Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/304



study of the formation of Switzerland in its national, institutional, and social aspect from pagan and druidic days to our own, while showing the survival of certain pagan and druidic customs, shows too that the descendants of the four Helvetic nations and of the ancient Rauracians who form the present Swiss nation borrowed their social and political civilisation neither from the Romans, nor from the Franco-Latins, nor from the Germans.

Is it a simple chance, or is it through the influence of their habitat, that the Swiss, surrounded and modified by great nations whose political and social institutions always were arbitrary, have realised in the government of their communes, their cantons, and their nation, an ideal of arbitration that is the envy of other democracies which, decked with the name of republics, are bowed under the yoke of irresponsible oligarchies that are a retrogression from monarchy?

Not in the legends of the more or less mythical father of the Swiss country can be found the explanation of the  democratic institutions governing Helvetia. William Tell VOL. III.