Nowhere does the chief magistrate hold the independent position of an American State governor, but, like the President of the Confederation, is mere chairman of the council. The salary paid the members of the executive council is from three to five thousand francs a year. This Council proposes laws and decrees to the Greater Council, and watches over the maintenance of public tranquillity and security, as well as over the execution of the laws, decrees, and regulations of the Greater Council. It administers the funds of the state; appoints those executive and administrative functionaries who are immediately subordinate to it, and watches over them; it has also the higher surveillance of the communal administrations, the poor, the schools, and the churches. The qualification for a member of the executive or Lesser Council is the same as that of the Greater Council; and in both instances it is uniformly limited to active citizens and laymen, and they are re-eligible without limit. The executive council in the larger Cantons is represented, in districts established for the purpose, by _Prefects_, or _Regierungsstatthalter_, or _Statthalter_, who, associated with two Councillors, compose a commission for many purposes. Although agents of the executive council, they are not always appointed by it, but sometimes by the Greater Council, and often directly by the people. The constitutions of most of the Cantons say that the legislative, executive, and judicial functions shall be kept distinct; yet in practice the line of demarcation is often ignored. The legislative bodies are given an important share both in the administration and interpretation of the laws. As in the federal, so in the cantonal constitutions, there is not to be found that delicate adjustment of the political forces, forming so conspicuous a feature in the national as well as in the State system of the United States; that great ingenuity and skill in the contrivances which prevent the different representative bodies from being mere fac-similes of each other, and at the same time preserve their equality in point of power. A cantonal constitution usually opens with the declaration that the “sovereignty resides in the people as a whole” (“_auf der Gresammtheit des Volks beruhe_”); and then follows the further declaration that the people, by virtue of that sovereignty, “give it [the Canton] the following constitution;” also that this sovereignty is to be “directly exerted by the active citizens and only indirectly by the magistrates and officials;” that “the people exercise the legislative power in co-operation with the cantonal council” (referring to the right of _Initiative_ and _Referendum_); and that in this “it is the duty of every citizen to participate.” All the cantonal constitutions contain, in a more or less explicit and elaborate manner, provisions of this nature, viz.: