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The Swiss Council are not the leaders so much as the experienced agents of the Swiss people. The Councillors are selected for capacity; hence the continuance in office of men recommended by the possession of experience. The Swiss Council is never permanently at variance with the Assembly, and never retires on account of a parliamentary defeat.

ADDITIONAL EXTRACTS RELATIVE TO SWITZERLAND. Wlien a Minister failed, in 1882, to carry a measure relating to education, there was no question of his giving in his resignation, and a Swiss paper, opposed to him in politics, remarked that it was lucky the parliamentary system did not exist in Switzerland, as otherwise there would have been an immediate resignation of a capable, honest, and devoted administrator. — Edinburgh Bevieio, 1890. In Switzerland the national finances are prosperous, and the country is not overburdened by a national debt. Education has permeated every class. . . . Among a people traditionally disposed to lawlessness, complete liberty has been made compatible with order, and theological animosities, which for centuries have been the special bane of the Confederacy, have been assuaged or removed by the healing influence of religious freedom and equality. Switzerland has an army of 200,000 men, which is enormous if measured by the resources of the Confederacy. Switzerland contains all those sources of division which have dismembered greater States. The Swiss are from one point of view not so much a nation as a league of twenty-two nations. They possess no common language : German, French, and Italian are each in official use. "Swiss democracy has met and triumphed over all the obstacles to national unity arising from differences of race, from religious discord, from historical animosities, and from the difficulty inherent in federalism of reconciling national authority with State rights. With the matter of education, wrote Mr. (now Sir) Horace Eumbold, when Secretary of Legation at Berne, the Swiss people manifest a veritable passion, and it is a thing worthy of sincere admiration—though but natural, perhaps, in the land that gave birth to Eousseau, Pestalozzi, Fellenberg, and others—-to note what heavy self-imposed pecuniary sacrifices they cheerfully make to the cause. The public foundations, the private gifts, the State contributions devoted to education by this otherwise thrifty, close-fisted race, may be truly said to be noble in the extreme. The Swiss parent looks upon the schoolhouse not merely as the place where his children are educated and fitted to make their way in the world, but as a political nursery where many of those doctrines cherished by the staunch republican are developed and fostered. — Edinburgh Bevieiv, 1890. The President of the Swiss Eepublic said in a public meeting, " Facts and not persons are what interest us. If you were to take ten Swiss, every one of them would know whether the country was well governed or not. But I venture to say that nine of them would not be able to tell the name of the President, and the tenth, who might think that he knew it, would be mistaken." It is impossible to define with any clearness the party lines, the political complexion of the National Council being about eighty Eadical Democrats, forty Conservatives, and twenty-five Ultramontanes. These party divisions seldom appear in the deliberations of the Assembly, there being a substantial unanimity on most public questions and general policy of legislation. When in session they impress the observer as business men consulting informally about the common interests with an entire absence of oratory, questions of privilege, points of order, or parliamentary tactics; they talk and vote, and there is an end of it. . . . Considering the scope of the powers exercised by the Swiss Federal Assembly very little popular interest seems to be taken in the election of the members, for it exercises a power far greater than that which belongs probably to any Legislative Assembly. . . . There is no other country where the direct popular vote has the same authority as here in the choice of its representatives.— Mr. Winchester to Mr. Bayard, re Government, Swiss. Approximate Cost of Paper.— Preparation (ail); printing (1,400 copies), ill.

By Authority: Geokge Didsbuby, Government Printer, Wellington.—lB9l. Pries 'id.]