nton the service, managed
irrespective of federal needs, was costly, and Swiss postal systems, as
compared with those of France and Germany, were notoriously behindhand.

_Banking._

While the Confederation coins the metallic money current in the country,
it is forbidden by the constitution to monopolize the issue of notes or
guarantee the circulation of any bank. For the past ten years, however,
it has controlled the circulation of the banks, the amount of their
reserve fund, and the publication of their reports.[H] The latter may be
called for at the discretion of the executive council, in fact even
daily.

[Footnote H: A vote, October 18, 1891, made note-issuing a federal
monopoly.]

There are thirty-five banks of issue doing business under cantonal law.
Of these, eighteen, known as cantonal banks, either are managed or have
their notes guaranteed by the respective cantons. Thus, while banking
and money-issuing are free, the cantonal banks insure a requisite note
circulation, minimizing the rate of interest and reducing its
fluctuations. The setting up of cantonal banks, in order to withdraw
privileges from licensed banks, was one of the public questions agitated
by social reformers and decided in several of the cantons by direct
legislation.

_Taxes._

The framework of this little volume does not admit so much as an
outline of the various methods of taxation practiced in Switzerland. As
in all countries, they are complex. But certain significant results of
direct legislation are to be pointed out. In all the cantons there is a
strong tendency to raise revenue from direct, as opposed to indirect,
taxes, and from progressive taxation according to fortune. The
following, from an editorial in the "Christian Union," February 12,
1891, so justly and briefly puts the facts that I prefer printing it
rather than words of my own, which might lie under suspicion of being
tinged with the views of a radical: "With the democratic revolution of
1830 the people demanded that direct taxation should be introduced, and
since the greater revolution of 1848 they have been steadily replacing
the indirect taxes upon necessities by direct taxes upon wealth. In
Zurich, for example--where in the first part of this century there were
no direct taxes--in 1832 indirect taxation supplied four-fifths of the
local revenue; to-day it supplies but one-seventeenth. The canton raises
thirty-two francs per capita by direct taxation where it