[Footnote H: A vote, October 18, 1891, made note-issuing a federal monopoly.] There are thirty-five banks of issue doing business under cantonal law. Of these, eighteen, known as cantonal banks, either are managed or have their notes guaranteed by the respective cantons. Thus, while banking and money-issuing are free, the cantonal banks insure a requisite note circulation, minimizing the rate of interest and reducing its fluctuations. The setting up of cantonal banks, in order to withdraw privileges from licensed banks, was one of the public questions agitated by social reformers and decided in several of the cantons by direct legislation. _Taxes._ The framework of this little volume does not admit so much as an outline of the various methods of taxation practiced in Switzerland. As in all countries, they are complex. But certain significant results of direct legislation are to be pointed out. In all the cantons there is a strong tendency to raise revenue from direct, as opposed to indirect, taxes, and from progressive taxation according to fortune. The following, from an editorial in the "Christian Union," February 12, 1891, so justly and briefly puts the facts that I prefer printing it rather than words of my own, which might lie under suspicion of being tinged with the views of a radical: "With the democratic revolution of 1830 the people demanded that direct taxation should be introduced, and since the greater revolution of 1848 they have been steadily replacing the indirect taxes upon necessities by direct taxes upon wealth. In Zurich, for example--where in the first part of this century there were no direct taxes--in 1832 indirect taxation supplied four-fifths of the local revenue; to-day it supplies but one-seventeenth. The canton raises thirty-two francs per capita by direct taxation where it raises but two by indirect taxation. This change has accompanied the transformation of Switzerland from a nominal to a real democracy. By the use of direct taxation, where every man knows just how much he pays, and by the use of the Referendum, where the sense of justice of the entire public is expressed as to how tax burdens should be distributed, Switzerland has developed a system by which the division of society into the harmfully rich and wretchedly poor has been checked, if not prevented. In the most advanced cantons, as has been brought out by Professor Cohn in the 'Political Science Quarterly,' the taxes, both on incomes and on property, are progressive. In each case a certain minimum is exempted. In the case of incomes, the progression is such that the largest incomes pay a rate five times as heavy as the very moderate ones; while in the case of property, the largest fortunes pay twice as much as the smallest. The tax upon inheritances has been most strongly developed. In the last thirty years it has been increased sixfold. The larger the amount of property, and the more distant the relative to whom it has