colloquialism is often used, which illustrates the relation of the cantonal to the national feeling,--“My shirt is nearer to me than my coat.” Switzerland, though not extensive in point of superficial surface, embraces such an extraordinary variety of climate, soil, race, and occupation as to render the rule of a single central democratic government, in an especial manner, vexatious. It must of necessity adhere to a system of Federal Union in preference to that of a central and universally diffused authority; because in small states, having each the power of internal legislation, the interests of the inhabitants are nearly the same, and their influence can be felt and their wants receive due consideration. The Cantons have deep-rooted and peculiar local institutions, in many cases of great vitality; laws handed down traditionally from generation to generation, often without having ever been committed to paper, much less to print. Until 1848 there was not one written and accepted cantonal constitution. A country where self-government has longest subsisted, and political institutions been most the subject of popular discussion and decision, it is at the same time a country in which innovations are with the most difficulty introduced. You might alter the whole political frame of government in the French republic with more facility than you could introduce the most insignificant change into the customs and fashions of the Swiss democracy. They seem as immovable as the mountains in which they were cradled. The French directory, in the ardor of their innovations, proposed to the peasants of the Forest Cantons a change in their league, and made the offer of fraternization, which had seduced the allegiance of so many other states, but these sturdy mountaineers replied, “Words cannot express, citizen directors, the profound grief which the proposal to accede to the new Helvetic League has occasioned in these valleys. Other people may have different inclinations, but we, the descendants of William Tell, who have preserved, without the slightest alteration, the constitutions which he has left us, have but one unanimous wish, that of living under the government which Providence and the courage of our ancestors have left us.”