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Updated: June 20, 2025
The principles of the Initiative and Referendum have of recent years been extended so as to apply, to a greater or lesser extent, not only to cantonal affairs in cantons far too large for the Landsgemeinde, but to certain affairs of the Swiss Confederation, comprising three million inhabitants.
That of Uri declares: "Whatever the Landsgemeinde, within the limits of its competence, ordains, is law of the land, and as such shall be obeyed," but: "The guiding principle of the Landsgemeinde shall be justice and the welfare of the fatherland, not willfulness nor the power of the strongest."
The chief elements of their political freedom the Initiative and Referendum came from the Landsgemeinde cantons. From the same source, in good time, so also may come to all Switzerland the prime element of economic freedom free access to land. Poverty is a relative condition. Men may be poor of mind ignorant; and of body ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-sheltered; and of rights dependent.
In the town hall are shown the tattered flags carried by the warriors of Uri in the early battles of the Confederation, the mace and sword of state which are borne by the beadles to the Landsgemeinde. In a somewhat inaccessible corner, a few houses off, the beginnings of a museum have been made.
"You will have an opportunity to see more of my parish than you can possibly see on a Sabbath occasion. I visit them as often as I can, and twice a year I receive them at my own house. The 'Weihnachtsgeschenk' is looked forward to with great pleasure, and the meeting of the Landsgemeinde in April is sure to bring my people together."
The articles were reprinted in book form in Brussels, and other works on the subject were afterward issued by Rittinghausen and his co-worker Victor Considérant. The cantonal Initiative was almost unknown outside the Landsgemeinde when it was established in Zurich in 1869. The people had grown tired of being beheaded by the office-holders after every election."
The pay of members ranges from sixty cents to $1.20 per day. The legislative bodies are large; the ratio in five cantons is one legislator to every 1,000 inhabitants; in twelve it ranges from one to 187 up to one to 800, and in the remaining five from one to 1,000 to one to 2,000. The Landsgemeinde cantons usually have fifty to sixty members; Geneva, with 20,000 voters, has a hundred.
In many communes, where they are mostly wooded, they are entirely in charge of the local government; in others, they are in part leased to individuals; in others, much of them is worked in common by the citizens having the right; but in the Landsgemeinde cantons it is customary to divide them periodically among the members of the corporation.
Of the Landsgemeinde cantons, one or two yet have nearly as great an area of public land as of private. The canton of Uri has nearly 1,000 acres of cultivated lands, the distribution of which gives about a quarter of an acre to each family entitled to a share. Uri has also forest lands worth between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 francs, representing a capital of nearly 1,500 francs to each family.
As is to be seen in the following chapter, in the management of natural monopolies the democratic Swiss, beyond any other people, have attained justice, and consequently have distributed much of their increasing wealth with an approach to equity; while in the system of communal lands practiced in the Landsgemeinde cantons is found an example to land reformers throughout the world.
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