of partisanship to the resulting Referendum. The number of signatures required in the optional Referendum varies, according to the size of the Canton, from five hundred to one thousand voters, and the time within which it must be made, usually thirty days from the passage of the law and its official publication. The compulsory Referendum exists in the seven Cantons of Zurich, Bern, Solothurn, Grisons, Aargau, Thurgau, and the Valais, and in the rural half-Canton of Basel. In Schwyz and Vaud both forms obtain. In Zurich a popular vote must be taken upon all changes in the constitution, new laws, concordats, and the appropriation of an amount exceeding 250,000 francs, or an annual expenditure exceeding 20,000 francs. The power of the cantonal council in Zurich is further limited by the _initiative_. Any voter, if supported by one-third of the members present at its next sitting, or any 5000 voters, may demand the passing, alteration or abolition of a law, or of a decision of the council. The optional Referendum exists in the seven Cantons of Luzern, Zug, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen, Ticino, Neuchâtel, Geneva, and the urban portion of Basel. Generally speaking, laws, concordats, and sometimes resolutions of cantonal councils are submitted to optional Referendum. It exists for financial matters, in different gradations in other Cantons, from 500,000 francs in Bern to 50,000 francs in Schwyz. The _initiative_ as to revision of the constitution prevails in all of the Cantons upon certain conditions, and the demand of voters varying in number from 1500 to 5000; with the exception of Bern and Valais, where there is no _initiative_. As before stated, Freiburg is now the only Canton in which the sovereignty of the people is not thus directly exercised; all the others, with the exception of those where there is still a _Landsgemeinde_, possess either a _compulsory_ or an _optional Referendum_; and in two instances both. A few Cantons have introduced an _imperative initiative_, by petition from a fixed number of voters, demanding action upon a certain matter by the cantonal council; whereupon the council must take a vote upon it, and then submit it to a popular vote, even if the action of the council upon it has been unfavorable.