II. Postal and telegraphic affairs.

The competence of the empire with respect to these matters was subject to certain limitations: "1. Hamburg and Bremen, for the time being, were excluded from the tariff legislation, as free ports. 2. In Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Baden, the beer and brandy tax was reserved for the special legislation of these States; and the same was true of the beer tax in the province of AlsaceLorraine. 3. Bavaria and Würtemberg manage independently their postal and telegraphic affairs in accordance with certain principles established by imperial legislation. 4. Both States enjoy, with respect to military affairs, certain exceptional rights. 5. With reference to Bavaria, the legislation relating to residence and colonization has no application, as that relating to railways has only a limited application."

1

The doctrine of the Swiss constitution on this point is that the cantons are sovereign in so far as their sovereignty is not limited by the federal constitution, and, as such, they exercise all the rights which are not delegated to the federal power. In the Act of Mediation and in the drafts of 1832 and 1833, it was required that the general government should exercise only such powers as were expressly delegated, as was the

1 De Grais, "Handbuch der Verfassung und Verwaltung in Preussen und dem deutschen Reiche." 11-13.

2 Article 3.

case under the Articles of Confederation in America. But in forming the constitution of 1848, the word “expressément" was omitted, just as the corresponding word had been omitted in forming the present Constitution of the United States, and with respect to this point the rule of these two constitutions is the same. The power of the general government of Switzerland, like that of the United States, "extends not merely to those affairs which are turned over to it by the exact words of the constitution itself, but also to the relations whose control by the central government appears as a necessity for its performance of the duties devolving upon it.”1

1 Blumer, I, 178.

Of the several governmental departments in a federal state, the legislative is the most conspicuous, although co-ordinate with the executive and judicial departments, and deriving its authority from a source of power common to all. In the federal state, "there are not only organized individual States but also a completely organized central and common state,"1 and the legislature of the central and common state is so constituted as to take account of the whole body of the people who make up the nation, and of the individual States within the larger or

1 Bluntschli, "Geschichte des schw. Bundesrechtes." I, 562. The distinctive characteristics of a federal government, as indicated by Arosemena, are: (1) "That the entities now united may have had an individual life previously, which they preserve while they delegate to a government general and common the functions which are necessary to constitute nationality; (2) that the sectional government be maintained independent of the national and common government, both in its formation and in its development." "Estudios Constitucionales," I, 199.

ganism. Although the citizens of the whole nation are represented in the lower house, yet they are represented not as one body, but as several individual groups whose geographical limits are the limits of the several States. When it is provided that there shall be one representative for every fifty thousand inhabitants, and for each fraction of this number not less than twenty thousand, as in Colombia, or for each twenty-five thousand and fraction of at least twelve thousand, as in Venezuela, or for each twenty thousand and fraction of at least ten thousand, as in the Argentine Republic and Switzerland, or for each forty thousand and each fraction of at least twenty thousand, as in Mexico, or for each one hundred thousand and fraction of at least fifty thousand, as in the German Empire, the number to be divided by the number required for each representative is the number of the inhabitants of each of the several States, and the fraction is the remainder after such division.' Thus the

1 Under the Constitution of the United States "the number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each State shall have at least one Representative." Awaiting the first enumeration of the inhabitants, which was required to be made "within three years after the first meeting of the Congress," an apportionment of the Representatives to be elected was made among the several States in such a manner that New Hampshire was entitled to choose three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania

individuality of the States is not set aside even in the organization of that legislative body which stands as the direct representative of the people.

The conditions of the suffrage under which the members of the lower house are elected in the several countries already considered, are (1) determined in a general way by the federal constitution, leaving details to be fixed by law, as in Switzerland, Canada, and the German Empire, or (2) left by that instrument to be determined by federal legislation, as in Mexico and the Argentine Republic, or (3) left to the free determination of the several States, as in Colombia, Venezuela, and the United States. Under the Swiss constitution, elections for members of the lower house are direct, and are held in federal districts that are subdivisions of the cantons. eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three (Art. I, Sec. 2). The ratio of representation in the House of Representatives has, however, been changed with each successive census, except the second, as shown by the following tabular account:From 1789 to 1792 according to Constitution..

30,000