LAUSR

The Old Swiss Confederation stood as a contentious point of reference in the ratification debate of 1787–88. While Federalists disdained the loosely banded cantons as a template of dysfunction, Anti-Federalists commended their regionalized constitution and variable systems of government. One Anti-Federalist, writing a series of essays for the Maryland Gazette under the name “A Farmer,” went as far as to hold up the Landsgemeinde, an apparatus of direct democracy found in the rural cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, as a model for governance in the United States. Renouncing representative government, the Maryland Farmer’s Essays pose a stark counterpoint to the liberal shift in American founding thought, positioning the ratification debate more squarely within the modern discourse on democracy.