“If one man rule, he will rule for his own benefit and that of his parasites; if a minority rule, we have many masters instead of one, all of whom must be fed and served; and if the majority rule, and rule wrongfully, why the minimum of harm is done.” CHAPTER II. THE CONSTITUTION. “On the main-land only two little spots at the two extremities of the old Teutonic world came out of the mediæval crucible with their self-government substantially intact. At the mouth of the Rhine, the little Dutch communities were prepared to lead the attack in the terrible battle for freedom with which the drama of modern history was ushered in. In the impregnable mountain fastnesses of upper Germany, the Swiss Cantons had bid defiance alike to Austrian tyrant and to Burgundian invader, and had preserved in its purest form the rustic democracy of their Aryan forefathers. By a curious coincidence, both these free peoples in their efforts towards national unity were led to frame federal unions, and one of these political achievements is from the stand-point of universal history of very great significance.”[14] Writers, as a rule, properly consider a federal government, owing to its nice balances in regard to a division of power between the union and the members, and in regard to the conflicting interests of the parts, as a peculiarly delicate and almost unadjustable framework. “The federative system,” says Guizot, “is one which evidently requires the greatest maturity of reason, of morality, of civilization in the society to which it is applied.” The two poles of a federal government are independent action of the members in certain things, and a central power or government which in certain things is equally independent. The aim is to gain the advantages of the concentrated power of great states, while retaining the advantages of local interest found in small states. On the one hand, each of the members of the union must be wholly independent in those matters which concern each member only. On the other hand, all must be subject to a common power in those matters which concern the whole body of members collectively. Switzerland represents the happy outcome of the first attempt at such a federal union made by men of Teutonic descent. Complete independence in local affairs combined with adequate representation in the Federal Council has effected such an intense cohesion of interests throughout the nation as no centralized government, however cunningly devised, would ever have secured. The constitutional history of the confederation is a study in federalism. First a mere defensive alliance or league;[15] then a _Staatenbund_, or permanent alliance of several small states, to which the term confederacy nearly corresponds; then a _Bundesstaat_, or an organized state with central legislative, executive, and judicial departments, which answers substantially to the term federation as usually employed, and as realized in the Constitution of 1848, and