There is also an entire absence from the Swiss Constitution of any provisions touching those personal rights and ancient muniments of liberty designated as the “Bill of Rights;” such as are contained in the first ten amendments of the Constitution of the United States; those fundamental principles that guarantee to the individual a sphere of liberty upon which the government may not encroach; a branch of constitutional law which it has been the peculiar province of American political science to develop. This omission from the Swiss Constitution may have been for the same reason that it occurred in the original Constitution of the United States; that these rights were sufficiently implied and understood in any system of free government. These cardinal rights are claimed by the Swiss to be expressly provided for in the Cantonal constitutions. Again, it is held that all these inherent and indefeasible rights are amply secured by the article of the Federal Constitution requiring the organic law of the Cantons to “insure the exercise of political rights after republican forms.” Hamilton met the objection to the Constitution of the United States containing no “Bill of Rights,” in the “Federalist” (No. 84), by saying, “Bills of rights are, in their origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects, abridgments of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservation of rights not surrendered to the prince. It is evident, therefore, that, according to their primitive signification, they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here in strictness the people surrender nothing; and as they retain everything they have no need of particular reservations.” But Jefferson expressed the prevalent opinion when he wrote, “The executive in our governments is not the sole, it is scarcely the principal, object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislatures is the most formidable dread at present, and will be for many years.” These restraints upon legislative power have proven most fortunate ones in the United States; for the provision, “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” together with those provisions which forbid the taking of private property for public use without just compensation, and the enactment of laws impairing the obligation of contracts, lies at the foundation of all constitutional protection of private rights in the citizen. Thus a body of constitutional law has been formed which is not yet completely crystallized, but is being daily shaped by the decisions of the courts. In annexing the “Bill of Rights,” the founders of the government may not have had a correct idea as to what would be the full effect of its provisions, but the object they had in view was perfectly clear. They believed that wherever power was placed, it was liable to be abused.