Note (Back) — Chapter XXII

460. The Landesgemeinde.—Prior to the French intervention of 1798 there were in the Confederation no fewer than eleven cantons whose government was of the Landesgemeinde type. To-day there are but six cantons and half-cantons—those, namely, of Uri, Glarus, the two Unterwaldens, and the two Appenzells. Under varying circumstances, but principally by reason of the increasingly unwieldy character of the Landesgemeinde as population has grown, the rest have gone over to the representative system. All of those in which the institution survives are small in area and are situated in the more sparsely populated mountain districts where conditions of living are primitive and where there is little occasion for governmental elaborateness.[607]