The Commune forms a distinct part of the state organism, as constituted by the cantonal power; it is a society of citizens for the purpose of exercising the rights of election, legislation, and administration; it has functions, as to certain affairs, in which it is vested with a certain autonomy; its institutions, estates, and donations, within the limits of the cantonal constitution, being under its exclusive authority and direction. It is as administrative units, presenting an orderly and systematic arrangement, giving the population an opportunity to exercise an immediate influence on affairs, and quickly awakening the public spirit, that the Communes possess their most essential importance. The reason that the republican system is so firmly established in Switzerland is, that it has its roots in these minute districts forming the principal forces of political and administrative life. Freedom is best served by breaking up commonwealths into small self-governing communities. They decentralize the government. A free state is free, not so much because its executive or even because its legislature takes a certain shape, as because its people are free to speak their minds and to act as they choose, within the limits of the law, in all matters, public and private. That is the best form of government that best secures these powers to its people. In Switzerland national freedom has grown out of personal and local freedom. The Confederation is a union of independent Cantons, the Cantons a union of autonomous Communes. Political life is localized, centripetal, intense, expressing itself in social and civic forms. The parts come before the whole, the smaller units are not divisions of the whole, but the whole is made up by the aggregation of the smaller units. Each stage--Commune, Canton, Confederation--is alike self-acting within its own range. Many of the Cantons changed from oligarchies to democracies, many rose from the rank of subjects to the rank of confederates; in all, their institutions rested on an ancient and immemorial groundwork of Communes; and whatever is new in them has grown naturally and consistently out of the old. During the time when the greater Cantons were aristocratically governed, some by a hereditary class of patricians, others by the exclusive corporation of burghers, communal liberty was retained as the basis of the cantonal organization, and through its influence, the republic, the political ideal of the people, had its deep root in the popular character and customs; therefore the transition from an aristocratic to a representative republic was easy and natural, when, in harmony with modern theories, civil liberties were extended to all classes.