Excerpt from The Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation: September 12, 1848; With Art, XLI and XLVIII as Amended January 14, 1866 To a native of Switzerland nothing could be more gratifying than to notice the frequent manifestations of popular sympathy in England and the United States, toward the country where republicanism has maintained a foot-hold for the last five hundred years. Having thus the love of country so innate in a Swiss, almost daily stimulated by the many encomiums bestowed upon the land of his birth, its scenery, institutions, and people, the translator was induced to think a rendering into English of the instrument which so effectually cemented into a general whole the varied interests of twenty-two distinct governments, could not but prove acceptable to its Anglo-Saxon admirers. It was considered irrelevant to give a detailed account of the causes which led to the adoption of the present excellent Constitution, as it would occupy a space wholly disproportionate to the nature of the present publication; suffice it to slay, that prior to 1848, Switzerland was only governed by the very inadequate laws of a Confederacy similar to those of the United Spates previous to the framing of their Constitution, in 1787. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.