"The introduction of the referendum in Switzerland constitutes one of the chief victories of the principle of direct government by the people over that of representative government. No one has defended direct government with more power and conviction than Victor Considérant, the advanced republican of 1848, who was one of the precursors of legislation by the people. "When a people," he wrote, "has once assumed the exercise of its legislative will, no section, old or young, rotten or sound, will be able to contemplate encroachment upon it. Divisions will be blotted out and parties united one with another. So long, however, as the people, like an inert mass, is moved by the governmental machine external to itself, which each party can use to impose its will upon the nation, so long will furious party strife, intrigues, coups d'Etat and revolutions remain the order of the day." ...In 1850, a German publicist, [Moritz] Rittinghausen contributed to La Démocratie pacifique articles upon "direct legislation by the people or true democracy," in which the same ideas were developed. Neither Considérant nor Rittinghausen was a prophet in his own country."