(6) Some years ago I went through all the elections to the _Bundesrath_ or Executive Council in Switzerland, and found that in eighteen years it had only twice happened that a member of the Council seeking reelection had failed to obtain it. I therefore think that I was right in congratulating a member of the Federal Council, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last year, on being a member of the most permanent government in Europe. (7) Under the so-called Helvetic Republic of 1798, the Cantons ceased to be sovereign States, and became mere divisions, like counties or departments. One of the earliest provisions of this constitution abolishes the ancient democracies of the Forest Cantons. “Die Regierungsform, wenn sie auch sollte verändert werden, soll allezeit eine repräsentative Demokratie sein.” (See the text in Bluntschli, ii. 305.) The “repräsentative Demokratie” thus forced on these ancient commonwealths by the sham democrats of Paris was meant to exclude the pure democracy of Athens and Uri. The Federal system was in some sort restored by the Act of Mediation (_Vermittlungsakte_) of Napoleon Buonaparte, when First Consul in 1803. See the text in Bluntschli, ii. 322. (8) Appenzell, though its history had long been connected with that of the Confederates, was not actually admitted as a Canton till December 1513, being the youngest of the thirteen Cantons which formed the Confederation down to 1798. See Zellweger, _Geschichte des Appenzellischen Volkes_, ii. 366, and the text in his _Urkunden_, ii. part 2, p. 481, or in the older _Appenzeller Chronick_ of Walser (Saint Gallen, 1740), 410, and the Act in his _Anhang_, p. 18. The frontispiece of this volume contains a lively picture of a _Landesgemeinde_. In 1597 the Canton was divided into the two Half-cantons of _Ausser-Rhoden_, Protestant, and _Inner-Rhoden_, Catholic. See Zellweger, iii. part 2, p. 160; Walser, 553. (9) On armed assemblies see Norman Conquest, ii. 331. (10) I perhaps need hardly insist on this point after the references given in my first note; but I find it constantly needful to explain that there is no such thing as a Swiss _nation_ in any but a political sense. The Cantons were simply members of the Empire which gradually won a greater independence than their fellows. And the Forest Cantons, and the German-speaking Swiss generally, do not even form a distinct part of the German nation; they are simply three settlements of the Alemanni, just as the three divisions of Lincolnshire are three settlements of the Angles. (11) The earliest instance that I know of the use of the word _Englaland_ is in the Treaty with Olaf and Justin in 991. Its earliest use in the English Chronicles is in 1014. See Norman Conquest, i. 78, 276, 605, 629. The oldest use that I know of the name Yorkshire (_Eoforwicscír_) is in the Chronicles under 1065. See Norman Conquest, ii. 478. Deira is, of course, as old as Gregory the Great’s pun.