Catholic magistrates having turned out some Protestant ministers, so serious a quarrel ensued between the two communions, that other Cantons were called in as mediators; to restore peace they resorted to a sort of political divorcement; the Canton was divided between the two parties, and a river marked the boundary; the Catholics passed on one side and the Protestants on the other, selling or exchanging reciprocally their fields and houses. The separation in Basel took place in February, 1832; the city of Basel maintained that the country people should either accept the constitution which pronounced them dependent and inferior, or renounce all connection with her: in vain the Diet protested against this division, but the city persisted in the separation rather than put itself on a level with the peasants. Only in one case, that of Basel, was the division accompanied by any violence. There is not a great difference between the population of the halves in the Cantons of Basel and Unterwalden; the urban half, of the former, having an excess of 12,000, and Obwald, of the latter, 3000; but the population of Ausser-Rhoden is four and a half times that of Inner-Rhoden. There is a wide diversity in the area of these several half-Cantons, not easily accounted for, except in the case of Basel, where one-half is composed of the city of Basel. Each half-Canton keeps its own share of sovereign power; each is practically complete in its state autonomy, the original cantonal integral having little recognition beyond the representation in the Council of States. In that body the members from these half-Cantons display, more or less, the antagonism which originally led to the division of their Cantons; Catholic Appenzell is almost certain to oppose Protestant Appenzell; so with all of the members from the fractional Cantons, they are arrayed on different sides of all local questions, seriously impairing their influence. In extent, population, and wealth, the Cantons are about equal to a county; still, each is one of the twenty-two confederate states. The official order of the Cantons corresponds with the historical date of their entry into the Confederation, except that Zurich, Bern, and Luzern, after joining the league of small Cantons, were placed at the head. Uri occupies the first place in chronological order, and anciently Luzern took the lead, but when Zurich entered the Confederation, as an imperial city, in 1351, it displaced Luzern by virtue of its great wealth; and two years later Bern joined the league, and was awarded the second place on account of its military power. The standards of the three original Cantons are very suggestive of their history. The one of Uri represents a bull’s head, with the broken links of the yoke hanging around the neck; that of Schwyz a cross, the double symbol of suffering and deliverance; and the banner of Unterwalden bears two keys, symbolical of the keys of the apostle St.