[45] A common standard of weights and measures was adopted in 1835, but the question of the coinage remained unsettled until 1848.
[46] It was customary, formerly, to deduct from five to ten per cent. from all property going out of the Canton by inheritance or marriage. It was also usual, when a person wished to sell land, to recognize a right in his relatives, or even neighbors, or fellow-citizens of the Canton, to take the property at an arbitrated value.
[47] Communities include school, church, and political territorial divisions, and only the latter are designated as Communes.
[48] Repealed in 1879, relegating it to the discretion of the Cantons except as to “political offences.” Since then eight of the Cantons have re-established capital punishment in their codes. They are the small Cantons, and represent only twenty per cent. of the Swiss population. No execution, however, has taken place in any of these Cantons since 1879; two sentences of death have been passed, but in both cases they were commuted to imprisonment for life.
[49] Professor Dicey, “Law of the Constitution.”
[50] These horns are made to imitate the human voice, and have a most mournful bellow.
[51] This is done to secure religious equality and to provide for the representation of the Catholic population in the Communes in which they are in the minority.
[52] Et in corruptissima republica plurimæ leges.—Tacitus.
[53] Professor Dicey.
[54] Numa Droz.