Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/476

440 and Uri. The same system is carried out, somewhat less directly, in the cantons of Graublinden and Wallis, which possess legislative bodies, but limited so far that they must submit all their acts to the people for confirmation or refusal. There are three other cantons, St. Gall, Luzern, and Thurgau, in which the citizens possess a veto power under certain conditions. In all the remaining cantons, the people delegates its sovereignty to a body chosen by universal suffrage, called the Grosse Rath, which exercises all the functions of the Landesgemeinde. The members of these bodies, as well as most of the magistrates, are either honorary servants of their fellow- citizens, or receive a merely nominal salary. There is no class of paid permanent officials existing, either in connection with the cantonal administrations, or the general government of the republic.

Church and Education.

The population of Switzerland is divided between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, about 59 per cent, of the inhabitants adhering to the former, and 41 per cent, to the latter. According to the census of December 10, 1860, the number of Protestants amounted to 1,476,982; of Roman Catholics to 1,023,430; of various Christian sects to 5,866; and of Jews to 4,216. By the forty-fourth article of the constitution, 'all Christian sects are tolerated;' but with the proviso, stipulated in the fifty-eighth article, that 'the order of the Jesuits is rigorously excluded from every part of the republic.' The Roman Catholic priests are much more numerous than the Protestant clergy, the former comprising more than 6,000 regular and secular priests. They are under five bishops, of Basel, Chur, St. Gall, Lausanne, and Sion. The government of the Protestant Church, Calvinistic in principle and Presbyterian in form, is under the supervision of the magistrates of the various cantons, to whom is also entrusted, in the Protestant districts, the superintendence of public instruction.

Education is very widely diffused through Switzerland, particularly in the north-eastern cantons, Avhere the vast majority of inhabitants are Protestants. In these cantons, the proportion of school-attending children to the whole population is as one to five; while in the half Protestant and half Roman-Catholic cantons it is as one to seven ; and in the entire Roman- Catholic cantons as one to nine. Parents are by law compelled to send their children to school, or have them privately taught, from the age of six to that of twelve years ; and neglect may be punished by fine, and, in some cases, by imprisonment. The law is not always enforced in the Roman-