He may, indeed,
offer to the citizens of other States his advice as to their
management, and the form in which it is tendered is left to his
own discretion and sense of propriety. It may be observed,
however, that organized associations of citizens requiring
compliance with their wishes too much resemble the recommendations
of Athens to her allies, supported by an armed and powerful fleet.
It was, indeed, to the ambition of the leading States of Greece to
control the domestic concerns of the others that the destruction
of that celebrated Confederacy, and subsequently of all its
members, is mainly to be attributed, and it is owing to the
absence of that spirit that the Helvetic Confederacy has for so
many years been preserved. Never has there been seen in the
institutions of the separate members of any confederacy more
elements of discord. In the principles and forms of government and
religion, as well as in the circumstances of the several Cantons,
so marked a discrepancy was observable as to promise anything but
harmony in their intercourse or permanency in their alliance, and
yet for ages neither has been interrupted. Content with the
positive benefits which their union produced, with the
independence and safety from foreign aggression which it secured,
these sagacious people respected the institutions of each other,
however repugnant to their own principles and prejudices.
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