Almost everywhere deliberative assemblies remain too long together: they irritate and weary the country; sometimescommunicating to it the passions by which they are themselves animated, and sometimes arousing an extreme movement inopposition when they have ceased to represent piblic opinion. When the assemblies are prorogued, the country is at rest, anddevotes itself to business, to art, literature, industry or commerce. Scarcely, however, have parliamentary discussionsrecommenced when everything is once more called in question: exasperated parties are at issue; and the government,compelled to devote its whole power in warding off the attacks of its adversaries, has no time to consider questions ofgeneral interest. The passions of the nation are aroused over contests in which a portfolio is the prize. The parliamentarysystem thus degenerates into contests of intrigue in the chambers, and contests of influence, too often corrupt, in theelections. America, Germany, and England have been preserved from the abuse of parliamentarianism, which, in France andItaly, has become an absolute cause of disorder. The best means of escaping it is to reduce the functions of the central powerby extending those of local powers, -- of the province, that is to say, and the commune.
In Switzerland, the communes enjoy almost absolute autonomy. They not only frame their own regulations, but even theirown constitution, so long as it is not contrary to the laws of the State. They administer independently everything relating totheir schools, churches, to the police, the roads, and the care of the poor. They have free power of nominating all theirofficers, and of fixing their local taxation. The State only meddles with the communal administration so far as to preserve thehereditary patrimony of the commune from destruction, and to prevent the violation of general laws. The interference of thecentral power is rather greater in certain cantons, such as Fribourg, Geneva and Berne; in others, such as Appenzell and theGrisons, it is reduced to nearly nothing. The State is only a federation of independent communes, which existed before itsbirth, and can live without it. The central power exercises no administrative control over the local authorities; the violationof a general law is the only ground for its interference. It can only reach the citizens through the medium of the communes;and it is the latter which vote the taxes and pass the laws, the establishment of which belongs to the people, in virtue of theConstitution. Decentralization here is excessive. Communal federalism pushed to this extreme degree takes away allconsistency from the State, and reduces the nation to dust. As Tocqueville has demonstrated, the superiority of the UnitedStates' constitution consists in the fact, that, while the independence of the federated states is respected, the central power,for the duties which it has reserved towards itself, addresses the citizens directly, by means of its own agents, nominated anddistributed by itself. (3)
The reason that the republican system is so firmly established in Switzerland is, that it has its roots in minute districts. If forcenturies it has been a guarantee alike of order and liberty, this is due to the fact that, most matters of public interest beingdecided in the commune, the changes, which elections bring about in the composition of the government, exercise only asecondary influence. It is impossible to found a republic, as has been attempted in France, by maintaining a centralization,which leaves in the hands of an assembly or a president the power of deciding everything. A civilized country can nevertolerate a system, which, at every general election, and at every renewing of the executive power, once more calls intoquestion the whole political and social organization. If all the organs of national sovereignty are to be elective, some limitmust be put on their authority, and some restraint on the functions of the central power. In the United States, as inSwitzerland, the commune, or township, is the principal focus of political and administrative life. In the township most of thecommon interests are managed. The State is composed of a union of independent and autonomic townships, just as livingcreatures are made up of an infinite number of connected cells, each of which is endowed with individual activity.
The characteristic distinguishing the Swiss commune from the American commune, and imparting to it a much greaterimportance, is that it is not merely a political and administrative institution; it is also an economical institution. It does notsimply give its members abstract rights; it procures them also in some measure the means of existence. As elsewhere, itsupplies the expenses of the school, the church, the police and the roads; but more than this, it secures to its members theenjoyment of property, the essential condition of true liberty and independence. This curious aspect of the primitive Swisscommunal organization we will endeavour to describe.
We have seen how, in all nations, by a slow and universally similar evolution, the commune and property were developed inthe mark . The mark we have seen was the common domain of the clan. Under the pastoral system, the enjoyment of thepasturage and forest was undivided. Each patriarchal family cut the wood necessary for its wants, hunted its game in theforest, and sent its cattle on to the pasture land.
