The members of the Assembly practically enjoy a life-tenure; once chosen a member, one is likely to be re-elected so long as he is willing to serve. Re-election, alike in the whole Confederation and in the single Canton, is the rule; rejection of a sitting member, a rare exception. Death and voluntary retirement accounted for nineteen out of twenty-one new members at the last general election. There are members who have served continuously since the organization of the Assembly in 1848. Referring to this sure tenure of officials generally, the President of the Confederation, in a public address, said, “Facts and not persons are what interest us. If you were to take ten Swiss, every one of them would know whether the country was well governed or not; but I venture to say that nine of them would not be able to tell the name of the President, and the tenth, who might think he knew it, would be mistaken.” To some extent this remarkable retention of members of the Assembly may be ascribed to the fact that the people feel that they are masters of the situation through the power of rejecting all measures which are put to the popular vote. The position of a member is haloed with dignity, and is not a place sought from material motives, a perquisite more than an honor. The absence of this fiscal view of the office of the legislator brings in its train an equal absence of the “rotation” notion. The Assembly is not made up on the theory of mutation or by agencies more malign. Some are fond of declaring against the caprice and ingratitude of the people, says Mr. Freeman in his “Growth of the English Constitution,” and of telling us that under a democratic government neither men nor measures can remain for an hour unchanged. The spirit which made democratic Athens, year by year, bestow her highest offices on the patrician Pericles and the reactionary Phocion, still lives in the democracies of Switzerland, in the _Landsgemeinde_ of Uri, and the Federal Assembly at Bern. The ministers of kings, whether despotic or constitutional, may vainly envy the sure tenure of office which falls to the lot of those who are chosen to rule by the voice of the people. Grote, who wrote his “History of Greece” in Switzerland, stated that his interest in the Swiss Cantons arose from the analogy they presented to the ancient Greek states; and specially as confirming the tendency of popular governments to adhere to their leaders with the utmost tenacity of attachment.