schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft (Freiburg, 1885), in Marquardsen's Handbuch. The best treatises in English on the Swiss governmental system are Erooks, Government and Politics of Switzerland, and F. Bonjour, Real Democracy in Operation (New York, 1920), although an older book, Vincent, Government in Switzerland, is excellent. Other earlier books include B. Moses, The Federal Government of Switzerland (Oakland, 1889), and B. Winchester, The Swiss Republic (Philadelphia, 1891). Mention should be made of A. B. Hart, Introduction to the Study of Federal Government (Boston, 1891). An excellent critical bibliography of Swiss constitutional development and governmental organization is printed in Brooks, op. cit., 386-416.