There are few principles of action which are more immediately beneficial to society, and which have received more assiduous cultivation, than _love of country_. The Swiss regards his country with the tenderness of filial affection, and, like the undiscerning lover, fondly gazes without discrimination upon its beauties and its deformities.[13] Enamored of their rocks, ice, and snow, they look on milder climates and more fruitful plains without one envious emotion. Deeper down even than the deep-seated differences of race, language, and creed lies the feeling that comes from the common possession of a political freedom that is greater than that possessed by surrounding peoples: this is the enduring bond of the Confederation. Switzerland has demonstrated that democracies are not necessarily short-lived. The short-lived glory of Athens and its subjection under the rough foot of the astute Macedonian was not the result of too much freedom, but because the Greek states had too little unity. In Switzerland republican institutions can claim to have been fairly tried and thoroughly succeeded. Dating from the perpetual Alliance of 1291, the Confederation now counts six centuries; living through many forms of government, feudal, clerical, imperial, radical, the League of Cantons never ceased to be a union of republics, and is the only federal government which has come down from mediæval times to our own day. We see that the Swiss have lasted well, “for utility is their bond and not respects.” While in some European countries very anomalous forms of government have assumed the republican name, it is gratifying to observe that there is at least one European state in which republicanism is a fact and a living force properly understood and properly practised, uniting with as large a measure of individual liberty all the advantages of careful and judicious legislation, economy in the administration, and justice in the execution of the laws to as high a degree as can be found in any country. Every man is free; every child educated; the sovereign power resides in hands that defend it in danger and adorn it in peace; a common faith that love of country, “all for each and each for all,” is better than a love of self pervades the entire population. Amid powerful monarchies there is a state without king or nobles, with a well-developed system of democratic institutions, admirably suited to the genius of the people and administered with the economy, the wisdom, and the consistency of a well-regulated family. There the problem of a free commonwealth was first solved, and popular government first made possible. There are presented some of the most striking examples of democracy in its simplest form, and of carefully-contrived and durable republican institutions, to be found in the annals of political history. There is a government based on the simple but sound philosophy expounded in the homely observations of the honest old boatman of Geneva, Jean Desclaux,