Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE One might naturally expect that a people long tutored under such conditions as those which have just been described would develop some striking, if not altogether peculiar, features of character, and such has indeed been the case with the Swiss. They have, through the gradual evolution of the centuries, worked out a political constitution which is in its way quite unique. Although the world has seen, and has still before its eyes, other experiments in democratic government, there is nothing in existence, or to be found in the records of history, at all like what we see in Switzerland. Moreover, the interesting point is—to Englishmen, at least—that the Swiss constitution, like that of Great Britain, has been one of slow and step-by-step growth. Beginning, so to speak, in a single germ, it has, by a method analogous to that witnessed in other organized bodies, gradually developed new powers and differentiated functions, in accordance with the demands of the time and the increasing complexity of modern life. It is curious to note that the future Swiss Confederation took its rise at the issue of the gorges of the St. Gothard, almost at the very heart, therefore, of theAlpine region. For here is situated the ancient village of Altdorf, still the chief town of the rude people of Uri, who take the bull for the symbol of their strength, and who, along with their neighbours of Schwyz and Unter- walden, with bull-like force and endurance withstood through the centuries every attack upon their homes and pastures, and upon the fires of liberty they had kindled upon their hearth-stones. Here, on the 1st of August, 1291, the people of these mountain fastnesses formed a perpetual alliance for the defence of their several local rights and privilege...