During the Middle Ages these assemblies died out, and the right of making laws passed either to the sovereign or to a representative body; the older method surviving only in some of the Swiss Cantons. In Uri, in the half-Cantons composing Unterwalden and Appenzell, and in Glarus, the law-making body is the Landsgemeinde, the free assembly of all the qualified voters, the _folk-moot_. The whole people come together to pass laws, to nominate magistrates, to administer affairs, just as was formerly the case with the Germans of Tacitus and the Achaians of Homer; with less pretensions, however, than the assembly of a Greek city, for it is rather an agricultural democracy, such as Aristotle commended. It is the direct government dreamed of by Rousseau, who in his dislike of representative systems wrote the “Contrat Social,” demanding that the entire community should meet periodically to exercise its sovereignty. Rousseau suggests that he was led to the opinions advanced in this work, by the example of the ancient tribal democracies; yet at a later date he declared that he had the constitution of Geneva before his mind; and he cannot but have known that the exact method of government which he proposed still lived in the oldest Cantons of Switzerland; where by the raising of hands offices and dignities were distributed, and sanction given to the laws; where feudalism and royalty had never penetrated, and where the most perfect liberty reigned, without class struggles or social strife. The assemblies in the Cantons named are called Landsgemeinden,--that is, “National Communes.” It is a strictly precise term, implying that the whole country forms, so to say, a single Commune. This was the case originally. Later, as different villages were formed, they constituted separate autonomic Communes; but the great Commune of the Canton, with the General Assembly of all the inhabitants, the Landsgemeinde, was maintained. Under the Helvetic republic of 1798 the Landsgemeinde was abolished, in order to make way for the representative system. It was, however, re-established under Napoleon’s act of mediation, promulgated in 1803. The sagacity with which the First Consul discriminated the most important features in the condition of the Swiss Cantons, may be appreciated by the following extract from the speech he delivered on the formation of the internal constitution of the Confederacy: “The re-establishment of the ancient order of things in the democratic Cantons,” said he, “is the best course which can be adopted, both for you and me. They are the states whose peculiar form of government renders them so interesting in the eyes of all Europe; but for this pure democracy you would exhibit nothing which is not to be found elsewhere. Beware of extinguishing so remarkable a distinction. I know well that this democratic system of administration has many inconveniences; but it is established, it has subsisted for centuries,