divided among 258,637 proprietors, the
average size of the farms throughout the whole country being not more
than twenty-one acres. The facilities for the acquisition of land have
produced small holders, with security of tenure, representing
two-thirds the entire population. There are no primogeniture, copyhold,
customary tenure, and manorial rights, or other artificial obstacles to
discourage land transfer and dispersion." "There is no belief in
Switzerland that land was made to administer to the perpetual elevation
of a privileged class; but a widespread and positive sentiment, as
Turgot puts it, that 'the earth belongs to the living and not to the
dead,' nor, it may be added, to the unborn."

Turgot's dictum, however, obtains no more than to this extent: (1) The
cantonal testamentary laws almost invariably prescribe division of
property among all the children--as in the code Napoleon, which prevails
in French Switzerland, and which permits the testator to dispose of only
a third of his property, the rest being divided among all the heirs. (2)
Highways, including the railways, are under immediate government
control. (3) The greater part of the forests are managed, much of them
owned, by the Confederation. (4) In nearly all the communes, some lands,
often considerable in area, are under communal administration. (5) In
the Landsgemeinde cantons largely, and in other cantons in a measure,
inheritance and participation, jointly and severally, in the communal
lands are had by the members of the communal corporation--that is, by
those citizens who have acquired rights in the public property of the
commune.

Nearly every commune in Switzerland has public lands. 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. The commune of Obwald,
in Unterwa