instructed and encouraged to take a personal and intelligent interest in what concerns the public weal, to be familiar with the public business, to the interchange of ideas, and to the give-and-take of civic life generally. He is taught that no man liveth to himself in a republic, but every man has public duties, every man is a public man, every man holds one high, sacred, all-embracing office, the office of a free citizen. Switzerland, with its Communes, fully answers Aristotle’s definition of a state, as “the association of clans and village communities in a complete and self-sufficing life.” Small bodies are more closely united and more vigorous in the pursuit of their end than large communities; this results from their leading more easily to personal friendships, and from the circumstance that, in a limited circle, men are brought more frequently and immediately into contact with one another. By this means their sympathetic feelings become more deeply interested in the common welfare; they see more clearly that they are pursuing a common object, and perceive the importance of vigorous co-operation on the part of each member of the association. Amid so small a number, each person feels that his single vote and exertions are of consequence, and the thought of this excites in him a sense of responsibility, and inspires him with a more lively interest in that government of which he himself is an efficient member. Every man who fills a communal station, however humble, is conscious that he is playing his part in the presence of the whole miniature republic, and that his conduct is every moment exposed to a minute and jealous scrutiny. By all these circumstances public virtue is stimulated, corruption checked, mutual sympathy heightened, patriotic zeal inflamed, and the union of public with private interests clearly and substantially demonstrated. “It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected. Were not this great country already divided into States, that division must be made, that each might do for itself what concerns itself directly, and what it can so much better do than a distant authority. Every State again is divided into counties, each to take care of what lies within its local bounds; each county again into townships or wards, to manage minuter details; and every ward into farms, to be governed each by its individual owner. It is by this partition of cares, descending in gradation from general to particular, that the mass of human affairs may be best managed for the good and prosperity of all.”[56] CHAPTER X. CITIZENSHIP.