The Swiss Commune is of very ancient origin, and claims to have been founded on the idea that civic rights and freedom were disconnected from mere birth or ownership of land, stress being laid instead on quasi-corporate union; one of the many forms of the _gens_ or clan, in which it is no longer a wandering or a merely predatory body; but when, on the other hand, it takes the form of an agricultural body, holding its common lands, and forming one component element of a commonwealth. The independence of the Swiss Commune has survived from the days of the primitive village community; that gathering of real or artificial kinsmen, made up of families, each living under the rule, the _mund_, of its own father; that _patria potestas_ which formed so marked and lasting a feature of the Roman law, and is to-day respected by the Confederation, designedly preserved by legislation, and jealously guarded by the people. The integer of Swiss political society is not the individual, not the household; the Commune is the Switzer’s ideal of a social and political system. The Swiss Society of Public Usefulness, in a pamphlet published in 1871, called “Souvenir de la Suisse,” with the purpose of presenting the Swiss republic as a model to the French soldiers, who at that time under Bourbaki had retreated into Switzerland, declares: “Our laws proceed from this great principle, that our institutions are truly free and popular, only in so far as our Communes are free; we move from low to high, the Commune is the centre of our life, and there can be no true development of liberty, except so far as it proceeds from the Communes, from the centre to the circling lines, from the simple to the composite.” Mr. Numa Droz, chief of foreign affairs in the Swiss Cabinet, in his “Instruction Civique,” a text-book in the Swiss public school, says: “The Commune is almost the state in a small compass; to employ an illustration from natural history, it is one of the cells of which the social body is composed. It is certain that a much-developed local right contributes to the strength and prosperity of the state. The Communes must have perfect liberty in rivalling one another in their efforts to satisfy and advance the interests they have in charge. So, care must be taken not to reduce them to a uniform level, which would stifle all spirit of initiative, every desire for improvement. The Communes were the first and principal nurseries of democracy, and are still so in many countries. In their bosom the citizens are best able of training themselves for public life, of familiarizing themselves with administrative questions, and learning how to deal with them. They are the natural nursery grounds, whence the state legislators and public servants come. A citizen, reared in the practical school of communal life, will always understand better the popular wants than one whose political education has been obtained in the offices of federal administration.”