"Opponents of democracy are continually raising two sets of objections which they deem fatal. First, they say, you cannot get the general will of the people really dominant in politics, whatever forms of franchise or election you devise, and if you could, the welfare, even the existence of the state would be constantly imperilled. Secondly, they say, if a sound democracy is possible, it can only be confined to so small a group of men as to be unfitted to the needs of modern society which demand large states. Hence, they proceed to argue, though a nation may be furnished with a tolerably complete democracy in its constitution, the complexity of a modern civilised government converts it into a practical bureaucracy, controlled, as all governments have ever been controlled, by an oligarchy of rich men. It is primarily because the Swiss Constitution claims to have provided an escape from this paralysing imbroglio, and to have attested experimentally the possibility of democracy, that it deserves the attention of other nations which are trying to be democracies and failing. The direct participation of a simple citizen in acts of government, and the application of the federal principle, are the keynotes to Swiss democracy. By means of the former it is claimed that those monstrous excrescences of "party," known as bosses and machine politicians, cannot thrive, while the latter prevents the growth of those not less dangerous abuses that proceed from the complex machinery of a highly centralised government in a large state. Let the body of free citizens not merely elect men who shall execute their will in making laws and in other acts of government, but retain the right of directing what laws shall or shall not be passed, what acts shall or shall not be done by their representatives; these checks upon the abuse of power by individual representatives or parties are, it is contended, necessary and sufficient securities for the free play of the general will."