established Church, supported and ruled by the civil magistrate. In recent times free churches have been founded in Geneva, Neuchâtel, and Vaud, and are showing a high degree of spiritual vitality and liberality. It would be better if it could work out an entire dissolution of the connection between Church and State throughout the Confederation, and religion be allowed to take its natural course. The Constitution of Switzerland is a conscious and sagacious reproduction of the Constitution of the United States, with noteworthy variations called for by the different conditions of the two commonwealths. The Government of the United States is one of limited and enumerated powers; “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The restrictions under the Swiss Constitution apply mostly to the Cantons. In Switzerland, as in the United States, there is no single determinate sovereign body or assembly, or any real sovereign other than the people themselves. In the Swiss Confederation the popular will does everything; the legislative power being directly exercised by the body of the people by way of _Referendums_. In the Republic of France the tendency is to centralize the direction of public affairs almost entirely in the Chamber of Deputies. In the United States it is claimed, with some color of truth, that the initiative and legislation are being gradually taken away from Congress by a very occult, but authoritative, government of committees. The separation of persons and functions is most complete in the United States; the Constitution enforcing a distribution of powers, and directly or indirectly the powers of every authority existing under it are defined, limited, and carefully regulated. In the Swiss Constitution these respective powers are not at all clearly distinguished; in fact, they seem to have been purposely left indeterminate. There are none of the elaborate checks and interlocking vetoes found in the United States. It is true the Swiss have the three organs,--a Federal Legislature, a Federal Executive, and a Federal Court; but they fail in the strict separation of each of these departments from and its independence of the other. Said John Adams, “Here is a complication and refinement of balances, which for anything I recollect, is an invention of our own and peculiar to us.”