others a regenerate nation, was still an old nation; above all things a system was needed which should preserve everything and jeopardize nothing. She seized on a rare and happy moment, when all the despots of Europe had enough to do at home, to reform her constitution without foreign intermeddling; and she formed a system which exactly suits the position of a small, free, conservative power, ready as ever to defend its own, but neither capable nor desirous of aggrandizement at the expense of others. The Swiss have a way of keeping their current history to themselves; or the outside world has a way of not asking for it, which is much the same thing. They are unique among civilized people for the extreme modesty of their claim upon the attention of mankind. This might imply the highest qualities or the lowest; but no one who knows anything of the little republic will doubt to which of them it is to be assigned. She lives, moves, and works without fuss or friction; and is constantly solving in her own way some of the hardest problems of politics. She has found out how to maintain perfect peace between diverse races and conflicting creeds; to adjust and harmonize discordant views and principles; and preserve to the several elements of the confederacy a due proportion of constitutional authority. This difficult task has been accomplished, not indeed without frictions, not without armed collisions, and not until after many trials and experiments; but it has been done, and on the whole successfully. Nothing is so easy as to find fault in every form of government, and nothing so hard as to show a perfect one reduced to practice. Most of the plans of government seem to have been formed like houses built at several times; for as the old parts of them always deface the new and render them irregular, so upon the establishment of any new frame something of the old is still preserved and enters into the frame of the new, which is not of a piece with it, and consequently spoils its symmetry. No one can look closely into the Constitution of Switzerland and fail to discover that, in its provisions, the principles of a democratic confederation find the elements of sound and vigorous health. Enlightened freedom, governed and secured by law, upholds the fabric of the Constitution; salubrious streams issuing from education and patriotism, consecrated by religion, mingle with each other, and unite in diffusing fertility through every channel of the state. The everlasting league still lives on, to shame the novel and momentary devices of the kingdoms and commonwealths which rise and fall around it.[29] CHAPTER III. THE FEDERAL ASSEMBLY. Bundesversammlung; Assemblée fédérale. “A legislative, and an executive, and a judicial power comprehend the whole of what is meant by government.”[30] We find in Switzerland this general division of powers, with many interesting and instructive peculiarities, which give the Swiss federalism an individual character.