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For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO.

Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

ST. JEAN PIED DU PORT.

WHERE the quaint Basque city stands,
Framed and fenced by warrior hands,
On its huge rock throned and crowned,
Mountains girdling it around;
There the strangers come and gaze
On the work of elder days,
Musing o'er the tales of old,
Gathered round the Border Hold.

There echoes rang of Roland's horn
From the Pass of Roncesvaux borne ;
There the stern avengers came
Shouting their dead hero's name;
There the fury of the Fronde
Swept the fertile plains beyond,
When against her royal foe,
Condé's princess held Bordeaux.

There Hawkwood's reckless riders swept;
There Clisson's sword the city kept,
While the might of angry Spain
Round her ramparts surged in vain ;
There our English Edward's lance
Held the lists for subject France;
There, when the eagles baffled fled,
Wellington his legions led.

There, to-day, the southern sky
On its heights gleams brilliantly;
Birch, and box, and poplars' sheen,
Clothed in April's tender green;
Gorse glows out, and peaceful broom
Waves aloft his golden plume,
While with shade and shine at play,
Neve goes dancing on her way.

Up and down each narrow street
Peasants go; with patient feet
Sad-eyed oxen bear their load,

Where chargers pranced and penons flowed;
While the citadel looks down,

Where, lapt in peace, the little town
Lies, heedless of its varied story,
Its stormy past, its ancient glory.

All The Year Round.

WITHOUT HIM.

["And I thought I said in my dream: What a very long time you have been away.""]

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Of helpful actions that were slowly done; To speak in dreams what echoes seldom caught;

To have the blessing back that Death has won;

To live the sorrow down, and try to be
Familiar with the strange new sense of To dream of dead days with their old re-

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From The Contemporary Review. THE REFERENDUM IN SWITZERLAND.

I.

tive" these two forming, along with the popular election of the authorities, "DEMOCRACY is in full flow," said the main body of the essential rights Roger Collard under the Restoration, of the people as exercised in this when the electoral qualification was country, and giving to our institutions fixed at three hundred francs. What a character hitherto unique throughout would he think of our times, when not the world. only universal suffrage is the rule almost everywhere, but when the sovereign people are aspiring to settle. SWISS institutions, to be rightly ungreat legislative and constitutional derstood, must be studied, not only in questions for themselves? Would he their present form, but in their hissay the stream has overflowed its torical development. There are in banks, and dykes must be built to con- Switzerland twenty-five cantons, or fine it? Or would he understand that demi-cantons, each of which has its modern governments must adapt them- own constitution and special laws, its selves to the times and the spread of education, by taking a more and more democratic form?

Not that it signifies in the least to us what was, or what would be, the opinion of that antiquated Liberal. One evokes his memory only to mark the distance we have come since the early days of the century. And it is quite clear that the original impulse is not exhausted yet. It will continue to act until, weakened by its own excesses, it meets with a counterpoising principle which may support and sustain it, or a superior force before which it must succumb.

own legislative, executive, and judicial authority. These independent organisms, which are like so many distinct families, are united by a common bond - the Confederation, which in its turn has a constitution and laws applicable to the whole of the territory, and a legislative, executive, and judicial authority. The federal constitution guarantees to the citizens and people of the cantons a minimum of rights and liberties, and at the same time prescribes the obligations which, in the general interest, they are bound to fulfil. Thanks to this organization, each canton becomes a practising ground for every new idea which only does not controvert the principles of the federal constitution. Experiments which have succeeded in one canton are frequently imitated by the others, or transplanted into the federal domain. Thus the democratic idea has been worked out in Switzerland at different paces, so to speak, and has given rise to institutions which vary according to the conditions, federal or cantonal, to which they have to adapt themselves.

At present, those who concern themselves with the solution of our democratic problems are turning their eyes towards the countries which have practical experience to show. Antiquity and the Middle Ages had indeed something to say on the point; but the conditions of ancient and mediæval popular life were too different from our own for their example to be at all decisive. We must learn from the experiments of our own time. And amongst the countries that compete for our attention, Switzerland must be direct placed in the first rank, since none can claim a longer democratic past, or possesses more advanced or more thoroughly tested institutions. It is for this reason that I have been asked to explain to English readers the working of what we in Switzerland call "the embodies the ideal of Rousseau, who referendum," to which must be added in his "Contrat Social" depicts the the complementary "right of initia- happiest people in the world"where

The first and purest type of the democracy is the Landsgemeinde, which has been in existence from the origin of the Confederation six centuries ago, and which still obtains in the cantons of Uri and Glarus, the two Unterwalds, and the two Appenzells. This system very nearly

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troubles at Geneva at the beginning and during the course of the eighteenth century; and hence the conspiracy of Henzi and the revolution attempted by Chenaux at Fribourg in 1781.

you may see troops of peasants set- vote without instructions received from tling the affairs of the State under an their constituents; the proposals foroak, and acting always wisely." Uu- mulated by the Diet were taken fortunately, the very smallest Landsge- referendum, and dealt with by each. meinde nowadays could hardly meet State in its own fashion. Here it was under one oak, as it would number the Landsgemeinde that decided; more than two thousand citizens, while there, a patriciate or a council of burthe largest that of Appenzell (Ausser gesses; in St. Gall it was a princeRhoden) is so numerous that dis-abbot. The spirit of oppression which cussion is impossible, and it has to had sprung up little by little in the confine itself to voting. In other re- cantons which had bailiwicks, the spects, Rousseau's eulogium is really rights usurped by the towns to the not exaggerated. detriment of the country, and the intolBut, from the time that the Confed-Terance shown by certain governments eration took in towns like Lucerne led more than once to popular risings. (1332), Zurich (1351), Berne (1353), Hence the peasants' war, which began Fribourg and Soleure (1481), the can- with two federal Landsgemeinden, so tous no longer presented a uniform called, held at Sumiswald on the 23rd type of pure democracy. These towns, of April, 1653, and at Hutwyl on the with their more or less aristocratic 30th of the same month; hence the organization, treated the country as a sort of subject community. The Confederation itself, or groups of cantons (including some of the democratic cantons) did the same with the common bailiwicks, which included a part of Aargau, Thurgau, and Ticino. At the By the end of the eighteenth centime of the Reformation, indeed, in tury the structure of the old Conthe cantons of Berne and Zurich, an federation, with its history of five attempt was made at consulting the hundred years, was rotten through and people, in order to ascertain how far through; it crumbled under the blows they were adherents of the new reli- of the French invasion. The new gion. At Berne the votes were for the constitution of the Helvetic Republic, most part taken by districts, and all the modelled on that of the Republic one men above the age of fourteen were and indivisible, perpetuated the repreallowed to vote, the ayes either remain- sentative system to the exclusion of ing where they were, while the noes the direct democracy. This was promoved off to one side, or else the whole mulgated in April, 1798. It was imassembly voting by show of hands. possible that it should last, for it had The vote of each district counted as been imposed by force, and it lacked one, whatever the number of voters. the consent of the people. Several At Zurich, the reference to the people attempts at modification were made, did not take the form of a simple through the mediation of the First enumeration of suffrages, but the an- Consul Bonaparte, who in 1801 forswers of the communes were given at warded to the Swiss delegates assemsome length, alleging the reasons for bled at Malmaison the draft of રી their decision. Constitution. This draft, adopted proDown to the close of the last cen-visionally on the twenty-ninth of May tury, the Federal Diet, composed of the of the same year by the legislative body representatives of the confederated and of the Helvetic Republic, was several allied States, was bound, of course, to times altered, and after sundry agitatake account of all these various insti- tions and two coups d'état, of which tutions. The representatives could not one was due to the federalists and the other to the unitary party, it ended (May 20, 1802) in the production of a

1 Lands held in common by two or more cantons.

new

fairly unitary constitution, which was the sanction of the people. As resubmitted to the approval of the peo-gards the exercise of governmental ple. This was the first instance of authority, however, it differed in no direct individual suffrage taken in essential particulars from the Act of Switzerland on a question relating to Mediation. the federal constitution. The result Under the federal compact was: ayes, 72,453; noes, 92,423; ab- struggles went on between the partistentions, 167,172. Now as, by a de- saus of the older system and those who cree of the legislature, the abstentions advocated the extension of popular were to be reckoned with the ayes, the rights. The constitutions of the repreconstitution forthwith came into force sentative cantons were regarded as a as having been adopted by "the great sort of charters granted by the govmajority of citizens having the right to ernors, which could not be modified vote." But the federalists soon got except at their will and pleasure. To the upper hand; and in the course of assert the popular claim the citizens the same year (1802) they attempted a had but one way open to them - to new revision, which, however, was shoulder their muskets and upset the never finished, because Bonaparte in- government. Of this solitary expeditervened by imposing his Act of Medi-ent they did not fail to make use during ation (February 19, 1803). the troublous times which lasted till

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This act, under which Switzerland 1848. Not only did they introduce into was governed till 1815, re-established the revised constitutions the recognithe democratic régime in the Lands- tion of the popular right to demand a gemeinde cantons, and the representative system in all the rest, on the basis of an electoral qualification and equality of rights for the towns and the country. The partisans of the old privileged system submitted sorely against their will to the new order of things, and seized the opportunity afforded by the reverses and subsequent fall of the mediator to try to upset it. During the years 1813 and 1815 a sharp constitutional struggle was going on; the new cantons - Aargau, Thurgau, Ticino, and Vaud - found their very existence menaced; the rural districts were threatened with the loss of the equality they had just acquired, and the very principle of the federative bond was imperilled. It needed a new foreign intervention that of the Holy Alliance to restrain these disastrous tendencies. The Congress of Vienna agreed to recognize the neutrality of Switzerland only on condition of the retention of the newly created cantons; it added those of Valais, Neuchâtel, and Geneva; and on the 7th of August, 1815, the representatives of the twentytwo cantons solemnized the acceptance of the constitutional act known under the name of the "Federal Compact." The compact was never submitted for

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revision at any time, but some of the cantons thought good to go farther and institute the veto-that is to say, the right of the people to prevent a law from coming into force. The mode of exercise of this right varied in the different cantons. Generally it consisted of a declaration made by the non-contents, and if, after a definite period of delay, the number of names attained a certain figure, the law was held to be rejected. St. Gall adopted the veto in 1831; rural Basle in 1832, after a rupture with the city of Basle on account of the inequality of rights between the city and the country; Valais in 1839 ; Lucerne in 1841. The attempts made in 1842 to introduce the new law in Zurich broke down. On the other hand, in 1842, the canton of Valais passed a measure replacing the veto by the referendum on all laws whatever; but as the first use made of the referendum was to reject the proposed measure itself, the canton went back to the representative system pure and simple (1848). Vaud (in 1845) and Berne (in 1846) adopted the optional referendum. The referendum differs from the veto inasmuch as all the citizens are called upon to pronounce, yes or no, on the acceptance of a bill, in

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