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Title: The Swiss Republic

Author: Boyd Winchester

Release date: February 7, 2023 [eBook #69971]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: J. B. Lippincott company, 1891

Credits: Andrew Sly, Krista Zaleski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SWISS REPUBLIC ***






  THE

  SWISS REPUBLIC.

  BY
  BOYD WINCHESTER,
  LATE UNITED STATES MINISTER AT BERN.

  [Illustration]


  PHILADELPHIA:
  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
  LONDON: 10 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
  1891.




  Copyright, 1891, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.


  PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA.




  TO

  HENRY WATTERSON

  THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED, AS A GRATEFUL BUT IMPERFECT TOKEN OF
  AN INTIMACY OF MANY YEARS, HOPING HE WILL ACCEPT THE

  Dedication,

  WITH THE ASSURANCE THAT IT IS NOT MEANT SO MUCH TO
  COMPLIMENT HIM, AS MYSELF.

    LOUISVILLE, KY., 1890.




PREFACE.


This book is based upon notes of studies and observations during four
years of diplomatic service in Switzerland, made, at the time, with
eventual publication in view. There is no attempt to treat the subjects
embraced, or rather touched upon, in any historical sequence, but,
by brief hints and random suggestions, to seize the principal and
interesting features of the country and its institutions, the people
and their characteristics.

The comparative method correlated with cause or effect is used in the
chapters on the government and administration, national and cantonal.
Many familiar facts in Swiss history, and experiences had by the United
States, are introduced to show their relation to and effect upon
certain political ideas. In fact, all through the Swiss federal polity
and that of the United States run not only parallels of illustration,
but lines converging to and pointing out essential truths in popular
government.

Dating from the “Eternal Covenant” of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden,
concluded in 1291, under all vicissitudes of government and
constitution,--with radical varieties of character, occupation,
religion, language, and descent,--love of liberty and a passionate
devotion to the republic have characterized the people, with “life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the great objects of
government, federal, cantonal, and communal. During this period of six
hundred years the smallest free commonwealth and the oldest federal
republic in the world presents a valuable stock of political experience.

It is very difficult for a stranger to discover all that is remarkable
in any country, and perhaps as hard to treat of so many different
subjects with such care as to omit nothing that is material. The utmost
endeavor, at least, has been used to be exact, and an effort to give
a more complete view of the modern state of the country than has yet
appeared. There is no design in the “Introduction” to write even an
historical outline; it is not necessary to the purpose of this work;
but only to relate such general facts, as to its former state, as may
serve to discover the causes which gave rise and birth to the present
Confederation.

Where references to national and local laws or ordinances and leading
historical events are necessary, partial repetition has been deemed
preferable to directing the reader to previous citations.

As the Swiss, in different Cantons, speak different languages with
several distinct idioms, there is necessarily a great diversity of
nomenclature; the aim has been to follow that locally prevalent, and
especially in the designation of the Cantons by their German, French,
and Italian names.

The writer has had frequent recourse to the following authorities:
“The Swiss Confederation,” by Sir Francis Adams and C. D. Cunningham,
London; “The Federal Government of Switzerland,” by Bernard Moses, San
Francisco (these two books are of recent date, supplementing each other
well, and constitute the only systematic and valuable publication in
English on the constitutional history and public law of Switzerland);
Woolsey’s “Political Science,” Woodrow Wilson’s “The State,” Freeman’s
“History of Federal Government,” May’s “Democracy in Europe,”
“Encyclopædia Britannica,” Reclus’s “The Earth and its Inhabitants,”
furnish briefer but valuable accounts. Elaborate works in German
and French consulted are Bluntschli’s “Staats und Rechts Geschichte
der Schweiz,” Dubs’s “Das öffentliche Recht der schweizerischen
Eidgenossenchaft,” Droz’s “Instruction Civique,” and Magnenat’s “Abrégé
de l’Histoire de la Suisse.”




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER I.                                                        PAGE
  INTRODUCTION                                                9

  CHAPTER II.
  THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION                                   35

  CHAPTER III.
  THE FEDERAL ASSEMBLY                                       65

  CHAPTER IV.
  THE FEDERAL COUNCIL                                        85

  CHAPTER V.
  THE FEDERAL TRIBUNAL                                      104

  CHAPTER VI.
  THE CANTONS                                               123

  CHAPTER VII.
  THE LANDSGEMEINDE                                         148

  CHAPTER VIII.
  THE REFERENDUM                                            164

  CHAPTER IX.
  THE COMMUNES                                              174

  CHAPTER X.
  CITIZENSHIP                                               191

  CHAPTER XI.
  LAND LAW AND TESTAMENTARY POWER                           209

  CHAPTER XII.
  MILITARY SERVICE AND ORGANIZATION                         226

  CHAPTER XIII.
  EDUCATION                                                 253

  CHAPTER XIV.
  TECHNICAL AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS                          277

  CHAPTER XV.
  INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE                                     299

  CHAPTER XVI.
  PEASANT HOME AND LIFE                                     324

  CHAPTER XVII.
  NATURAL BEAUTIES AND ATTRACTIONS                          353

  CHAPTER XVIII.
  WILLIAM TELL                                              391

  CHAPTER XIX.
  BERN                                                      411

  CHAPTER XX.
  SWITZERLAND THE SEAT OF INTERNATIONAL UNIONS              430

  CHAPTER XXI.
  SWITZERLAND AND THE EUROPEAN SITUATION                    450

  POPULATION AND SOIL, CENSUS, 1888                         469

  MONEY, WEIGHTS, MEASURES                                  469

  CENSUS OF 1888                                            470

  ORDER AND DATES OF THE ENTRY OF THE TWENTY-TWO CANTONS
  INTO THE CONFEDERATION                                    471

  APPENDIX                                                  473





THE SWISS REPUBLIC.




CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.


The first inhabitants of Switzerland, according to tradition, were
fugitives from Italy, who had been driven by the Gauls from the country
where now flourish the cities of Genoa and Florence, and who, 600 B.C.,
found an asylum in the recesses and wilderness of the valleys above
which the Rhine has its source. They were known as the Rhetians, from
the name of their hero Rhetus; hence the country about the source of
the Rhine, embracing the Grisons, is even now called by some, Rhetia.
The Canton of Schwyz claims to have been peopled by the Cimbrians, who,
leaving their original habitations in Sweden, Norway, and Friesland,
conquered their way over the Rhine to the cities of the Gauls, in the
country which is now France. The people of Gaul implored help from
Rome; a strong army was sent against them, defeating and driving them
into the Helvetian mountains. Another tradition says that they were
a race of Gaulic Celts, whom some unknown accident had guided from
the borders of the Rhine and Main to those of the Lake of Geneva,
their collective name being Helvetians, after whom the country was
named in Roman times. The first authentic mention we find of these
people, as a nation, is by Julius Cæsar, who, in the first book of his
“Commentaries,” related the war he waged with the Helvetians, who had
made an irruption into Burgundy during his government in Gaul. He
defeated them, and reduced the country to the obedience of the Romans,
annexing it to that part of his government which was called Gallia
Celtica. They lived in subjection to the Roman government till that
empire fell. Among the new kingdoms and principalities that were raised
out of the ruins was the kingdom of Burgundy, composed of a Vandal race
from the Oder and the Vistula. Helvetia was overrun and made a part of
this kingdom in the beginning of the fifth century (409 A.D.). Then
followed irruptions of Alemanni, Ostrogoths, and Franks. The division
of Switzerland into German- and French-speaking races is doubtless to
be ascribed to these early settlements of different tribes from Germany
and Gaul. In the sixth century (550 A.D.), the Franks having subjected
the other two, all Helvetia was united to the crown of France. It was
lost to the kings of France during the ninth century, under the weak
reign of Charles the Fat. About the year 870 there sprang up again
two new kingdoms of Burgundy, one called Cis-Jurana and the other
Trans-Jurana; the first, at the end of fifty years, was merged in the
latter. In this kingdom was comprehended the country of Helvetia, and
continued part of it till about 1032, when Rudolph, the third and last
king of Burgundy, dying without children, left all his kingdom to the
Emperor Conrad II., whose successors enjoyed it for two centuries, when
it was broken into several petty sovereignties.

Feudalism had been rapidly growing up, and, like other parts of Europe,
Helvetia fell under the rule of military chiefs and of powerful bishops
and abbots. A numerous and ancient nobility divided the possession with
ecclesiastical lords; of the former, conspicuous were the Dukes of
Zähringen and Counts of Kyburg, Rapperswyl, and Hapsburg; and of the
latter, the Bishop of Coire, the Abbot of St. Gallen, and the Abbess
of Seckingen. There is no country whose history better illustrates
the ambiguous relation, half property and half dominion, in which
territorial aristocracy under the feudal system stood with respect to
their dependants. The power under these princes, to which the country
was subjected, was so limited that it might properly be said to be
under their protection rather than their dominion. In the thirteenth
century the race of the Dukes of Zähringen became extinct, which made
way for the Counts of Hapsburg to enlarge their authority, being raised
afterwards to the Austrian Duchy, and invested with the imperial
dignity in Germany. The Helvetic people placed themselves under the
protection of Rudolph of Hapsburg, with permission to send governors or
bailiffs among them. They were governed with mildness while he lived.
He died, and his son Albert did not tread in his father’s footsteps.
This was the beginning of the fourteenth century, the memorable period
of Rütli and William Tell. A resolution was taken to form a general
insurrection in each Canton, in order to surprise and demolish all the
castles and drive the governors and adherents out of the country. “They
judged that a sovereign unjust towards a vassal, ceased to be himself
protected by justice, and that it was lawful to employ force against
him.”[1]

The confederates pursued so well the measures agreed on that their
object was easily accomplished, and with rare examples of moderation.
A few years later, a further attempt was made to bring them under
the yoke of the empire, when the brave peasants routed the imperial
army, under Leopold, Duke of Austria, at Morgarten, on the 15th of
November, 1315. This victory confirmed the independence of the three
original Cantons. Soon afterwards followed the perpetual league of
Brunnen, on December the 9th of the same year; there is at Brunnen this
inscription: “_Hier geschah der erste Bund, Anno 1315, die Grundfeste
der Schweiz_” (“Here was the first perpetual league, the foundation of
Switzerland”).

According to the Swiss historian, Planta,[2] the Helvetic union, as
founded by the three forest Cantons, called _Waldstätten_, composed of
Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, bears date from the most remote periods
of their existence, and was framed long before they knew how to commit
it to writing. In 1291 this league was reduced to writing; the first
covenant is in Latin, and begins, “_In nomine Domini, Amen_,”[3] and
this form was followed in the several later covenants at Rütli, 1307,
and Brunnen, 1315. Each Canton obligated itself to assist and succor
the others, with its utmost force, and at its own expense, against
all persons or states that should assault or molest any of them; that
neither of the Cantons should submit to receive any new sovereign
without the knowledge and consent of the others; that none should enter
into any alliance or engagement with any other prince or state without
the said consent; and that if any difference should arise between any
two of these confederated Cantons, the third should be the arbitrator,
and obliged to assist that Canton which submitted to its arbitration
against the other that should refuse it. The express purpose of this
league was for self-defence against all who should attack or trouble
them.

The constitution of each Canton was purely democratic; the supreme
power was vested in the people at large; all males of fourteen years
old in Uri, of fifteen in Schwyz and Unterwalden, having a voice.
Though deputies were chosen to represent the people in the Council of
Regency, and a Landammann, or chief magistrate,[4] was also appointed,
yet the supreme power was exercised by a general assembly held in the
open air. In 1332 Luzern joined the three Cantons, and thus arose
the federation of the Four Forest Cantons, _Vierwaldstätten_. Zurich
came in in 1351, Zug and Glarus in 1352, and Bern in 1353. These eight
Cantons continued until 1481, or a hundred and twenty-eight years,
without increasing their number, and are distinguished by the name
of the _Eight Old Cantons_. For a long time these Cantons possessed
many distinctive privileges. This league upheld its independence in
1386 against Duke Leopold III., of Austria, in the battle of Sempach,
when the most heroic courage was shown. This resulted in the decree
of Sempach, whereby the eight Cantons agreed to preserve peace among
themselves; to uphold each other; and in war to unite their banners
against the common enemy. The last remnant of ancient Helvetic
territories in Aargau was wrested in 1417 from Frederic, Count of
Tyrol. Though still comprehended within the nominal sovereignty of the
empire, encroachments upon their territory or their political liberties
were no longer dreaded. They were henceforth free from external control
and from contributions imposed by the Germanic Diet. In 1444 followed
the defeat of the Dauphin Louis of France at St. Jacob, and the defeat
of the Burgundians at Morat and Nancy in 1477. In 1481 Solothurn and
Freiburg were admitted. The Cantons then bound themselves under a
treaty effected at Stantz, Canton of Unterwalden, in December of that
year, to two additional articles:

1. That all the Cantons oblige themselves to succor one another in the
support of the form of government then established in each of them.[5]

2. That a body of military laws therein referred to should be received
throughout the whole nation, and the observation of them enjoined.

The Emperor Maximilian I. determined to force the Swiss to join the
Suabian League; hence resulted the Suabian war, which was concluded
after the Swiss had gained six victories, by the peace of Basel in
1499. In 1501 Basel and Schaffhausen acceded to the league. In 1512, by
the Milanese war, the Swiss obtained from Milan the territory which at
present forms the Canton of Ticino. In 1515, after losing the battle of
Marignano,[6] an advantageous peace was concluded with France, which
was followed by the first formal alliance with that kingdom in 1521;
and the two countries enjoyed an almost uninterrupted amity for nearly
three hundred years.

Such was the political state of Switzerland in the beginning of the
sixteenth century; it was an independent federal republic, renowned in
war and distinguished for its ancient political institutions. In the
Thirty Years’ War the Confederates maintained a prudent neutrality, and
the Peace Congress of Münster in 1648, through the mediation of France,
solemnly acknowledged the complete renunciation of Switzerland’s
nominal allegiance to the German empire. From this time until the
outbreak of the French Revolution, in 1789, the history of Switzerland
presents few events of general importance. Appenzell had been united
to the league in 1573, making the number of Cantons thirteen. The
thirteen Cantons took the name of _Eidgenossen_, a word signifying
confederates, because they bound themselves together as comrades by
oath. This endured without a further change of actual members until
1803. From the peace of Aarau, in 1712 (generally credited to 1718,
since the Abbot of St. Gallen did not accede to it until six years
after its agreement), down to 1798, the Cantons enjoyed the blessings
of seventy-nine years of comparative quiet. The tranquillity enjoyed
was favorable to the progress of commerce, agriculture, the arts,
and sciences. The French Revolution, which disturbed the peace and
unsettled the political institutions of every country in Europe,
convulsed Switzerland with civil war and anarchy. In January, 1798, a
French army entered Switzerland to assist the Pays de Vaud, which had
declared its independence against the Bernese; Bern was taken and the
Swiss Confederation converted into the “Helvetic Republic, one and
indivisible.”

The Cantons of Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Zug, Glarus, and Appenzell
declared that they would not accept the laws which had been forced
upon them, and leagued together to resist. These refractory Cantons
were overpowered and coerced, but so gallantly did they maintain their
ground that the French general declared, “that every Swiss soldier
fought like a Cæsar.” It was then ordained by the French that an oath
of allegiance to the new government should be taken in every Canton.
Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, and Zug refused obedience to this ordinance.
It was forced upon them and upheld by a costly army, which practised
intolerable exactions and haughty and insolent domination. Geneva
at this time was annexed to France. Lavater styled this epoch “the
first year of Swiss slavery.” The atrocities of the French invasion
of Switzerland excited great indignation in Europe. All that tyranny
the most oppressive, rapine the most insatiate, cruelty the most
sanguinary, and lust the most unbridled, could inflict did that devoted
country experience. The effect on the friends of freedom may be judged
of from the following indignant lines of Coleridge, once an ardent
supporter of the Revolution, in his “Ode to Freedom,” written in 1798:

  “Forgive me, Freedom! oh, forgive those dreams;
  I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament,
  From bleak Helvetia’s icy cavern sent;
  I hear thy groans upon her blood-stain’d streams;
  Heroes, that for your peaceful country perish’d,
  And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain snows
  With bleeding wounds, forgive me that I cherish’d
  One thought that ever bless’d your cruel foes;
  To scatter rage and traitorous guilt,
  Where peace her jealous home had built;
  A patriot race to disinherit
  Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear.”

When Switzerland became the battle-field of French and Austrian armies,
by the treaty of Lunéville, between the Emperor of Austria and the
French Republic, the independence of the Helvetic Republic, and the
right of the people to adopt whatever form of government they pleased,
were guaranteed; but the irreconcilable dissensions of the French and
National Swiss parties prevented the adoption of any constitution
generally acceptable to the people.

The withdrawal of the French troops in 1802 led at once to a revolution
in almost every Canton. Again Napoleon, First Consul of the French
Republic, in contravention of the treaty, interfered, and subdued the
movement. Forty thousand French troops took military occupation of
Switzerland. Deputies were ordered to assemble at Paris, and after
long discussion with them, Napoleon, on the 2d of February, 1803,
transmitted to Switzerland what is known as the Act of Mediation, under
which he assumed the title of “Mediator of Switzerland.” In some cases,
what had been subject lands were incorporated into the league, and to
the thirteen old Cantons six new ones were added,--St. Gallen, the
Grisons, Aargau, Thurgau, Ticino, and Vaud.

The downfall of the arbitrary “Mediator” was for the Swiss, as for
the greater part of Europe, the signal of a happy deliverance. The
apparent interest taken by Bonaparte in the welfare of Switzerland,
and his anxious desire to suit its civil institutions to the local
prejudices and habits of each small community, were wholly military
and political. He looked upon Switzerland as a watch-tower between
the three great divisions of Europe, of which the Act of Mediation
secured possession to him, without the trouble of a garrison. Soon
after his defeat at Leipsic in 1813, the Allies invaded Switzerland,
and in December of that year the Swiss Diet met at Zurich and formally
annulled the Act of Mediation. A general council was assembled, and new
articles of confederation agreed upon, known as the Federal Pact, in
September, 1814. This Confederacy was acknowledged by the Congress of
Vienna, November 20, 1815; by which the eight powers, Austria, Russia,
France, England, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden, proclaimed
the neutrality of Switzerland and the inviolability of its soil. It
must in justice be said that at that epoch of sweeping annexations
and unblushing bartering of countries, Switzerland was better treated
than she had reason to expect,--Russia and England were her steadfast
friends.

The nineteen Cantons were increased to twenty-two by the addition
of Geneva, which had been annexed to France under the Directory in
1798, and Neuchâtel[7] (a Prussian possession), and the Valais.
The greater Cantons demanded a return to the old status and their
ante-revolutionary supremacy. The relapse would have been worse, had
it not been for the Allied Powers, who would guarantee neutrality only
on the condition that the new Cantons be maintained free.

In 1817 Switzerland, upon the invitation of the Emperor Alexander of
Russia, joined the Holy Alliance. The restoration of peace to Europe,
and the securities obtained for the neutrality and independence of
Switzerland at the Congress of Vienna, gave great encouragement to the
intellectual and material progress of the country, wealth increased,
and industry prospered. Public works of great utility were undertaken,
including noble roads over the passes of the St. Gothard, the St.
Bernard, and the Splügen. In July, 1830, the peace of the country
was suddenly disturbed by the French Revolution. Violent political
agitation broke out in riots and insurrection. Political wrongs were
rudely redressed; but life and property were respected. The general
aim of this movement was to wrest from the aristocratic class and
the capital towns the exclusive privileges which they had gradually
recovered since the beginning of the century, and to increase the
power of the people. The Cantons were forced to reorganize their
constitutions on a more liberal and democratic basis. This movement
naturally drifted into a plan for revising the federal constitution;
but the effort to do this in 1832 was defeated by a popular vote.

The old religious jealousy of the Catholic and Protestant Cantons now
revived with increased violence. These troubles were attributed by many
to the influence of the Jesuits, and an active agitation was commenced
for obtaining their expulsion. Under the claim that religion was in
danger, delegates from seven Catholic Cantons assembled at Rothen,
in the Canton of Luzern, and formed a separate League, called the
_Sonderbund_, or separate confederation. In violation of the Federal
Pact of 1815, these Cantons engaged to defend each other by an armed
force, and appointed a council of war to take all necessary steps. The
Federal Diet, in session at Bern in July, 1847, realized that prompt
action must be taken to suppress a movement which was threatening the
country with a civil war. Friendly negotiation having failed, the Diet
declared the League to be dissolved, and at once hostilities broke out.
A sharp, decisive contest of only eighteen days’ duration brought the
strife to an end; the seceding Cantons were overwhelmed and forced back
to their allegiance.

The strength of the Confederation being so decisively proved, it
was regarded an opportune time to revive the effort for a thorough
reformation of the federal system. This was accomplished the following
year by the constitution of 1848.

Swiss history is largely the history of the drawing together of parts
of three adjoining nations for common defence against a common foe,
little by little winning their independence.

“A liberty that sprang to life in Greece; gilded next the early and
the middle age of Italy; then reposed in the hallowed breast of the
Alps, and descended at length on the coast of North America, and set
the stars of glory there. At every stage of its course, at every
reappearance, it was guarded by some new security; it was embodied
in some new element of order; it was fertile in some larger good; it
glowed with a more exceeding beauty.”[8]

The name “Swiss” and “Switzerland,” German “_Schweiz_,” French
“La _Suisse_,” supposed to be derived from the Canton of Schwyz,
though long in familiar use, did not form the official style of the
Confederation until 1803. Schwyz, according to Gatschet, signifies
“clearing the ground by fire;” and, again, it is derived from “Sweiter”
and “Swen,” two brothers who are said to have founded it; and these
family names, common in Sweden, are now heard in the valleys of Schwyz.

Switzerland is triangular in shape, and occupies an almost
imperceptible space upon an ordinary map of the world. Voltaire used
to say he “shook his wig and powdered the republic.” It is bounded
on the north and east by Germany, on the south by Italy, and on the
west by France; and is situated between latitude 45° 50′ and 47° 50′
north, and longitude 6° and 10° 25′ east. Its greatest length from
east to west measures two hundred and sixteen miles; its greatest
breadth north and south is one hundred and fifty-six miles. Nearly its
entire boundary is formed by rivers, lakes, and mountains. The Rhine
constitutes almost two sides of its boundary, from the point where the
various streams from the glaciers of the Grisons have met to form a
river into the Lake of Constance, and from its exit thence to where
the Jura Mountains turn its course to the Northern Ocean. The Jura
separates it from France; and with merely an outlet for the Rhone, the
Alps take up the line, dividing its rugged regions from the plains of
Northern Italy. On the eastern side is an entangled mass of mountains;
on the western side is a succession of parallel ridges, separated from
each other by longitudinal valleys. The elevation varies from six
hundred and forty-six feet, at Lake Maggiore, to fifteen thousand two
hundred and seventeen feet on Monte Rosa. Only two per cent. has an
altitude less than one thousand feet, and six per cent. of the whole
surface is covered with snow-fields and glaciers. Two-thirds of its
surface consist of lofty mountain chains and valleys; the remainder a
plain thirteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. That portion
which lies to the east of the Rhine rises from a platform no less than
three thousand two hundred feet in height, even in the valleys. All
of Switzerland, with Savoy, and indeed the Tyrol and other adjoining
countries, lie on a huge mountain. They all have their valleys, it
is true, but their valleys are more elevated than even the hills of
the lower regions. Two of the mightiest European rivers, the Rhine
and Rhone, have their sources in Switzerland. Their head-waters are
separated only by the tangled mass between the Pizzo Rotondo and
the Oberalp Pass,--the Rhine running towards the east and the Rhone
towards the west. The St. Gothard may be regarded as the central point
of the country, and from its sides these two rivers take their rise
in a great transversal valley of the Central Alps. On the east, the
Rhine, springing from the glaciers, flows through the Grisons to the
north and loses itself in the Lake of Constance, issues from it at
Stein, and flows to the westward as far as Basel, where it commences
its perpendicular course towards the German Ocean. On the west, the
Rhone, rising in the blue and glittering glacier of the same name,
descends through the long channel of the Valais, expands into the Lake
of Geneva, and takes its rapid course to the Mediterranean. Both of
these rivers purify their waters in a large lake; and in their passage
through the same Jurassic range of mountains they both form cataracts
and waterfalls, though separated by that time by an interval of one
hundred and eighty miles. Nine-tenths of the central table-lands of
Switzerland belong to the Rhine system, and only one-tenth to the
Rhone. In addition to these, two great rivers on the north of the St.
Gothard, the Reuss and the Aar, descend in parallel ravines through
rugged mountains, feeding the Lakes of Luzern, Thun, and Brienz; while
on the south its snows nourish the impetuous torrents of the Ticino,
which swells out into Lake Maggiore, and loses itself in the waves of
the Po.

Within two degrees of latitude, Switzerland contains the climate of
thirty-four degrees. The variety in the vertical configuration of the
country naturally affects its climate, and nearly every valley and
every mountain-side has a climate of its own. Besides “mathematical
climate,” which is expressed by latitude, and depends on the elevation
of the surface of the earth to the sun, modern science gives “physical
climate.” It describes isothermal lines, which do not exactly coincide
with the circles of latitude, but diverge to north or south, according
as the temperature is modified by other factors, such as the height
of the land above the sea, the modifying action of mountain chains,
currents of wind and water, and the neighborhood of lakes and sea.
The climate of Switzerland is specially modified by the influences
which spring from the capricious consequences of the nearness of
mountains, which are a bulwark against the periodical agitations of the
atmosphere; they form a great barrier to the northward against the icy
blasts sweeping down from the snow-fields of Russia and Siberia; and to
the south, to the hot Libyan winds blowing across the Mediterranean.
For regular isotherms, it would be idle to seek in such a broken
region. The lakes, which are fed by the glacier waters, have a cooling
effect on the temperature of the summer heat; the temperature of the
water of Lake Brienz does not exceed from 48° to 53° Fahrenheit in the
warmest days. It is a great benefit to the circulation of air which
comes in contact with surfaces so relatively cold, nor do these bodies
of air carry away with them any large amount of moisture, because the
low temperature of the water does not favor any great evaporation.
Within a short distance one may see at the same time all the seasons
of the year, stand between spring and summer,--collecting snow with
one hand and plucking flowers from the soil with the other. In Valais
the fig and grape ripen at the foot of ice-clad mountains; while near
their summits the lichen grows at the limit of the snow-line. There
is a corresponding variety as regards the duration of the seasons. In
Italian Switzerland, winter lasts only three months; at Glarus, four;
in the Engadine, six; on the St. Gothard, eight; on the Great St.
Bernard, nine; and on the Théodule Pass, always. Upon first beholding
the peaks of the Alps, shrouded in their everlasting mantles of snow,
one would little dream that in the valleys beneath ran musical streams
of summer water, with emerald meadows spreading their velvet cloaks,
dappled with clustering rose-bush, and the sun-loving flowers of the
gardens of the tropics.

In ancient times writers exhausted their eloquence in painting the
horrors of the climate of the Alps. Livy wrote, “and the snows almost
mingling with the sky, the shapeless huts situated on the cliffs, the
cattle and beasts of burden withered by the cold, the men unshorn and
wildly dressed, all things, animate and inanimate, stiffened with
frost, and other objects more terrible to be seen than described, renew
their alarm.”[9]

To-day, within its habitable regions, the climate is distinguished for
being generally temperate, healthful, and invigorating. It enjoys, from
its geographical smallness, immunity from the penalty a vast continent
pays in colossal visitations and vicissitudes of meteorological
conditions.

The Föhn is a remarkable local wind in Switzerland; it is a strong
southwest or south wind, very hot and dry, formerly supposed to
originate in the Sahara, and flowing in towards the area of low
atmospheric pressure; or to be a tropical counter-current of the trade
winds. Meteorologists now hold that it is engendered by local causes.
Commencing its descent in the northern valleys with a high temperature,
it necessarily increases its temperature and dryness as it passes
into the higher pressure of lower levels; it sweeps through certain
valleys, especially in Glarus and Uri, where old laws enact that when
it blows, every fire in the place, for whatever purpose used, is to be
extinguished, for its violence is often extreme. It is much dreaded,
yet acts beneficially by a rapid polar-like awakening of nature; it is
it which melts most of the snow in the spring, and “without the Föhn,”
says the peasant of the Grisons, “neither God nor the golden sun would
prevail over the snow.” The Bise is the opposite of the Föhn, a cold,
biting north wind, whose tooth has been sharpened by its passage over
the ice-fields, bringing all the chills of Siberia, and searching one
through and through, eating into the very marrow. This wind is confined
within a narrow area of the country, pouring from the northeast over
the Boden-See, and along the Jura to the Lake of Geneva below Lausanne;
its effect is blighting on the pastures, which it sometimes visits at
untimely seasons, killing even cattle exposed to it in May.

The German, Burgundian, and Italian nations which joined together to
form the modern Swiss nation, cast away their original nationality, and
made for themselves a new one, forming a nation as real and true as if
it had strictly answered to some linguistic or ethnological division.
These northern and southern nations of Europe have been singularly
intermingled in Switzerland, and in this respect furnish an interesting
study, as a striking exception to the general idea suggested by
the word “nation” as a considerable continuous part of the earth’s
surface, where speakers of a single tongue are united under a single
government. The long persistent division of the Swiss people into
German, French, and Italian stands in marked contrast with the thorough
unity of the nation. They have never been blended into one people,
so far as speaking a common language is concerned. German, French,
Italian, Romansch, and Ladin are spoken within the limits of the
Confederacy. And even the dialects of the German differ so much as to
make communication almost impossible, at times, between the different
villages and towns.

The census of December 1, 1888, showed the total population of
Switzerland to be 2,933,612. The German-speaking element increased from
2,030,792, in 1880, to 2,092,479, which, taking into account the normal
growth of the population, was no relative increase; the proportion in
both cases being about seventy-one per cent. of the whole. The French,
on the other hand, increased from 608,007 to 637,710, which was a
relative increase of from 21.4 to 21.07 per cent., while the Italian
declined actually as well as relatively, the numbers being 161,923
in 1889, and 156,482 in 1888, or 5.7 and 5.3 per cent. respectively.
The decline of the Italians in Uri and Schwyz may be explained by the
return home of a large number of Italian workmen engaged on the St.
Gothard Railway. It is difficult to explain the large decrease of
Germans in the Cantons of Bern and Neuchâtel, while the French have
increased. In general, the French increase in Switzerland seems to be
at the expense of the Germans, while the German element recovers its
place at the expense of the Italian.

The region extending from the Lake of Geneva to the Lake of Constance,
and from the foot of the Alps to the foot of the Jura, forms only
one-fourth of Switzerland, so far as area is concerned; but nearly
its whole population, wealth, and industry are concentrated there.
The population is settled in the plains, the hill regions, and the
valleys; there are chalets nearly eight thousand feet high on the
Fleck and Indre Alps, but only one town, viz., Chaux-de-Fonds, in the
Jura of Neuchâtel, has been built at an elevation of more than three
thousand two hundred feet; but there are villages in Alpine valleys
with an elevation of four thousand to five thousand feet, and the
hamlet of Juf, in the dreary valley of the Avers, has an elevation of
six thousand seven hundred feet, and is the highest village in Europe
permanently inhabited.

In point of religion the Swiss are as sharply divided as they are in
tongue and customs. It is to the increasing efforts of the clergy,
during the many centuries that elapsed between the fall of the Roman
empire and the revival of knowledge, that the judicious historian of
Switzerland ascribes the early civilization and humane disposition
of the Helvetic tribes; and invariably the first traces of order and
industry appeared in the immediate neighborhood of the religious
establishments. The traveller will behold with interest the crosses
which frequently mark the brow of a precipice, and the little chapels
hollowed out of the rock where the road is narrowed, and will consider
them so many pledges of security; and he will rest assured that so long
as the pious mountaineer continues to adore the “Good Shepherd” he
will never cease to befriend the traveller or to discharge the duties
of hospitality. That a church, or rather that churches, existed in
Switzerland in the fourth century is proved by the signatures, coming
down from that date, of certain bishops and elders of Geneva, Coire,
and the Valais; and one century later it is known that other places
besides these had been in a measure Christianized. The Fraternity
of St. Bernard was founded in the latter part of the tenth century
by Bernard de Menthon, an Augustinian canon of Aosta, in Piedmont,
for the double purpose of extending bodily succor and administering
spiritual consolation to travellers crossing the Pass of St. Bernard,
where winter reigns during nine months of the year. The idea of
establishing a religious community in the midst of savage rocks, and at
the highest point trodden by the foot of man, was worthy of Christian
self-denial and a benevolent philanthropy. The experiment succeeded in
a degree commensurate with its noble intention: centuries have gone
by, civilization has undergone a thousand changes, empires have been
formed and overturned, and one-half of the world has been rescued
from barbarism, while this piously-founded edifice still remains in
its simple and respectable usefulness where it was first erected, the
refuge of the traveller and a shelter for the poor. The building,
the entertainment, the brotherhood, are marked by a severe, monastic
self-denial which appears to have received a character of stern
simplicity from the unvarying nakedness of all that greets the eye in
that region of frost and sterility. In storms, monks, helpers, and dogs
all go out to search for helpless travellers; and during the severe
winter of 1830 both packs of dogs had to be taken out, and nearly all
perished; the names of Barry and Bruno are kept with those of departed
archbishops and monks. These St. Bernard dogs are adapted, by their
instincts, intelligence, and benevolence, to the charitable work in
which they are engaged. The moment they scent a traveller buried in the
snow they announce the fact by setting up a loud bark, but they do not
wait for the arrival of their human companions, but begin at once to
dig into the snow with all their strength. The pure breed is said to be
extinct, but the cross variety still retains many of the good points of
the genuine breed.[10]

Einsiedeln is a very ancient and celebrated monastery in the Canton of
Schwyz; it is more generally known as the Monastery of “Our Lady of the
Hermits,” and is one of the most famous pilgrim resorts in the world.
It was here that Meinrad, an anchorite of the house of Hohenzollern,
is supposed to have retired in the ninth century, and built a cell
for the worship of the Black Virgin, presented to him by the Abbess
Hildegard of Zurich. He was murdered, and respect for his memory
induced a religious community to establish themselves there. On the
occasion of the consecration of the chapel erected by them, the Bishop,
it is related, was anticipated by angels, who performed the rite to
heavenly music at midnight. Leo VIII. declared this consecration to be
a full and perfect one, and forbade the repetition of the rite; and
Pope Benedict VIII. placed Count Meinrad in the catalogue of saints
one hundred and fifty years after his death. The inscription over
the church-door at Einsiedeln is “_Hic est plena remissio peccatorum
a culpa et a pœna_” (“Here is plenary remission of sins from their
guilt and from their punishment”). There is a copious fountain before
the church, and another tradition has it that the Saviour visited the
shrine and drank from it. This fountain has fourteen jets, carved to
imitate the heads of strange beasts and birds, and the pilgrims must
drink of every one to make sure that they should not miss the right
one, which is said to have refreshed our Lord.

It has been disputed to whom the priority in the race of reform in
Switzerland belongs, Zwingli or Luther. Zwingli himself declares that
in 1516, before he had heard of Luther, he began to preach the gospel
at Zurich, and to warn the people against relying upon human authority.
The name of Zwingli is always associated by the Swiss with the rise of
Protestantism as that of Calvin is with its triumphant progress.[11]
This Reformation, introduced by Zwingli and extended by Calvin,
occasioned the fiercest dissensions. Early in the sixteenth century
both Geneva and Zurich became cities of refuge for French, Italian,
and English who were forced to flee from their native lands on account
of their faith. The first edition of the English Bible was printed in
Zurich in 1535. The Reformers separated themselves into Lutherans,
Calvinists, and Anabaptists. It was held to be the duty of each Canton
to force its own faith upon the whole body of the people; church-going
was enforced by fines and corporal punishment; staying away from
church on Sunday mornings, in some localities, was followed by a loss
of citizenship. The latter part of the sixteenth and the whole of the
seventeenth century are crowded with controversies and bloodshed;
that violence and those animosities which are found so terribly to
prevail where religious zeal has been abused for the purposes of
intolerance. Nowhere were the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation
more ardently embraced; nowhere was the strange moral phenomenon,
which is to be traced in so many quarters of Europe, more conspicuous
than among the Cantons of Switzerland, the early, exact, permanent,
geographical division, which was realized between the Protestant and
Popish communities; a division which frequently an insignificant stream
or street has been sufficient to maintain for ages. Religious parties,
like glaciers, became at once frozen up in set attitudes and forms,
which no subsequent events have been able to alter. In three instances
controversies on the subject of religion kindled violent and bloody
contests. The most memorable was the war between Bern and Zurich, on
the one part, and five little Catholic Cantons on the other, in 1712.
At the close of the period of the Reformation, seven of the Cantons,
Luzern, Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Zug, Freiburg, and Solothurn adhered
to their ancient Catholic faith; the Cantons of Bern, Basel, Zurich,
St. Gallen, and Schaffhausen adopted the reformed religion; Appenzell
and Glarus recognized both forms of worship. In Geneva, over which the
Duke of Savoy ruled, the effects of the Reformation were peculiarly
important. Calvinism, as it existed at Geneva, was not merely a system
of religious opinion, but an attempt to make the will of God, as
revealed in the Bible, an authoritative guide for social and personal
as well as for moral direction. Moral sins were treated after the
example of the Mosaic law, as crimes to be punished by the magistrates;
“elsewhere,” said Knox, speaking of Geneva, “the word of God is taught
as purely, but never anywhere have I seen God obeyed as faithfully.”[12]

Reprobating and lamenting that the great reformer depended upon the
use of the sword for the extirpation of heresy, let us remember that
Calvin was not only the “founder of a sect, but foremost among the
most efficient of modern republican legislators; and that his genius
infused enduring elements into the institutions of Geneva, and made
it for the modern world the impregnable fortress of popular liberty,
the fertile seed-plot of democracy.” That “theological city,” called
by some the Jerusalem of Switzerland, seems to be pervaded by an
endemic influence inciting to religious discussion and agitation;
the eager, irrepressible spirit of John Calvin walks abroad from his
unknown sepulchre as the _genius loci_. The Reformation contributed in
Switzerland to the enlightenment of the people and to the maintenance
of a spirit of freedom; but in a political point of view it was the
cause of the gravest evils, which continued long after the original
convulsions. To differences of race and language it added divisions
of religious faith and the conflict of hostile churches. For some
time there was an alliance of clerical aggressiveness and ambition,
with the employment of religion as a political influence. The radical
government of Zurich was violently overthrown on the 6th of September,
1839, in consequence of the nomination of Dr. Strauss to a chair of
theology; thousands of peasants, led by their pastors and singing
hymns, armed with scythes and clubs, entered Zurich, and the government
was forced to dissolve itself. As late as the war of the Sonderbund,
in 1847, religious intolerance appeared to threaten the integrity
of the Confederation; and by an article in the Constitution of
1848, and re-enacted in that of 1874, the Jesuits and all affiliated
societies were interdicted throughout the Confederation. Hostility to
the Jesuits was not regarded as hostility to the Catholic religion.
The order of Jesuits, as then existing in Switzerland, could not be
considered purely religious, but partly political, partly sectarian and
controversial, its direct aim being to aggrandize the Church at the
expense of the state, and the Catholic religion at the expense of the
Protestant. From the first of these two tendencies, it was repugnant to
a large portion even of the Catholic world. The whole history of the
Jesuits in Switzerland betokened an organized and systematic teaching
of religion, not exclusively for religious ends, but largely as a means
for procuring political and social ascendency; even to the extent of
reducing it to rule, craft, and professional duty. It was against
this tendency, not against any matters essential to the Catholic
religion, that even the Catholic world protested. The growth of the Old
Catholics, after the Vatican Council of 1870, caused many disturbances
in Western Switzerland, specially in the Bernese Jura. Inaugurated
in the Catholic universities of Germany, it was transplanted for a
complete and more vigorous growth into the soil of Geneva, and there
taking on a logical, consistent, and organized form, it seemed fitted
for the wide propagation and success that marked the great Reformation
of the sixteenth century, to which, in its early stages, it showed
curious points of undesigned coincidence.

The Swiss serve God and serve Liberty; two facts which go far to
solve all the phenomena of their remarkable history. They hold with
Plutarch that “a city might more easily be founded without territory
than a state without belief in God.” It may be, as Professor Tyndall
contends, that there is “morality in the oxygen of the mountains.” Man
feels himself reduced to nonentity under the stupendous architecture of
these elevated regions which carries his thoughts up to the Creator.
A cultivated and pious mind may find itself stayed and soothed and
carried upward, at some evening hour, by those great symbols of a
duration without an end to a throne above the sky; and this impression
may be deepened until the outward glory reproduces itself in the
inward, and causes it to cry out:

  “Great Hierarch! Tell thou the silent sky,
  And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
  Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.”

The lives of the Swiss are in continual struggle with the elements,
the visible power of the Deity; their sober habits, simple, natural,
imaginative, all predispose them to believe; and the Gospel easily
obtained dominion over their faith and feelings.

The sublime works of nature are equally calculated to arouse sentiments
of patriotism; they are capable of a companionship with man, full of
expression of inexplicable affinities and delicacies of intercourse.
No race of men can dwell in Switzerland, amidst its mountains, its
precipices, its rocks, glaciers, avalanches, and torrents, without
being strong, brave, and resolute. Just as we recognize an elevated
region by its growth of peculiar timber, whether stunted or lofty,
alike in their power of resisting the tempest, and by its hardy plants
characterized by their intense tenacity of life, just so a mountainous
country is indicated by a courageous, athletic, close-knit population
of liberty-loving, patriotic men.

“_Montani semper liberi_,” everywhere mountainous regions have been
favorable to a free and manly spirit in the people; in every zone the
mountain races are a free, a pastoral, an unchanging people, rather
confirming Emerson’s hasty generalization as to snow and civil freedom.
In the East the warlike hill-tribes have been less subject to despotic
rule than the milder races dwelling on the plains. The varied grandeur
of the mountains no less than the awful power of the ocean counts for
something in the perpetuation of distinctive characteristics. But the
spirit of freedom is thought to take a different color from the sea and
from the mountain; in the mountain it is stubborn and resolute; by the
sea it is excitable and fickle. The hill-tribes of Judea kept their
covenant, the tribes of Jordan fell away; those Medes who never changed
their laws descended from the Caspian Alps, those Greeks who sought new
things from day to day were dwellers by the Ægean Sea. Among the vines
and olives in Italian gardens men are soft, poetic, phosphorescent, no
less full of fire than they are fond of change; among the pines and
larches of the Swiss glaciers men are hardy, patient, dumb, as slow to
fume and flash as they are hard to bend and break. The poet Wordsworth
represents that it was the peculiar fortune of Switzerland to enjoy the
influence of mountain and sea at once,--

  “Two voices are there: one is of the sea,
  One of the mountains; each a mighty voice:
  In both, from age to age, thou didst rejoice,
  They were thy chosen music, Liberty.”

There are few principles of action which are more immediately
beneficial to society, and which have received more assiduous
cultivation, than _love of country_. The Swiss regards his country
with the tenderness of filial affection, and, like the undiscerning
lover, fondly gazes without discrimination upon its beauties and
its deformities.[13] Enamored of their rocks, ice, and snow, they
look on milder climates and more fruitful plains without one envious
emotion. Deeper down even than the deep-seated differences of race,
language, and creed lies the feeling that comes from the common
possession of a political freedom that is greater than that possessed
by surrounding peoples: this is the enduring bond of the Confederation.
Switzerland has demonstrated that democracies are not necessarily
short-lived. The short-lived glory of Athens and its subjection under
the rough foot of the astute Macedonian was not the result of too
much freedom, but because the Greek states had too little unity. In
Switzerland republican institutions can claim to have been fairly
tried and thoroughly succeeded. Dating from the perpetual Alliance
of 1291, the Confederation now counts six centuries; living through
many forms of government, feudal, clerical, imperial, radical, the
League of Cantons never ceased to be a union of republics, and is the
only federal government which has come down from mediæval times to
our own day. We see that the Swiss have lasted well, “for utility is
their bond and not respects.” While in some European countries very
anomalous forms of government have assumed the republican name, it is
gratifying to observe that there is at least one European state in
which republicanism is a fact and a living force properly understood
and properly practised, uniting with as large a measure of individual
liberty all the advantages of careful and judicious legislation,
economy in the administration, and justice in the execution of the
laws to as high a degree as can be found in any country. Every man is
free; every child educated; the sovereign power resides in hands that
defend it in danger and adorn it in peace; a common faith that love
of country, “all for each and each for all,” is better than a love of
self pervades the entire population. Amid powerful monarchies there
is a state without king or nobles, with a well-developed system of
democratic institutions, admirably suited to the genius of the people
and administered with the economy, the wisdom, and the consistency
of a well-regulated family. There the problem of a free commonwealth
was first solved, and popular government first made possible. There
are presented some of the most striking examples of democracy in its
simplest form, and of carefully-contrived and durable republican
institutions, to be found in the annals of political history. There is
a government based on the simple but sound philosophy expounded in the
homely observations of the honest old boatman of Geneva, Jean Desclaux,
“If one man rule, he will rule for his own benefit and that of his
parasites; if a minority rule, we have many masters instead of one,
all of whom must be fed and served; and if the majority rule, and rule
wrongfully, why the minimum of harm is done.”




CHAPTER II.

THE CONSTITUTION.


“On the main-land only two little spots at the two extremities of
the old Teutonic world came out of the mediæval crucible with their
self-government substantially intact. At the mouth of the Rhine, the
little Dutch communities were prepared to lead the attack in the
terrible battle for freedom with which the drama of modern history was
ushered in. In the impregnable mountain fastnesses of upper Germany,
the Swiss Cantons had bid defiance alike to Austrian tyrant and to
Burgundian invader, and had preserved in its purest form the rustic
democracy of their Aryan forefathers. By a curious coincidence, both
these free peoples in their efforts towards national unity were led to
frame federal unions, and one of these political achievements is from
the stand-point of universal history of very great significance.”[14]
Writers, as a rule, properly consider a federal government, owing to
its nice balances in regard to a division of power between the union
and the members, and in regard to the conflicting interests of the
parts, as a peculiarly delicate and almost unadjustable framework.

“The federative system,” says Guizot, “is one which evidently requires
the greatest maturity of reason, of morality, of civilization in the
society to which it is applied.” The two poles of a federal government
are independent action of the members in certain things, and a central
power or government which in certain things is equally independent.
The aim is to gain the advantages of the concentrated power of great
states, while retaining the advantages of local interest found in small
states. On the one hand, each of the members of the union must be
wholly independent in those matters which concern each member only. On
the other hand, all must be subject to a common power in those matters
which concern the whole body of members collectively. Switzerland
represents the happy outcome of the first attempt at such a federal
union made by men of Teutonic descent. Complete independence in local
affairs combined with adequate representation in the Federal Council
has effected such an intense cohesion of interests throughout the
nation as no centralized government, however cunningly devised, would
ever have secured. The constitutional history of the confederation is
a study in federalism. First a mere defensive alliance or league;[15]
then a _Staatenbund_, or permanent alliance of several small states, to
which the term confederacy nearly corresponds; then a _Bundesstaat_, or
an organized state with central legislative, executive, and judicial
departments, which answers substantially to the term federation as
usually employed, and as realized in the Constitution of 1848, and
perfected in that of 1874. The distinction which German publicists
have introduced into political science between a _Staatenbund_ and
a _Bundesstaat_, constituting the two chief forms of union between
states, is a very valuable one,--the former word denoting a league
or confederation of states; the latter, a state formed by means of
a league or confederation. In order to know to which of the two
classes a given state belongs, we need to inquire only whether the
political body in question has the essential qualities of a state
or not. Confederation and federation; both are composite political
bodies, and in so far different from mere alliances which form no new
state. _Staatenbund_, or confederation, is rather a conglomeration of
states than a real state; it retains the character of a contractual
combination of states. _Bundesstaat_, or federation, implies the
advance from the incomplete and transitional form to the formation of a
collective state or union; it is a more highly developed _Staatenbund_,
the difference is only one of degree in purpose, form, and powers
to carry out the national will. A confederation, by joining several
states in a political association, presents at least externally the
appearance of one state of an international personality; but yet is
not organized into one central state distinct from the particular
states. The management of the collective state is left either to
some particular state as President (_Vorort_), or to an assembly of
delegates and representatives of all the several states. The former
was the case with the Greek leagues under the hegemony of Sparta and
Athens; the latter with the American Union under the ancient articles
of 1778, and the German confederation of 1815. In a federation there
are not merely completely organized particular states, each remaining
sovereign and independent within the range of such powers as it does
not hand over to the federal authority; but there is an independently
organized common or central state, that within the range of the powers
handed over to it forms a single commonwealth under a government with
its own executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The Achæan
league was already in some measure such a federal state. This form of
state first appears in modern times in the Constitution of the United
States adopted in 1787, and subsequently imitated by Switzerland.
The Swiss Confederation previous to 1848 joined the members of the
league only on such terms and for such purposes as were agreed on, and
their common affairs were administered by a federal Diet. Still each
Canton remained perfectly independent in all its internal concerns;
even keeping the right of separate dealings with foreign governments.
There was nothing which could be strictly called a federal government,
whose one will makes the constitution, and demands obedience from the
minority, even of particular Cantons. The foundation of the Swiss
Constitution is the old Swiss league, which lasted from 1291 to 1798.
But there had been simply alliances between different Cantons, and no
real federal constitution existed. The establishment of the Helvetic
Republic, one and indivisible, was the first attempt at a constitution.
The representative democracy of the United States found a soil ready
prepared for it in Switzerland, to which it was transplanted by French
intervention. The constitution _unitaire_ was imposed on Switzerland
most tyrannically, but it was not in itself a bad one. Under what may
be called the French readjustment of Switzerland, constitutions rose
and fell and succeeded each other in rapid rotation from 1798 to 1803.
First appears a project of the Constitution of March, 1798; by this a
single centralized state was substituted for the thirteen old Cantons.
It served with modifications as the groundwork of another sketched
in April of the same year. This latter was prevented by the outbreak
of war between France and Austria in 1799 from taking root. Another
Constitution of May, 1801, approved by Bonaparte, then First Consul,
was acceptable to few in its political and territorial arrangements.
The Cantons became mere divisions, like counties or departments.
One of its earliest provisions abolishes the ancient democracies of
the Forest Cantons. The traditions of independence in these older
Cantons, and the elements of internal opposition, were too strong to
admit of submission. The inhabitants of these sequestered regions,
communicating little with the rest of the world, ardently attached to
their liberties, inheriting all the dauntless intrepidity of their
forefathers, clearly perceived that, in the wreck of all their ancient
institutions, the independence of their country could not long be
maintained. They saw that the insidious promises of the French envoys
had terminated only in ruinous exaction and tyrannical rule. Animated
by these feelings, “We have lived,” said they, “for several centuries
under a republic based on liberty and equality; possessing no other
goods in the world but our religion and our independence; no other
riches but our herds; our first duty is to defend them.” This attempt
to form the whole of Switzerland into a united representative system
could not be permanent, and was soon dissolved. Other constitutions
followed in October, 1801, February, 1802, and July, 1802. Then
February 2, 1803, came, under the so-called Act of Mediation, a
moderately centralized federal government granted by Napoleon. Old
family and civic privileges were annulled; all Swiss were made equal
in the eye of the law, and vassalage was altogether abolished, and
free right of settlement in any part of Switzerland assured to all.
All alliances of one Canton with another, or with a foreign state,
were interdicted. This was stipulated in consequence of an improper
alliance in 1442 by Zurich with the House of Austria. It was ordained
that each Canton should send one deputy to the general Diet; that they
should have definite instructions and powers of attorney, and should
not vote against their instructions. The functions of the Diet were
declared to be: 1. To proclaim war or peace, and conclude foreign
alliances, which required the consent of three-fourths of the Diet.
2. To fix regulations for foreign commerce, capitulations in foreign
service, and the recruiting of soldiers. 3. To levy the contingent,
appoint commanders of the armed forces, and the foreign ambassadors. 4.
To adopt measures of external utility and settle disputes between one
Canton and another. The act concluded in these terms: “The present act,
the result of long conference with enlightened persons, appears to us
the best that could be devised for the constitution and happiness of
the Swiss. As soon as it is carried into execution the French troops
shall withdraw. We recognize Helvetia as organized by this act as an
independent power, and guarantee the Federal constitution, and that of
each Canton in particular, against the enemies of the tranquillity of
the state.” This act for the remainder of Napoleon’s reign settled the
condition of the Helvetic Confederacy; and although it was peaceful
and prosperous, the Act of Mediation was felt to be the work of a
foreigner and master, and it fell with the extinction of his power.
Here French readjustments came to an end, and after the Congress of
Vienna, March, 1815, guaranteed the neutrality of Switzerland, there
followed in November of the same year the Federal Pact. This was a
looser confederation, and in many respects a return to the state
of things previous to the French Revolution, and restored to the
Cantons a large portion of their former sovereignty. There continued
to be a _Tagsatzung_, or Diet for general affairs, consisting of
“ambassadors from the sovereign estates,” meaning the Cantons, each
Canton still having only one voice, and three-fourths of the votes
being necessary for war or peace and treaties with foreign powers;
but in other matters of business an absolute majority decides. It
fixes the rate of troops and taxes for federal purposes; gives every
Canton the right to demand defence against internal and external
force; provides for the settlement of disputes between the Cantons;
puts an end to all dependent territory and exclusive possession of
rights by a class of citizens; and continues the old plan of having a
_Vorort_. Military capitulations and conventions concerning affairs
of police or public economy may be made by single Cantons, provided
they oppose no federal principles, nor existing league, nor cantonal
rights. Ambassadors from the league may be sent to foreign powers when
their appointment is thought necessary. In extraordinary cases the
_Vorort_ may be invested with especial powers, and a committee can be
appointed, composed of the officer of the _Vorort_, who is intrusted
with the management of the federal affairs in conjunction with other
representatives of the Confederation. This representative committee
is chosen by six circles of Cantons each in turn. The Diet gives the
requisite instructions to these federal representatives, and fixes
the duration of their duties, which cease, of course, when there is
a new Diet. When this assembly is not in session, the _Vorort_ has
the charge of federal affairs within the limits existing before 1798.
Cloisters and chapters are allowed to continue, but are subject to
taxation like private property; and the Helvetic national debt is
acknowledged. The Federal Pact became unpopular not merely from its
own intrinsic defects and ambiguities, but also from the time and
circumstances of its origin. It was a reactionary instrument, bringing
back the yoke of the patrician families and the extreme Ultramontane
party. The central authority of the Confederation was wreak. It had no
powers, either legislative, executive, or administrative, binding upon
the several Cantons; no provision for the repression of wars between
rival Cantons, nor for the proper restraint of separate alliances with
foreign powers which endangered the peace, if not the independence, of
the federal state; no federal army, no public treasury, no national
mint, no common judiciary, nor any other common marks of sovereignty.
The Diet assembled for little more than deliberation, all matters
of importance being referred to the determination of the Cantons.
National affairs were discussed in general Diets, as in fact they
had been from the beginning, but they were Diets which lacked the
very essentials of republican government, majority rule, and power of
execution. They depended more upon moral authority than legal powers,
persuading where they could not command obedience. The difficulties of
a union so obviously imperfect and narrow were greatly increased by
the Reformation, which alienated the Catholic and Protestant Cantons,
causing political and religious struggles that culminated in civil war.
There is then a constitutional rest until the next great revolutionary
storm, which swept over so many countries of Europe in 1848, when a
new constitution, modelled in many respects after that of the United
States, was adopted, and superseded the Federal Pact. It changed the
federal union of states into a federal republic; a transition from
a _Staatenbund_ to a _Bundesstaat_. The stage of confederation was
passed over and the higher state of federation reached; an organized
nation, and at the same time the peoples of the particular Cantons
also possessing organic unity; a Swiss nation, and yet a Bernese and
Genevese people. The Constitution of 1848 was the first which was
entirely the work of the Swiss without any foreign influence. For
the revolution of 1848, which paralyzed Austria, Rome, and Germany,
enabled the Swiss to reassume in full the reins of self-government.
Two legislative chambers were for the first time created, and invested
with the power of enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding
directly on individual citizens. This most important and far-reaching
principle, that the Federal head should operate directly on individuals
and not on states, involved momentous consequences, forcing the
construction of a “Composite State.” The joint action of the two
chambers, constituting the _Bundesversammlung_, or Federal Assembly,
became a substantive part of the government of every Canton; and,
within the limits of its attributions, made laws which are obeyed
by every citizen, and executing them through its own officers, and
enforcing them by its own tribunal; powers essential for an effective
federal government. The old Diets never ventured on any undertaking
of public utility, amelioration, or reform, during more than three
hundred years. The Confederation was loose and incomplete even for its
essential objects, mutual defence and foreign relations. The principal
objects of this new constitution were:

1. The strengthening of the national government, reconciling the
supremacy of the Confederation with the autonomy of the Cantons.

2. The overthrow of oligarchies.

3. The protection of the state from the dominion of Rome.

The first two were attained by the direct provisions of the
Constitution; the third was afterwards promoted by the expulsion of the
Jesuits and their affiliated societies from Swiss territory. A great
benefit was conferred upon the Confederation by the unification of such
matters as coinage, weight, measures, and posts; and the surrender by
the Cantons to the Confederation of the exclusive right to levy duties
at the frontiers of the country. For twenty-four years Switzerland
enjoyed under this Constitution uninterrupted peace and prosperity; the
European wars between 1855 and 1871 did not disturb her neutrality,
though military operations offered great temptation to march across her
territory. In 1872 a project of amendment was submitted conferring upon
the general government many additional powers. By a small popular and
a large cantonal majority it was defeated. The agitation for amendment
continued, and in 1874 a more moderate revision of the Constitution
of 1848 was again presented. This remodelling in 1874 did little more
than work out in a complete and logical form the principles laid down
in 1848; the most marked difference being a further enlargement of the
Federal authority; forming a well compacted union, a Federal state,
each portion of which has its sphere of sovereignty. This revised
Constitution received the sanction of the Federal Assembly, January 31,
1874, was submitted to the popular vote on Sunday, April 19, following,
resulting in a vote of 340,199 in favor of, and 198,013 against,
acceptance. The vote by Cantons was fourteen and a half Cantons for,
and seven and a half Cantons against, acceptance (the votes of the
half-Cantons being counted each as a half vote). The Cantons voting
against the adoption of the Constitution were Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden
(the original three), Luzern, Zug, Freiburg, Valais, and Appenzell
(Inner). A decree of the Federal Assembly, May 28, 1874, after setting
forth that the revised Federal Constitution had received both a
majority of all the votes cast and the approval of a majority of all
the Cantons, says, “That it is, therefore, hereby solemnly declared in
effect, bearing date of May 29, 1874.” The Federal Council, on May 30,
1874, ordered the above decree, together with the Constitution, to be
enrolled in the official collection of statutes of the Confederation,
and the decree to be transmitted to the governments of the Cantons, to
be published by them through posting up in public places. The Federal
system thus established has many features which are strikingly like,
as well as many which are almost as strikingly unlike, those in the
system of the United States. The preamble, and Articles I. and II. of
the Constitution, point out the aim and lay down the fundamental idea
of the Confederation.

    IN THE NAME OF ALMIGHTY GOD.

    The Swiss Confederation, desiring to confirm the alliance
    of the confederates, to maintain and to promote the unity,
    strength, and honor of the Swiss nation, has adopted the
    Federal Constitution, following:

    ARTICLE I.--The peoples of the twenty-two sovereign Cantons
    of Switzerland, united by this present alliance [then follow
    the names of the Cantons], form in their entirety the Swiss
    Confederation.

    ARTICLE II.--The purpose of the Confederation is to secure
    the independence of the country against foreign nations, to
    maintain peace and order within, to protect the liberty and
    rights of the confederates, and to foster their common welfare.

The Constitution is divided into three chapters, embracing,
respectively, seventy, forty-seven, and four articles, numbered
consecutively throughout the whole. The chapters have subdivisions,
with descriptive titles to the general heads.

The first chapter is titled _General Provisions_, and covers a wide
field.

A literal transcript of the most important provisions of this chapter
will be given.

    CHAPTER I.

    The Cantons are sovereign so far as their sovereignty is
    not limited by the Federal Constitution, and as such they
    exercise all the rights which are not delegated to the Federal
    government. All Swiss are equal before the law, with neither
    political dependence, nor privilege of place, birth, persons,
    or families. The Confederation guarantees to the Cantons their
    territory, their sovereignty (within the limits fixed), their
    Constitutions, the liberty and rights of the people, the
    constitutional rights of citizens, and the rights and powers
    which the people have conferred on those in authority. The
    Cantons are bound to ask of the Confederation the guarantee of
    their Constitutions: this is accorded, provided,--

    (_a_) That the Constitutions contain nothing contrary to the
    provisions of the Federal Constitution.

    (_b_) That they assure the exercise of political rights
    according to republican forms, representative or democratic.

    (_c_) That they have been ratified by the people, and may be
    amended whenever the majority of all the citizens demand it.

    All separate alliances and all treaties of a political
    character between the Cantons are forbidden. The Confederation
    has the sole right of declaring war, of making peace, and
    of concluding alliances and treaties with foreign powers,
    particularly treaties relating to tariffs and commerce. No
    military capitulations shall be made.[16] Members of the
    Federal Government, civil and military officials of the
    Confederation, and Federal Representatives or Commissioners
    shall not accept from foreign Governments any pension, salary,
    title, present, or decoration. The Confederation has no right
    to maintain a standing army: every Swiss is subject to military
    service. The Confederation may construct at its own expense, or
    may aid by subsidies, public works which concern Switzerland
    or a considerable part of the country: the Confederation has
    the right of general supervision over the water and forest
    police measures in the upper mountain regions. It is authorized
    to adopt regulations as to the right of fishing and hunting,
    especially for the preservation of the large game in the
    mountains, and for the protection of birds which are useful
    to agriculture or forestry. Legislation pertaining to the
    construction and operation of railways is an affair of the
    Confederation. It has the right to establish, in addition to
    the existing Polytechnic school, a Federal University and other
    higher institutions of learning, or assist in their support.
    The customs are in the province of the Confederation; it may
    levy export and import duties; but the collection of the
    Federal customs shall be regulated according to the following
    principles:

    1. Import duties.

    (_a_) Materials necessary to the manufactures and agriculture
    of the country shall be taxed as low as possible.

    (_b_) Likewise all articles which may be classed as necessaries
    of life.

    (_c_) Luxuries shall be subjected to the highest duties.

    2. Export duties shall also be as low as possible.

    3. The customs legislation shall include suitable provisions
    for the continuance of commercial and market intercourse across
    the frontier.

    The freedom of trade and of industry is guaranteed throughout
    the whole of the Confederation: excepted from this rule are
    the salt and gunpowder monopolies, the Federal customs,
    measures of sanitary police against epidemics and cattle
    diseases, import duties on wines and other spirituous liquors,
    and other taxes on consumption expressly permitted by the
    Confederation, under certain restrictions: but all the import
    duties levied by the Cantons as well as the similar duties
    levied by the Communes to cease, without indemnity, at the end
    of the year 1890. The Confederation has power to enact uniform
    provisions as to the labor of children in factories, and as
    to the duration of labor fixed for adults therein, and as to
    the protection of workmen against the operation of unhealthy
    and dangerous manufactures. The business of emigration agents
    and of private insurance companies shall be subject to the
    supervision and legislation of the Confederation. The opening
    of gambling-houses is forbidden (those in existence allowed
    until December 31, 1877, to close); necessary measures may
    also be taken concerning lotteries. The post and telegraphs
    (now includes the telephone) in all Switzerland are controlled
    by the Confederation, and the proceeds belong to the Federal
    Treasury; the tariff charges shall be regulated according to
    uniform principles in as equitable a manner as possible, and
    inviolable secrecy of letters and telegrams is guaranteed. To
    the Confederation belongs the exercise of all rights included
    in the coinage monopoly: it alone shall coin money, establish
    the monetary system, and enact provisions, if necessary, for
    the rate of exchange of foreign coins, and to make by law
    general provisions as to the issue and redemption of banknotes:
    it shall not, however, establish any monopoly for the issue
    of banknotes, nor make them a legal tender. The Confederation
    fixes the standard of weights and measures. The manufacture
    and the sale of gunpowder throughout Switzerland pertains
    exclusively to the Confederation (the manufacture and sale of
    spirituous liquors was made a Federal monopoly December 22,
    1885). Every citizen of a Canton is also a Swiss citizen, and
    as such he may participate in the place where he is domiciled
    in all Federal elections and popular votes, after having duly
    proven his qualification as a voter.[17] A Federal law shall
    establish the distinction between settlement and temporary
    residence, and shall at the same time make the regulations
    to which Swiss temporary residents shall be subjected as to
    their political rights and their civil rights. A Federal law
    shall make provision as to the cost of the care and burial
    of indigent persons of one Canton who may become sick or die
    in another Canton. Freedom of conscience and belief shall be
    inviolable; no one shall be compelled to take part in any
    religious society or in any religious instruction, or to
    undertake any religious act, nor shall he be punished in any
    way whatever for his religious views. The person who exercises
    the parents’ or guardians’ authority has the right, conformably
    to the principles above stated, to regulate the religious
    education of children up to the close of their sixteenth year.
    The exercise of civil or political rights shall not be abridged
    by any provisions or conditions whatever of an ecclesiastical
    or religious kind. Religious views shall not absolve from the
    performance of civil duties. No person is bound to pay taxes
    of which the proceeds are specifically appropriated to the
    expenses of any religious society to which he does not belong.
    The free exercise of religious worship is guaranteed within
    the limits of morality and public order; the Cantons and the
    Confederation may take suitable measures for the preservation
    of public order and of peace between the members of different
    religious bodies, as well as against any interference in the
    rights of citizens or of the state by church authorities.
    Contests in public and private law which arise out of the
    formation or the division of religious bodies may be brought by
    appeal before the competent Federal authorities. No bishopric
    shall be created upon Swiss territory without the consent of
    the Confederation; neither the order of the Jesuits nor the
    societies affiliated with them shall be suffered in any part
    of Switzerland, and all participation of their members either
    in church or school is prohibited; this prohibition may be
    extended also by Federal ordinance to other religious orders
    whose action is dangerous to the state, or disturbs the peace
    between sects. The establishment of new convents or religious
    orders or the restoration of those which have been suppressed
    is forbidden. The civil status and the keeping of records
    thereof is subject to the civil authority (taking it away from
    the clergy, who were formerly the custodians). The disposition
    of burial-places shall belong to the civil authorities; they
    shall take care that every deceased person may be decently
    interred (to prevent denial of burial by the church). The
    right of marriage is placed within the protection of the
    Confederation; this right shall not be limited for confessional
    or economic considerations, nor on account of previous conduct
    or other police reasons; no tax upon admission or similar tax
    shall be levied upon either party to a marriage. Freedom of
    the press is guaranteed; the Confederation may enact penalties
    against the abuse of the freedom of the press when directed
    against it or its authorities. The right of petition is
    guaranteed. No person shall be deprived of his constitutional
    judge, and there shall consequently be no extraordinary
    tribunal established.[18] Ecclesiastical jurisdiction is
    abolished. Suits for personal claims against a solvent debtor
    having a domicile in Switzerland must be brought before the
    judge of his domicile; in consequence his property outside the
    Canton in which he is domiciled may not be attached in suits
    for personal claims; with reference to foreigners, however,
    the provisions of the respective international treaties shall
    apply. Imprisonment for debt is abolished. The exit duty on
    property is abolished as respects foreign countries, provided
    reciprocity be observed. The Confederation shall have power to
    legislate:

    1. On civil capacity.

    2. On all legal questions relating to commerce and to
    transactions affecting chattels (law of commercial obligations,
    including commercial law and law of exchange).

    3. On literary and artistic copyright.[19]

    4. On the legal collection of debts and on bankruptcy.

    Capital punishment abolished;[20] corporal punishment is
    forbidden. The Confederation by law provides for the
    extradition of accused persons from one Canton to another;
    nevertheless, extradition shall not be made obligatory for
    political offences and offences of the press. Measures shall be
    taken by Federal law for the incorporation of persons without
    a country.[21] The Confederation has power to expel from its
    territory foreigners who endanger the internal or external
    safety of Switzerland.

The second chapter embraces the _Federal Authorities_:

    CHAPTER II.

    1. The Federal Assembly or Legislative Department.

    2. The Federal Council or Executive Department.

    3. The Federal Tribunal or Judicial Department.[22]

    4. The Federal Chancellery.

    It is provided that the duties of Secretary to the Federal
    Assembly and Federal Council shall be performed by a Federal
    Chancellery under the direction of a Chancellor of the
    Confederation. The Chancellor shall be chosen for the term of
    three years by the Federal Assembly at the same time as the
    Federal Council. The Chancellery shall be under the special
    supervision of the Federal Council.

    5. Miscellaneous provisions.

These are three in number:

    1. All that relates to the location of the Federal authorities
    is a subject to be determined by the Confederation.

    2. The three principal languages spoken in Switzerland--German,
    French, and Italian--shall be considered national languages of
    the Confederation.[23]

    3. The officials of the Confederation shall be responsible
    for their conduct in office. Federal law shall define this
    responsibility and the means of enforcing it.

The third chapter directs the method by which the Constitution can be
amended.

    CHAPTER III.

    1. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended.

    2. Each revision shall take place by the ordinary method of
    Federal legislation.

    3. If one branch of the Federal Assembly passes a resolution
    for amendment of the Federal Constitution and the other does
    not approve; or upon the demand of fifty thousand qualified
    voters, in either case, the question whether the Constitution
    ought to be amended must be submitted to a vote of the Swiss
    people, voting yes or no. If a majority of the citizens voting
    pronounce in the affirmative, there shall be a new election
    of both branches of the Federal Assembly for the purpose of
    preparing amendments.

    4. The amended Constitution shall go into effect whenever
    it shall receive a majority of all the votes cast, and the
    approval of a majority of the Cantons. In determining the
    majority of the Cantons, the vote of a half-Canton shall be
    counted as half a vote. The result of the popular vote in each
    Canton shall be taken as determining the vote of the Canton.[24]

The Constitution closes with five articles, styled _Temporary
Provisions_:

    1. The proceeds of the posts and customs shall be divided
    upon the existing basis until such time as the Confederation
    shall take upon itself the military expenses up to this time
    borne by the Cantons. The loss which may be occasioned to the
    finances of any Canton by the sum of the charges which result
    from certain articles of the Constitution shall fall upon such
    Canton only gradually.

    2. The provisions of the Federal laws and of the Cantonal
    concordats, constitutions or Cantonal laws which are contrary
    to this Constitution cease to have effect by the adoption of
    the Constitution, or when the Federal laws passed in pursuance
    thereof, shall be published.

    3. The new provisions in regard to the powers of the Federal
    Tribunal shall not take effect until the passage of the Federal
    laws relating to it.

    4. The Cantons shall be allowed a period of five years within
    which to introduce the system of free instruction in primary
    public education.

    5. Those persons who practise a liberal profession, and who
    before the publication of the Federal law provided for by the
    Constitution have obtained a certificate of competence from a
    Canton or a joint authority representing several Cantons, may
    pursue that profession throughout the Confederation.

There have been three amendments to the Constitution from the date of
its adoption in 1874 to 1889 inclusive:

    1. In 1879, Article lxv. of the Constitution abolishing capital
    punishment was repealed, and in lieu thereof the following
    substituted: “No death penalty shall be pronounced for a
    political crime.”[25]

    2. In 1885, Article xxxii. of the Constitution was modified
    so that drinking-places and the retail trade in spirituous
    liquors should be excepted from the guarantee of freedom of
    trade and of industry; but the Cantons might by legislation
    subject the keeping of drinking-places and the retail trade
    in spirituous liquors to such restrictions as are required
    for the public welfare. And Article xxxii. _bis_ was added
    authorizing the Confederation by legislation to regulate the
    manufacture and sale of alcohol. In this legislation those
    products which are intended for exportation, or which have
    been subjected to a process excluding them from use as a
    beverage, shall be subjected to no tax. Distillation of wine,
    fruit, and the products of gentian roots, juniper berries, and
    similar products are not subject to Federal legislation as to
    manufacture or tax. After the cessation of the import duties
    on spirituous liquors, as provided for, the trade in liquors
    not distilled shall not be subjected by the Cantons to any
    special taxes, or to other limitations than those necessary
    for protection against adulterated or noxious beverages.
    Nevertheless the powers of the Cantons defined in the
    Constitution are retained over the keeping of drinking-places,
    and the sale at retail of quantities less than two _litres_.
    The net proceeds resulting from taxation on the sale of alcohol
    shall belong to the Cantons in which the tax is levied. The net
    proceeds to the Confederation from the internal manufacture of
    alcohol, and the corresponding addition to the duty on imported
    alcohol, shall be divided among all the Cantons in proportion
    to population. Out of the receipts therefrom the Cantons must
    expend not less than one-tenth in combating drunkenness in its
    causes and effects. The Confederation shall provide by law
    that for such Cantons or Communes as may suffer financial loss
    through the effect of this amendment, such loss shall not come
    upon them immediately in its full extent, but gradually up to
    the year of 1895.[26]

    3. In 1887, Article lxiv. of the Constitution was so amended
    as to give the Confederation the power to make laws, “On
    the protection of new patterns and forms, and of inventions
    which are represented in models and are capable of industrial
    application.”

All amendments to the Swiss Constitution are incorporated in their
logical place in the text immediately upon their adoption.

Much legislation called for by the mandatory provisions of the
Constitution, and suggested by the discretionary powers vested in
the Confederation, has passed into Federal statutory enactments. A
few may be mentioned. An elaborate law as to military service, tax
for exemption therefrom, and pensions; statutes regulating labor
in factories, containing a wide range of provisions for the health
and safety of employés; the practice of the professions of medicine
and dentistry; the construction and management of railroads; the
protection of literary and artistic property and patents; hunting
and fishing; the control of forests, dikes, and water-courses in the
mountainous regions; the election of members of the Federal Assembly
and organization of the Federal Tribunal; the method of taking the
_Referendum_; rights of citizenship and expatriation; banking and
bankruptcy; emigration and immigration. There are very comprehensive
laws also as to “civil capacity and obligations” and “marriage and
divorce.” The Federal law on “civil capacity and obligation” comprises
more than nine hundred articles, and deals with every imaginable kind
of contract except that relating to the acquisition and transfer of the
ownership of land; this forming part of the independent legislation
of the several Cantons. The law of “marriage and divorce” includes
registration of births and deaths, and presents a law which is a
carefully-prepared, scientific whole. The legal age of marriage;
degrees of consanguineous or other relationship; consent of parents;
rules for notice of intention; provision for verifying the facts
alleged; certification both of the fact and means of the dissolution of
a previous marriage, whether by death or divorce; strict requirements
for publication of the banns; restrictions as to locality within which
the marriage must occur; civil marriage made obligatory; and details of
the conditions under which marriages may be declared void and divorces
granted; these constitute some of the main features of the law.

The Constitution, with the evolution through Federal laws made
necessary by it, contains much detail, showing the mind of the
German race therein. It is not confined to an enunciation of general
principles, but determines specifically and at length, with some
confusion of repetition and at times distressing prolixity, many
things which, under a general provision, might have been clearly
interpreted to belong, as the case might be, to either the Federal
or Cantonal authority. It contains a large number of articles which
have no reference to the distribution or exercise of sovereign power,
but which embody general maxims of policy or special provisions as to
matters of detail, to which the Swiss attach great importance, and
which therefore they do not wish to be easily alterable. It goes far
beyond that of the United States in inscribing among constitutional
articles either principles or petty rules which are supposed to have
a claim of legal sanctity. It gives to the Federal authorities power
and supervision over a variety of special interests; a system that may
work well in a small country, but not in one so large as the United
States, with such diversified and local aspects. For these reasons the
text of the Swiss Constitution is not so brief,[27] nor its language so
terse, as that of the United States, which a famous English statesman
has called, “The most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time
by the brain and purpose of man.” The Swiss Constitution leaves little
room for contention in the construction of its phraseology, meaning
the same thing to-day, to-morrow, and forever. Its written provisions,
stipulations, and guarantees leave little room for the exercise of
“doubtful powers.” With such a mass of detail, the Confederation is not
competent to act directly; the execution of much is left to the Cantons
acting under the supervision of the Federal authorities, which only
interfere where the former neglect or refuse to fulfil their obligation.

The repeated and remarkable stipulations of the Constitution, reaching
almost every conceivable exercise of religious action and freedom,
present one of its most marked characteristics and radical departures
from that of the United States. The latter contains only two allusions
to the subject. The first in Article VI.: “No religious test shall ever
be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the
United States.” The second in the first amendment: “Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof.” Previous to the Swiss Constitution of
1874 there was no mention of individual religious liberty. That of
1848 guaranteed the free exercise of divine worship to the recognized
confessions, the Roman Catholic and the Reformed (_i.e._, the Church
Reformed by Zwingli and Calvin), but forbade the order of Jesuits. It
is manifest that the framers of the Constitution of 1874 were resolved
to effectually suppress the further exercise of the ecclesiastical
narrowness and sectarian antagonism which, as late as the Sonderbund
War of 1847, disturbed the peace and threatened the stability of the
Confederation. The extreme rigor with which these provisions of the
Constitution are enforced, and the latitude of action given under them
to Cantonal authority, do appear at times to be strained to an extent
deaf to both humanity and common sense. In 1888, “Captain Stirling,” of
the Salvation Army, a subject of Great Britain, was sentenced in the
Canton of Vaud to one hundred days’ imprisonment in Chillon Castle for
attempting to proselyte some children. The appeal made in her behalf to
the Federal Council was refused, and she was compelled to complete the
term of her sentence. Surely no danger was threatened that might not
have been averted by her removal to the frontier, or the offence atoned
for by a slight fine. The case presented an appeal to that unknown
quantity, the Swiss sense of the ridiculous. The sanctity of the law is
all very well; but when the law is one against persons who sing hymns
to children in the street, and its terrors are those of Bonnivard’s
prison, the plot of the drama seems hardly equal to the majesty of the
scene. To put a young lady, for so trivial an offence, under triple
bolts and bars for months is a piling up of the agony which indicates a
singular weakness of dramatic resource. Perhaps the military style of
the movements in these days of alarming concentrations on Continental
frontiers may have invested the “colonels” and “captains” in the
Salvationist train, even of the gentler sex, with undue importance
and alarm. It is difficult to reconcile Federal and Cantonal action
in Switzerland in this and other instances with the spirit of the
inviolability of freedom of faith and conscience guaranteed by the
Constitution. Religious liberty encounters no little restriction and
abridgment in several of the Cantons. Each Canton has still its own
established Church, supported and ruled by the civil magistrate. In
recent times free churches have been founded in Geneva, Neuchâtel,
and Vaud, and are showing a high degree of spiritual vitality and
liberality. It would be better if it could work out an entire
dissolution of the connection between Church and State throughout the
Confederation, and religion be allowed to take its natural course.

The Constitution of Switzerland is a conscious and sagacious
reproduction of the Constitution of the United States, with noteworthy
variations called for by the different conditions of the two
commonwealths. The Government of the United States is one of limited
and enumerated powers; “the powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved
to the States respectively, or to the people.” The restrictions under
the Swiss Constitution apply mostly to the Cantons. In Switzerland, as
in the United States, there is no single determinate sovereign body
or assembly, or any real sovereign other than the people themselves.
In the Swiss Confederation the popular will does everything; the
legislative power being directly exercised by the body of the people
by way of _Referendums_. In the Republic of France the tendency is
to centralize the direction of public affairs almost entirely in
the Chamber of Deputies. In the United States it is claimed, with
some color of truth, that the initiative and legislation are being
gradually taken away from Congress by a very occult, but authoritative,
government of committees.

The separation of persons and functions is most complete in the
United States; the Constitution enforcing a distribution of powers,
and directly or indirectly the powers of every authority existing
under it are defined, limited, and carefully regulated. In the
Swiss Constitution these respective powers are not at all clearly
distinguished; in fact, they seem to have been purposely left
indeterminate. There are none of the elaborate checks and interlocking
vetoes found in the United States. It is true the Swiss have the
three organs,--a Federal Legislature, a Federal Executive, and a
Federal Court; but they fail in the strict separation of each of these
departments from and its independence of the other. Said John Adams,
“Here is a complication and refinement of balances, which for anything
I recollect, is an invention of our own and peculiar to us.”

There is also an entire absence from the Swiss Constitution of any
provisions touching those personal rights and ancient muniments of
liberty designated as the “Bill of Rights;” such as are contained in
the first ten amendments of the Constitution of the United States;
those fundamental principles that guarantee to the individual a sphere
of liberty upon which the government may not encroach; a branch of
constitutional law which it has been the peculiar province of American
political science to develop. This omission from the Swiss Constitution
may have been for the same reason that it occurred in the original
Constitution of the United States; that these rights were sufficiently
implied and understood in any system of free government. These cardinal
rights are claimed by the Swiss to be expressly provided for in the
Cantonal constitutions. Again, it is held that all these inherent and
indefeasible rights are amply secured by the article of the Federal
Constitution requiring the organic law of the Cantons to “insure the
exercise of political rights after republican forms.”

Hamilton met the objection to the Constitution of the United States
containing no “Bill of Rights,” in the “Federalist” (No. 84), by
saying, “Bills of rights are, in their origin, stipulations between
kings and their subjects, abridgments of prerogative in favor of
privilege, reservation of rights not surrendered to the prince. It is
evident, therefore, that, according to their primitive signification,
they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the
power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives
and servants. Here in strictness the people surrender nothing; and as
they retain everything they have no need of particular reservations.”
But Jefferson expressed the prevalent opinion when he wrote, “The
executive in our governments is not the sole, it is scarcely the
principal, object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislatures is
the most formidable dread at present, and will be for many years.”
These restraints upon legislative power have proven most fortunate ones
in the United States; for the provision, “No person shall be deprived
of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” together
with those provisions which forbid the taking of private property
for public use without just compensation, and the enactment of laws
impairing the obligation of contracts, lies at the foundation of all
constitutional protection of private rights in the citizen. Thus a
body of constitutional law has been formed which is not yet completely
crystallized, but is being daily shaped by the decisions of the courts.
In annexing the “Bill of Rights,” the founders of the government may
not have had a correct idea as to what would be the full effect of its
provisions, but the object they had in view was perfectly clear. They
believed that wherever power was placed, it was liable to be abused.
They intended to restrain the impulse of popular majorities, and more
especially to prevent the legislature from becoming despotic and
tyrannous. But the number of rights which can be effectually protected
by the Constitution is very limited; and the legislature must always
retain sufficient power to disturb seriously all social relations,
if it is determined to make use for this purpose of the means at its
command. The utmost that a constitution can be expected to do is to
protect directly a small number of vested rights, and to discourage and
check indirectly the growth of a demand for radical measures.

The power of the general government in Switzerland, as that of the
United States, extends not merely to those affairs which are turned
over to it by the exact words of the Constitution itself, but also
to the relations whose control by the central government appears as
a necessity for its performance of the duties devolving upon it. In
a comparison of the Swiss Federal polity with that of the United
States, it must be borne in mind that the infinite variety in the
local and otherwise peculiar circumstances of different nations,
produces wide discrepancies between governments bearing a common
appellation. There exists, indeed, but little community of opinion
or uniformity of practice beyond the circumscribed limits of those
maxims in politics which are deducible by direct inference from moral
truths. The great mass of those rules and principles which have a more
immediate influence on practice, and give to government its tone and
peculiar organization, are of a description purely local; deriving
their force from local interests, and therefore, however just, are only
applicable in their full extent to the particular case. Hence it is
that constitutions, nominally and externally the same, have little or
no interior resemblance, and in many instances only so far correspond
as to justify us in referring them to one common standard. The United
States and Switzerland have republican states joined in a republican
union, with a division of powers between states and union approximately
the same; and they present the most completely developed types of
that federalism “which desires union and does not desire unity;” the
same problem upon which all civilized peoples have been working ever
since civilization began,--how to insure peaceful concerted action
throughout the whole, without infringing upon local and individual
freedom in the parts; to reconcile the welfare and security of the
whole with the local claims and diversified institutions of the
component parts. The Swiss Constitution blends these ends harmoniously
in a government not too centralized to act in the interest of the
localities; but a little too closely wedded to routine to adapt itself
to changing conditions. The federative principle implies the existence
of opposing tendencies, active within a superior agency, which is
capable of regulating their mutual aggression, and of securing their
harmony. Over the two historical forces, _Nationalism_ and _Localism_,
the federative principle asserts its supremacy, and gives them
simultaneous, correlated, and adequate expression. Under confederation,
both _Nationalism_ and _Localism_ by different processes increase
each its original determinative strength; and the danger arises that
either alone might force a union of but partial means and incapable of
the highest end. The federative principle by its own creative energy
chooses the time and method of its complete self-assertion, and brings
its factors to the work of “forming the more perfect union.” Thus
_Nationalism_ and _Localism_, though their methods are in constant
warfare, their aim is one,--the good of the individual, who in his dual
relation is an epitome of the controlling principle. A complete harmony
of the two elements of the federative principle can never be realized;
but the tendency is ever towards harmony, thus placing before our hopes
an ideal state. In constructing his ideal republic, Plato rejects
discordant powers and forces which would bring false harmony, and
leaves but two essential elements: “These two harmonies I ask you to
leave,--the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain
of courage and the strain of temperance.” In a republic, national will
and local self-rule--the one federative principle--constitute true
harmony.[28]

The question of government is a question of the application of means to
an end; that end being, in general terms, the happiness and prosperity
of the people. Government considered as comprehending those laws and
principles which regulate the conduct of the individual in his relative
capacity to the state, being continually present to his mind, must
invariably influence his habits of thinking and acting. The genius of
the organic law, the Constitution, is transfused into the national
mind, and in the character of the citizens we recognize the congenial
spirit of the laws.

The history of the Swiss Constitution is the history of a confederation
of free Cantons, uniting city and rural communities in a common
league; providing at once for separate autonomies, and for confederate
union and government; insuring mutual protection and a national
policy. It represents a wise and politic union; a union constituting
an honorable European state in the full enjoyment of its ancient
franchises; a union of strength and national life and enduring liberty.
Times and circumstances taught their own lesson; civil and religious
establishments were imperfectly produced, roughly moulded, and slowly
improved, but they were adequate to dispense the blessings of a
free government to a brave and artless people, in a state of great
comparative independence and honor, security and happiness.

A constitution is valuable in proportion as it is suited to the
circumstances, desires, and aspirations of the people, and as it
contains within itself the elements of stability and security
against disorder and revolution. Measured by this standard, the
Swiss Constitution is an excellent adaptation to the conditions of
a most varied and composite nationality. With a strong paternal
tendency, the Constitution takes cognizance of the citizen at his
birth by registration, and guarding him through life with legislative
scrutiny, vigilant and minute, it insures him a “decent burial.” Yet
this searching, far-reaching, central authority is administered in
a beneficent and patriotic spirit, with a jealous regard for all the
highest natural rights of man.

Federalism tends to conservatism; it is almost certain to impress on
the minds of citizens the idea that any provision included in the
organic law is immutable and, so to speak, sacred. History shows that
those states have been most stable and prosperous which, in casting
off an old allegiance or in ordering their political constitutions
afresh, made no more changes than were absolutely needful, and did not
violently snap the tie between the old and the new state of things;
that the best form of government will commonly be that which the events
of its history have given it,--a government which has arisen out of
the events and necessities of the country. Switzerland and the United
States are examples of commonwealths whose success has been largely
owing to the comparatively small amount of change which accompanied
their acquisition of independence. Each has that form of government
which the events of its history have made natural for it. In each the
existing political system is founded on the practical needs of the time
and place. Referring to the preamble of the _Declaration of Rights_,
wherein the prayer is made, “That it may be declared and enacted that
all and singular the rights and liberties asserted and declared, are
the true ancient and indubitable rights and liberties of the people
of this kingdom,” Burke says, “By adhering in this manner to our
forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians,
but the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance
we have given to our frame of policy the image of a relation in blood,
binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic
ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family
affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of
all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our
hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.” Switzerland and the United
States in their organic law and its application, while presenting many
and essential differences, constitute the only two genuine and thorough
republics in existence; and each system better suits the position
of the nation which has adopted it. Switzerland, though beyond all
others a regenerate nation, was still an old nation; above all things
a system was needed which should preserve everything and jeopardize
nothing. She seized on a rare and happy moment, when all the despots
of Europe had enough to do at home, to reform her constitution without
foreign intermeddling; and she formed a system which exactly suits
the position of a small, free, conservative power, ready as ever to
defend its own, but neither capable nor desirous of aggrandizement at
the expense of others. The Swiss have a way of keeping their current
history to themselves; or the outside world has a way of not asking
for it, which is much the same thing. They are unique among civilized
people for the extreme modesty of their claim upon the attention of
mankind. This might imply the highest qualities or the lowest; but no
one who knows anything of the little republic will doubt to which of
them it is to be assigned. She lives, moves, and works without fuss or
friction; and is constantly solving in her own way some of the hardest
problems of politics. She has found out how to maintain perfect peace
between diverse races and conflicting creeds; to adjust and harmonize
discordant views and principles; and preserve to the several elements
of the confederacy a due proportion of constitutional authority. This
difficult task has been accomplished, not indeed without frictions,
not without armed collisions, and not until after many trials and
experiments; but it has been done, and on the whole successfully.

Nothing is so easy as to find fault in every form of government, and
nothing so hard as to show a perfect one reduced to practice. Most of
the plans of government seem to have been formed like houses built
at several times; for as the old parts of them always deface the new
and render them irregular, so upon the establishment of any new frame
something of the old is still preserved and enters into the frame of
the new, which is not of a piece with it, and consequently spoils its
symmetry. No one can look closely into the Constitution of Switzerland
and fail to discover that, in its provisions, the principles of a
democratic confederation find the elements of sound and vigorous health.

Enlightened freedom, governed and secured by law, upholds the fabric
of the Constitution; salubrious streams issuing from education and
patriotism, consecrated by religion, mingle with each other, and
unite in diffusing fertility through every channel of the state. The
everlasting league still lives on, to shame the novel and momentary
devices of the kingdoms and commonwealths which rise and fall around
it.[29]




CHAPTER III.

THE FEDERAL ASSEMBLY.

Bundesversammlung; Assemblée fédérale.


“A legislative, and an executive, and a judicial power comprehend the
whole of what is meant by government.”[30] We find in Switzerland this
general division of powers, with many interesting and instructive
peculiarities, which give the Swiss federalism an individual character.

The need for two chambers in a federal state has become an axiom of
political science. Where there is a twofold sovereignty, that of the
whole nation, and that of the states or Cantons, which are joined
together to form it, each sovereignty must be represented in the
legislature. With the two chambers, one representing the people as
a whole, the other the integral parts as constituent members of the
whole, each element is a check upon the other by the coexistence of
equal authority. By the Constitution of 1874, “With reservation of
the rights of the people and of the Cantons the supreme authority of
the Swiss Confederation is exercised by the Federal Assembly, which
consists of two sections or councils, to wit:

“1. The National Council (_Nationalrath_; _Conseil National_).

2. The Council of States (_Ständerath_; _Conseil des États_).”

Relating to the National Council, the Constitution has eight articles,
viz.:

1. The National Council is composed of representatives of the Swiss
people, chosen in the ratio of one member for each twenty thousand
persons of the total population. Fractions of upward of ten thousand
persons are reckoned as twenty thousand. Every Canton, and in the
divided Cantons every half-Canton, chooses at least one representative.

2. The elections for the National Council are direct. They are held in
federal electoral districts, which in no case shall be formed out of
parts of different Cantons.

3. Every male Swiss who has completed twenty years of age, and who
in addition is not excluded from the rights of active citizenship
by the legislation of the Canton in which he is domiciled, has the
right to take part in elections and popular votes. Nevertheless, the
Confederation by law may establish uniform regulations for the exercise
of such right.

4. Every lay Swiss citizen who has the right to vote is eligible as
member of the National Council.

5. The National Council is elected for three years, and entirely
renewed at each general election.

6. Members of the Council of States, or of the Federal Council, or
officials appointed by the latter, shall not at the same time be
members of the National Council.

7. The National Council chooses from among its members, for each
regular or extraordinary session, a President and a Vice-President. A
member who has held the office of President during the regular session
is not eligible either for President or Vice-President of the next
regular session. The same member may not be Vice-President for two
consecutive regular sessions. The President shall have the casting vote
in case of a tie; in elections, he votes in the same manner as any
other member.

8. The members of the National Council receive a compensation from the
federal treasury.

The qualification of the elector, as above described, is that of being
in the enjoyment of the “active right of citizenship,”--_i.e._, not
excluded from the rights of a voter by the legislation of his Canton.
This also applies to those who have been deprived of their civic rights
by virtue of the penal law, and in consequence of a judicial sentence;
and in some Cantons embraces insolvents and paupers. The limitation
of eligibility to “lay” Swiss citizens does not necessarily exclude
ecclesiastics, as illustrated in a recent case of a Bernese clergyman,
who, being chosen a member of the National Council, simply laid aside
temporarily, by resignation, his clerical robes; should he fail any
time of re-election he may return to the pulpit. Naturalized citizens
are not eligible until five years after they have become citizens. The
provision forbidding a member to hold the office of President for two
consecutive ordinary sessions makes it possible, during the life of
a National Council, for one-fourth of the Cantons (even counting the
half-Cantons) to be honored with this officer; and certainly gives but
little opportunity for the building up of a one-man power, just this
side of absolute. The power of the presiding officer of the National
Council is too insignificant to justify any parallel with that of the
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. A federal law
regulates in a uniform manner, and by ballot, the election for members
of the National Council; the execution of the law is entirely under
the direction of the Canton, and in immaterial details there is a
great diversity. There are registers in each Commune, in which every
citizen having a vote must be inscribed. These registers are open two
weeks before the day of the election, and close three days previous
to it. In some Cantons, a card from the Commune where the voter is
registered is left at his house; in others, he must present himself
at the proper office and obtain his card. The election takes place on
the last Sunday in October triennially. The polls generally are in the
churches, and no one is permitted to enter except upon the presentation
of the requisite proof as to his right to vote. Candidates must be
elected by an absolute majority of the votes cast. Should there be a
failure of election, a second ballot under the same conditions is had
the following Sunday. If a third ballot becomes necessary, the election
is again repeated the next Sunday, when the _scrutin de liste_ is
restricted to a number not exceeding three times the number of members
to be chosen; and these must be taken in order from those receiving the
largest vote in the previous _tours de scrutin_. In this final trial
the candidate or candidates, as the case may be, having a plurality
are elected. The members are elected on a general ticket,--that is,
“at large” for the district, not for the Canton. These districts are
called _arrondissements_, and the method of voting is known as _scrutin
d’arrondissement_.

The National Council at present consists of one hundred and forty-five
members, apportioned among forty-nine electoral districts. The
number returned from these districts varies from one to five members
each. The Cantons of Uri and Zug, and the half-Cantons of Obwald,
Nidwald, and Inner-Rhoden compose only one district each. Bern has six
districts and twenty-seven members; Zurich, four districts and sixteen
members. Every elector is entitled to vote for as many members as his
district is entitled to, but not cumulatively. A federal census for
the apportionment of representation is taken every ten years. Members
receive a compensation of twenty francs per day (about $3⁸⁶⁄₁₀₀) when
the National Council is in session,[31] and a travelling allowance of
twenty centimes per kilometre (a fraction under .03 per mile). A member
loses his _per diem_ if he does not answer the roll-call at the opening
of the day’s session, unless he should appear later and give to the
secretary a sufficient excuse for his dilatoriness. If subsequently,
during that day’s session, there is a vote by roll-call (_appel
nominal_), or if there is a count of the House to ascertain the
presence of a quorum, the compensation of the members whose absence is
disclosed is forfeited for that day. This law is not a “dead letter,”
but is strictly enforced, and with a frugal-minded people tends to keep
the members in their seats.

The Council of States (_Ständerath_; _Conseil des États_).

The space devoted to the Council of States in the Constitution is
one-half of that given to the National Council, and is comprised within
four articles:

1. The Council of States consists of forty-four representatives of the
Cantons. Each Canton elects two representatives, and in the divided
Cantons, each half-Canton elects one.

2. No member of the National Council or of the Federal Council may be
at the same time a member of the Council of States.

3. The Council of States elects from among its members a President and
Vice-President for each regular and extraordinary session. From among
the representatives of that Canton from which a President has been
elected for a regular session, neither the President nor Vice-President
can be taken for the next following regular session. Representatives of
the same Canton cannot occupy the position of Vice-President during two
consecutive regular sessions. When the votes are equally divided, the
President has a casting vote; in elections, he votes in the same manner
as the other members.

4. Members of the Council of States receive compensation from their
respective Cantons.

The constitution of the two Houses is manifestly borrowed from the
model of the United States; but it is apparent that the Council of
States does not so closely correspond with the Senate of the United
States as the National Council does to the House of Representatives. It
has no such clearly-defined character as the Senate in distinctively
representing the federal feature of the union between the Cantons.
For the mode in which its members shall be elected, the qualifications
which they shall possess, the length of time which they shall serve,
the salary which they shall receive, and the relations they shall bear
to those whom they represent, in fact, every element of their character
as representatives is left to the Canton, and a great variety of
provisions prevail.[32] The small Cantons in which the people assemble
annually (_Landsgemeinde_) have their members elected by this assembly,
by the raising up of hands for such or such a candidate. In other
Cantons, including Zurich, Thurgau, and Basel-rural, the whole Canton
forms but one district for the nomination of the members; the votes
are deposited in the ballot-box of the Commune, and are collected and
counted by a cantonal board. In the Cantons having the representative
system, such as Geneva, Freiburg, Ticino, and Bern, they are chosen
by the cantonal legislative body. The terms of the members vary from
one to three years; twelve Cantons elect for one year, twelve for
three years, with Valais holding to the mean of two years. Their
compensation, paid by the Canton, is the same as that received by the
members of the National Council, with the exception of Geneva, where
it is double the amount, or forty francs. When serving on committees
during recess, the members of the Council of States are paid by the
Confederation. The Vice-Chancellor serves as Secretary of the Council
of States.

The Council of States has no special executive powers apart from the
National Council like the United States Senate; which in some respect
give that body a further strength and dignity of its own. The Swiss
Senate rests solely on its general position as one necessary element of
the federal system. The two branches of the Assembly are co-ordinate,
standing in all respects on an equal footing. The work of each
session, so far as known at its opening, is divided between the two
Houses by a conference of their Presidents. The right of initiative
belongs to each House, and to each member of the Assembly. There may be
a shade of superior consequence and dignity attaching to the National
Council. It is designated first in order by the Constitution, it has a
fixed term of service, and when the two Houses are in joint session,
the President of the National Council takes the chair. In the National
Council are to be found the more ambitious and active men in political
life, for the members of the Federal Council are sure to be chosen
from this body. The members of both Houses equally enjoy the usual
privileges and immunities of members of representative bodies. The
two Houses act separately in all strictly legislative matters; coming
together for deliberation in common only for the exercise of certain
electoral and judicial functions.

The powers of the Federal Assembly are thus set forth in the
Constitution

1. The National Council and the Council of States have jurisdiction
over all subjects which the present constitution places within the
competence of the Confederation, and which are not assigned to other
federal authorities.

2. The subjects which fall within the competence of the two Councils
are particularly the following:

Laws pertaining to the organization and election of federal authorities.

Laws and ordinances on subjects intrusted by the Federal Constitution
to the Confederation.

The salary and compensation of members of the federal governing bodies,
and of the Federal Chancellery; the establishment of federal offices,
and determination of their salaries.

The election of the Federal Council, of the Federal Tribunal, of the
Federal Chancellor, and of the General of the Federal Army.[33]

Alliances and treaties with foreign countries, and the approval of
treaties made by the Cantons between themselves or with foreign powers;
such cantonal treaties shall, however, not be submitted to the Federal
Assembly, unless objection be raised to them by the Federal Council or
by another Canton.

Measures for external safety; for the maintenance of the independence
and neutrality of Switzerland; the declaration of war and the
conclusion of peace.

The guarantee of the constitutions and the territory of the Cantons;
intervention in consequence of such guarantee; measures for the
internal safety of Switzerland, for the maintenance of peace and order;
amnesty and pardon.[34]

Measures for securing observance of the Federal constitution; for
carrying out the guarantee of the Cantonal constitutions, and for the
fulfilment of federal obligations.

The power of controlling the federal army.

The determination of the yearly budget, the audit of public accounts,
and federal ordinances authorizing loans.

General supervision of the federal administration and of federal
courts; appeals from the decisions of the Federal Council upon
administrative conflicts of jurisdiction between federal authorities.

Revision of the Federal constitution.

3. Both Councils shall assemble once each year in regular session, on
a day to be fixed by the standing orders.[35] They may be convened in
extra session by the Federal Council, or on demand of one-fourth of the
members of the National Council, or of five Cantons.

4. In either Council a quorum is a majority of the total number of its
members.

5. In the National Council and in the Council of States, a majority of
those voting shall decide the question.

6. For federal laws, decrees, and resolutions, the consent of both
Councils is necessary. Federal laws shall be submitted for acceptance
or rejection by the people upon the demand of thirty thousand qualified
voters, or of eight Cantons. The same principle applies to federal
resolutions, which have a general application, and which are not of an
urgent nature.

7. The Confederation shall by law establish the forms and times of
popular voting.

8. Members of either Council vote without instructions.

9. The Councils deliberate separately. But in the case of the elections
(specified in Section 2), of pardons, or of deciding a conflict of
jurisdiction, the two Councils meet in joint session, under the
direction of the President of the National Council. Votes shall be
decided by simple majority of the members of both Councils, present and
voting.

10. Measures may originate in either Council, and may be introduced by
any member of each Council.

11. The sittings of both Councils shall, as a rule, be public.

The law-making department in any sovereign state is the repository
of most power; consequently the constitution of Switzerland, like
that of the United States, after enumerating the powers which shall
be exercised by authority of the general government, confers them in
terms upon the most immediate representative of the sovereignty. In
Switzerland this is the Federal Assembly; in the United States it
is Congress. The scope of powers conferred upon the Swiss Federal
Assembly enables it to exercise not only legislative, but supervisory,
executive, and judicial functions. The separation of its powers from
those of the Federal Council and the Federal Tribunal--the executive
and judicial departments--is neither clearly set forth nor in practice
is it strictly observed. Cases have occurred, the jurisdiction over
which being involved in so much doubt, the interested parties, from
abundance of caution, submitted their memorials simultaneously to two
of these federal departments. The Swiss Federal Assembly exercises a
power more comprehensive and greater than that given probably to any
legislative body; at least in a republic, where there is a professed
organic distribution of the three great heads. It elects the Federal
Executive, Federal Judiciary, and the Commander of the Army. It is
the final arbiter on all questions as to the respective jurisdiction
of the Executive and the Federal Court. It would appear that there
is no decision of the Executive which cannot be revised by it. It is
the chief power in the land. No veto can intervene nor any judicial
power question the constitutionality of its statutes. Its acts form
the law which the court must execute. The Swiss people, as it were,
speak in each legislative enactment; and the only check or revision
to which it is amenable rests with the people themselves by means of
the _Referendum_. The authority of the Swiss Assembly, it is true,
exceeds that of the Congress of the United States, and yet it may be
regarded as a weaker body. For while in each case there lies in the
background a legislative sovereign, capable of controlling the action
of the ordinary legislature, the sovereign power is far more easily
brought into play in Switzerland than in the United States. Again,
every ordinary law passed by the Swiss Assembly may be annulled by a
popular vote. The freedom from instruction secured to the members of
the Federal Assembly was first declared in the Swiss Constitution of
1848. The whole history of the representative principle proves the
soundness of the doctrine, that the vesting an entire discretion in
the representative is an essential part of the definition. It is not
to the power of instructing the representative that constituents are
to look for an assurance that his efforts will be faithfully applied
to the public service; but it is to the power of reducing him from
the elevation to which their suffrages have raised him. The object to
be obtained is not to compel the representative to decide agreeably
to the opinions of his constituents, for that would be compelling him
often to decide against his better judgment; but it is to force him
to decide with a single view to the public good. It is by leaving him
unshackled with positive instructions, while he is subject to the
ultimate tribunal of the opinion of his constituents, that the end in
view is to be accomplished of bringing into action, in the proceedings
of the legislature, the greatest practicable quantity of intelligence
under the guidance of the purest disposition to promote the welfare of
the community. The view which Burke takes of the relation between a
representative and his constituents is in the main so correct, and is
so luminously expressed, that no one can read it without pleasure and
instruction. The passage occurs in his celebrated speech at Bristol
on the conclusion of the poll. “Certainly, gentlemen,” he says, “it
ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the
strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved
communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great
weight with him; their opinion high respect; their business unremitted
attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures,
his satisfactions to theirs; and above all, ever and in all cases to
prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his matured
judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you,
to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from
your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a
trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable.
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment;
and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your
opinion.”

Neither the Constitution of the United States, nor that of Switzerland,
vests anywhere any power of dissolution of the legislative body. The
Swiss Assembly is chosen for a definite time; when that time is up it
dissolves by the operation of the law; before that time is up no power
can lawfully dissolve it.

Either the National Council or Council of States can recommend to the
Federal Council that it shall prepare and present for its consideration
certain bills; or a member can suggest one to his own House, and, if
agreeable, the matter will be referred to the Federal Council with
instruction to draft the necessary bill; or the Federal Council itself
presents bills upon its own initiative. The Assembly recommends to
the Federal Council by motions, called _postulats_, such alterations
or reform in bills submitted by it as seem to them to be proper. If
the Federal Council does not assent to a particular _postulat_ coming
from one of the Houses, it makes a report to that effect to the House,
and if the latter insists upon its view, then a formal proposition is
drawn up, and if carried in both Houses, the Federal Council is bound
to execute its provisions. It must be understood that every bill must
pass through the hands of the Federal Council, and by it laid before
the Assembly. When a bill is presented by the Federal Council, the
House, which has first to take it up, appoints a committee to examine
and report upon it. These committees or commissions are appointed as
the occasion arises,--there being no standing committees,--by the
President of the House and the _scrutateurs_; constituting together
what is called a _bureau_. These _scrutateurs_, four in the National
Council and two in the Council of States, are elected every session
from the members of their respective Houses; and it is also their duty
to determine and to announce the result, whenever a vote is had, either
by ballot, division, or _viva voce_; they occupy an elevated position
to the right of the President. On the submission of a committee’s
report, the bill is discussed, and ultimately either passed with or
without amendments, or rejected. If passed, it goes to the other House,
where a similar process is undergone. When passed by both Houses it
becomes law, and is published as such by the Federal Council in the
_Feuille fédérale Suisse_; subject, however, to the _Referendum_, if
duly demanded. The Federal Council, in publishing a law, decree, or
resolution not subject to the _Referendum_, fixes the date when it
shall go into force, if this is not done in the text of the bill.
Generally, this date is the day of publication. For all measures liable
to the _Referendum_, what is termed _délai d’opposition_ is named,
being a period of three months, during which the appeal to the popular
vote can be demanded. In case of no appeal being taken, the law goes
into force after the expiration of the three months.

The daily sittings of the Assembly open at eight o’clock in the
morning during the June session, and nine o’clock during the December
session; the adjournments are usually from one to two o’clock P.M. The
sessions never extend beyond three weeks. It requires from the federal
treasury a small sum to defray the entire annual cost of the Assembly.
In the legislative appropriation bill for 1889 the following sums
were provided for the compensation of the two Houses of the Assembly:
_Ständerath_, salaries and mileage of committees, 10,000 francs;
salary and mileage of translator, 3000 francs; service, 2500 francs;
total, 15,500 francs; _Nationalrath_, salaries and mileage of members
and members of committees, 200,000 francs; translator, 3000 francs;
service, 3000 francs; total, 206,000 francs. So the entire outlay of
the country for its legislative department for the year was 221,500
francs, or about $44,000; one thousand dollars less than is annually
paid to nine members of Congress.

One in visiting the chambers of the Assembly is much impressed with
the smooth and quiet despatch of business. The members are not
seated with any reference to their political affiliations. There are
no “filibustering,” no vexatious points of order, no drastic rules
of “clôture,” to delay or ruffle the decorum of its proceedings.
Interruptions are few, and angry personal bickerings never occur.
There are no official stenographers, or _verbatim_ reports made of
the proceedings; press reporters represent only the local papers
and furnish a very meagre synopsis of the daily business. The small
gallery set apart for the public is rarely occupied. “Leave to
print” or a written speech memorized and passionately declaimed are
unknown; there are none of these extraneous and soliciting conditions
to invite “buncombe” speeches or flights of oratory for the press
and the gallery. The debates are more in the nature of an informal
consultation of business-men about common interests; they talk and
vote, and there is an end of it. This easy colloquial disposition of
affairs by no means implies any slipshod indifference, or superficial
method of legislation. There is no legislative body where important
questions are treated in a more fundamental and critical manner.
The members of the National Council stand up to speak, while those
of the Council of States speak from their seats. The tri-lingual
characteristic of the country is carried into the Assembly; and within
a brief visit to either House, different members may be heard to speak
successively in German, French, and Italian. If the presiding officer
of either House is a German and cannot speak French, his remarks are
immediately repeated by a French official interpreter who stands at
his side; and with a President who is French and cannot speak German
the process is reversed. The members from the Italian Cantons, as a
rule, understand French or German sufficiently not to require special
translation into their tongue. All bills, reports, resolutions, and
laws are published in the three languages. The Swiss have been as
successful in reconciling the difficulties of diverse dialects in the
federal legislature as in the harmonious union of Cantons. It was a
serious obstacle in the way of the union, when the legislature of
the kingdom of the Netherlands, founded in 1814, had three different
languages spoken in its Halls,--Dutch, Flemish, and French. This was
considered to foreshadow the disruption in 1830, as it intensified
every prejudice and difficulty. The _personnel_ of the Assembly is
grave and sedate, dignified and serious. A large majority of the
members are past middle age,--men of education, culture, and experience
in public life. Many of them have held office first in their Communes
and then in their Cantons. It is curious that, in a country where it
is hard to find the court-house or a lawyer’s sign, one-fourth of the
members of the Assembly report themselves as _advokats_; next in number
come merchants, then farmers, physicians, bankers, and professors.
One-third are given as incumbents of various other cantonal and
communal offices. It is very common for a person to fill at the same
time a federal, cantonal, and communal office, where the duties do
not conflict and belong to the same general class. This is regarded
as both simplifying and cheapening the public service. The very dress
of the members, in its severe sombreness and uniformity, bespeaks
the stable and serious bent of their minds. Scarcely the change of a
cravat would be required for the entire body to appear at a funeral
_de rigueur_. The oath administered to the members of the Assembly is
calculated to emphasize the high and sacred trust assumed. It runs
thus: “I swear, by God the Almighty! to maintain the constitution and
the laws of the Confederation, faithfully and truly to guard the unity,
power, and honor of the Swiss nation, to defend the independence of the
Fatherland, the freedom and rights of the people, and its citizens in
the whole, to fulfil conscientiously all duties conferred upon me, as
truly, as God blesses me.” In taking this oath the member stands with
his right hand uplifted, the thumb and first two fingers extended,
indicating the Trinity.

The members of the Assembly practically enjoy a life-tenure; once
chosen a member, one is likely to be re-elected so long as he is
willing to serve. Re-election, alike in the whole Confederation and
in the single Canton, is the rule; rejection of a sitting member, a
rare exception. Death and voluntary retirement accounted for nineteen
out of twenty-one new members at the last general election. There are
members who have served continuously since the organization of the
Assembly in 1848. Referring to this sure tenure of officials generally,
the President of the Confederation, in a public address, said, “Facts
and not persons are what interest us. If you were to take ten Swiss,
every one of them would know whether the country was well governed or
not; but I venture to say that nine of them would not be able to tell
the name of the President, and the tenth, who might think he knew it,
would be mistaken.” To some extent this remarkable retention of members
of the Assembly may be ascribed to the fact that the people feel that
they are masters of the situation through the power of rejecting all
measures which are put to the popular vote. The position of a member is
haloed with dignity, and is not a place sought from material motives,
a perquisite more than an honor. The absence of this fiscal view of
the office of the legislator brings in its train an equal absence
of the “rotation” notion. The Assembly is not made up on the theory
of mutation or by agencies more malign. Some are fond of declaring
against the caprice and ingratitude of the people, says Mr. Freeman
in his “Growth of the English Constitution,” and of telling us that
under a democratic government neither men nor measures can remain for
an hour unchanged. The spirit which made democratic Athens, year by
year, bestow her highest offices on the patrician Pericles and the
reactionary Phocion, still lives in the democracies of Switzerland,
in the _Landsgemeinde_ of Uri, and the Federal Assembly at Bern. The
ministers of kings, whether despotic or constitutional, may vainly
envy the sure tenure of office which falls to the lot of those who
are chosen to rule by the voice of the people. Grote, who wrote his
“History of Greece” in Switzerland, stated that his interest in the
Swiss Cantons arose from the analogy they presented to the ancient
Greek states; and specially as confirming the tendency of popular
governments to adhere to their leaders with the utmost tenacity of
attachment.

Corruption at the polls, civic jobbery, the declension of legislative
character, the greed for official pelf,--these evils are not restricted
to any people or country. An imperfect answer as to the cause and
remedy is difficult; a complete answer is impossible. Some of these
evils are connected with political problems that are vexing our epoch
in every state and country where constitutional government and a
liberal suffrage prevail. Switzerland, with a government so adequate
for a simple people and small country, appears to have firmly resisted
the impact of these political ills. Service in the federal legislature
is accepted from a sense of patriotic duty; neither emolument nor
self-aggrandizement being an element of its membership worthy of
consideration. The election of deputies to the Swiss Assembly is an
event which creates no violent commotion or even general interest
in the great body of the people. A large majority of the candidates
are unopposed; there is no opportunity for bribery to sap the public
_morale_, or any field for the unscrupulous plying of the disgraceful
artifices and incidents which too often mark a hotly-contested election
in the United States. An election, general or local, is not an occasion
of bustle or clamor, turbulence or revelry; there are no processions,
no party badges, no music, no “pole-raising,” probably not a speech,
and no candidate present when the exercise of this important privilege
is going on. It is an affair of deliberation and decision, of sobriety
and wisdom. The electors themselves feel that they are called upon to
exercise a serious and elevating duty; the solemn and deliberate act
of choosing men to govern the destinies of a civilized and enlightened
people. It may be that the Swiss elections, being held on Sunday, and
the polls often in the churches, in part contribute to inspire the
elector with respect for himself, for the character which he has to
sustain, and for the institution in which he thus bears an honorable
part. It is feared that the suggestion of such a remedial agency in the
United States would be regarded by our churchmen as _ægrescit medendo_.
The excitement attending the popular elections in the United States
as now conducted is in the main of a vicious and degrading character.
Instead of infusing into the hearts of the people a spirit of
patriotism, leading them to value the blessings of the government under
which they live, it infuses little but rancor and malignity; giving
an opportunity for the indulgence of vicious passions which are born
but do not die with the emergency; evolving the gross, vulgar morality
which, provided you do no injury to a man’s person or possessions, sees
nothing in your conduct towards him to condemn; which is near-sighted
to the turpitude of slander and misrepresentation directed against
him, and blind to the iniquity of needlessly invading a man’s private
life; a morality which is incapable of comprehending that one source
of happiness ought to be as sacred from wanton encroachment and
disturbance as another; and that visible property is not the only thing
which can be purloined or invaded. These evils are being submitted to,
without any strenuous effort to remove them, as if they were not a mere
excrescence, but formed an integral or essential part of the system,
which they deform and debase.

There can scarcely be said to be any party alignments in the Swiss
Assembly. It is comparatively free from the “offensive partisanship,”
“pernicious activity,” and system of party organization and activity
which flourish in the United States with exuberant and, in some
respects, ominous vigor. While nominally three political divisions
exist in the Swiss Assembly, the Right, Centre, and Left, the accepted
general classification reduces them to two, Radicals and Conservatives.
The main line of separation is the same perplexing issue running
through all political history, the rivalry between the state and
nation, one seeking to minimize, the other to magnify the sphere of
the central government. The Radicals are those who seek to give the
broadest interpretation to the constitution, so as to enlarge the
field of federal authority. The Conservatives are jealous of every
encroachment upon the traditional prerogative of the Cantons, and
desire to restrict and confine the limits of federal action. The
Radicals are the most numerous, commanding an absolute majority in
both the National Council and the Council of States. Within these
two broad divisions there are many different shades that separate on
questions of a social, religious, and economic character. Then these
grand and subdivisions have an entirely different significance, as
applied to federal or cantonal questions; a Radical as to the one, may
be a Conservative as to the other. The Radical and Conservative of the
Canton of Vaud is by no means the same as the Radical and Conservative
of the Cantons of Zurich and Aargau; the Radical of Geneva is very
different from the Radical of St. Gallen. The two parties are not
distinguished from each other by any systematic respect or disrespect
for cantonal independence. So the purely political question between
privilege on one side and the sovereignty of the people on the other
is one of subordinate moment; the former does not find expression
in any party formula. It is an error to estimate the character and
tendencies of the Swiss parties by the names which they bear,
Radical and Conservative, in the light of the footing these names
have obtained in every language in Europe, and the strong feelings of
esteem or hatred associated with them. As such they are nowise fully
correct designations of the political divisions, prominently opposed
in Switzerland, and of the points at issue between them. It is not
true that the Swiss Radical desires over-centralization to the extent
of unitary government; but, with the Conservative, holds to the great
theory of local self-government as founded upon these propositions;
that government is most wise, which is in the hands of those best
informed about the particular questions on which they legislate; most
economical and honest when in the hands of those most interested in
preserving frugality and virtue; most strong when it only exercises
authority which is beneficial in its action to the governed. There is
a feeling common to the population of every Canton and Commune, which
puts all idea of any party advocating one concentrated system out of
the question. Madison says, “An extinction of parties necessarily
implies, either a universal alarm for the public safety, or an absolute
extinction of liberty.” Political parties perform functions of the
greatest possible importance; through their organizations is fulfilled
that obligation which is incumbent upon every citizen of a republic,
to give an earnest, careful, and habitual attention to the conduct
of government. Parties are the exponents and representatives of the
great issues that constantly arise in every free community. By the
discussions that arise between them public opinion is formed, the
people educated in their political rights, a due sense of citizenship
generated and fostered; they are a great centripetal force in every
system of home-rule government.

The strong attachment to party, with its resultant full crop of
political dissension, in the United States has at the same time
awakened a zeal for turning the powers of government to profitable
public account, and a sensibility to the exposure of wrong or abuse,
which manifest themselves in a thousand beneficial ways. “It is one
of the advantages of free government,” declares Sir James Mackintosh,
“that they excite sometimes to an inconvenient degree, but upon
the whole, with the utmost benefit, all the generous feelings, all
the efforts for a public cause, of which human nature is capable.”
Switzerland, in the legislative branch of her federal system, gathers
together a body of men remarkable for that generous and patriotic
impulse which moves noble minds to sacrifice private interests to the
public good, and that public spirit that is the sense of duty applied
to public affairs; none of the cowardly and unpatriotic sentiment
expressed in the speech of Cato, “when vice prevails and impious men
bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.” With a Swiss, the
post of honor is always the post of duty, and the call of duty is
loudest from the public service, and secures the ready response of
the best citizens. Nowhere does popular government rest upon a firmer
foundation of public spirit and the willing and active interest of the
people.




CHAPTER IV.

THE FEDERAL COUNCIL.

Bundesrath; Conseil fédéral.


The three main forms of executive embrace the hereditary and
irresponsible king, with or without a responsible ministry; the
single responsible president; and the executive council. The most
typical examples of these are: the constitutional monarchy of England;
the Presidency of the United States; and the Federal Council of
Switzerland. Or, there may be said to exist four chief ways in which
parliamentary government is worked.

_First_, that of England, where the executive is the primary and the
legislature the ultimate source of power; the English ministers have
the right of initiative, but they cannot remain in office without a
majority in the House of Commons.

_Second_, the German plan, where the ministers are solely dependent
upon the Crown, but cannot spend money without parliamentary sanction.

_Third_, there is the constitution of the United States, under which
the functions of both branches are clearly defined; the Cabinet being
excluded from Congress, and Congress having no control over it, further
than the confirmation of its members by the Senate.

_Fourth_, the Swiss system, wherein the executive is as great a
departure from the precedent of the United States, and has produced
something at least as widely different from the President of the United
States, as he differs from an European king. The Swiss constitution
provides no executive head, in the sense of that of the President
of the United States; there is practically no such functionary. The
Swiss executive has, in fact, none of the functions that are given to
the President of the United States, as an independent power in the
State, making him as truly the representative of the sovereign people
as Congress itself. Andrew Jackson, indeed, habitually prided himself
on the privilege of representing the masses; and the use of the veto
by the President is in most cases highly popular, for through it the
President is expected to counterbalance the power of the legislature.

Not until 1833, was there any project of reform in Switzerland
looking to a special federal executive, apart from all the cantonal
governments. Previously, the federal executive authority was not vested
in any special magistrate or council, but exercised by the council
of one or the other of the three directing Cantons, as explained in
the “Introduction.” This had of course the inconvenience, among many
others, of causing the employment of federal authority to be more or
less guided by the politics actually prevalent in each of the three
directing Cantons. Up to 1848, the legislative and executive power
were vested in the same body. Switzerland, in its federal character,
having never known a personal head of any kind, when the old weak Diet
was changed into a real federal government, it naturally limited the
executive power far more than it is limited in the United States; and
the powers left to the executive were no less naturally intrusted, not
to a President, but to a council. Unwilling to trust the executive
power to any single man, it was placed in the hands of a council of
seven. It may be called an impersonal executive. There is nothing about
it to invite the homage of those whose chief object it is to find
something to abase themselves before; its walks cannot be recorded in a
court circular; it holds no drawing-rooms or levées; it pays no one the
honor of a visit, and no one has the honor of being invited to visit
it in return. A legislature chosen for a fixed term, which cannot be
dissolved before the end of that term, chooses an Executive Council,
for the term of its own existence. To such a body no scrap or rag of
royal purple can hang; and it completely refutes the notion that the
executive power of a republic is simply a shadow of kingship, a mere
transfer from a life and hereditary tenure to an elected and limited
term. The organization, powers, and duties of the Federal Council are
defined by the constitution in the following provisions:

1. The supreme direction and executive authority of the Confederation
shall be a Federal Council, consisting of seven members.

2. The members of the Federal Council are chosen by the Federal
Assembly for the term of three years, from among all Swiss citizens
eligible to the National Council. But not more than one member shall
be chosen from the same Canton. After every general election for the
National Council, the Federal Council shall also be integrally renewed.
Vacancies which occur in the course of the three years are filled, for
the rest of the term, at the ensuing session of the Federal Assembly.

3. The members of the Federal Council shall not during their term
of office hold any other office, either in the service of the
Confederation or of a Canton, or follow any other pursuit, or exercise
a profession.

4. The Federal Council is presided over by the President of the
Confederation. There is also a Vice-President. The President of the
Confederation and the Vice-President shall be chosen, for the term
of one year, by the Federal Assembly from among the members of the
Council. The retiring President is not eligible either as President or
Vice-President for the year ensuing. The same member may not hold the
office of Vice-President for two consecutive years.

5. The President of the Confederation, and the other members of the
Federal Council, shall receive an annual salary from the federal
treasury.

6. A quorum of the Federal Council consists of four members.

7. The members of the Federal Council have the right to take part
in the discussions, but not to vote in either House of the Federal
Assembly; and also the right to make motions on any matter under
consideration.

8. The powers and the duties of the Federal Council, within the
limits of this constitution, are particularly the following: It
directs federal affairs conformably to the laws and resolutions of
the Confederation: it shall care that the constitution, federal laws
and ordinances, and also the provisions of the federal concordats be
observed: it shall take the necessary measures for their execution
either on its own initiative or upon complaint, so far as the decision
of such affairs has not been vested in the Federal Tribunal. It takes
care that the guarantee of the cantonal constitutions is enforced. It
proposes bills and resolutions to the Federal Assembly, and gives its
opinions upon the propositions sent to it by the Federal Assembly or
the Cantons. It executes the federal laws and decrees, the judgments
of the Federal Tribunal, as well as the compromises or decisions in
arbitration on questions of dispute among the Cantons. It makes such
appointments as are not intrusted to the Federal Assembly, Federal
Tribunal, or other authority. It examines the treaties made by the
Cantons with one another, or with foreign countries, and approves them,
if proper. It watches over the external interests of the Confederation,
especially in all international relations, and shall, in general, have
charge of foreign affairs. It protects the external safety, and the
independence and neutrality of Switzerland. It protects the internal
safety of the Confederation, and the maintenance of its peace and
order. In cases of urgency, and when the Federal Assembly is not
in session, the Federal Council shall have authority to raise the
necessary troops and employ them, with the reservation that it shall
immediately call the Federal Assembly together, if the number of men
called out shall exceed two thousand, or if they remain in arms more
than three weeks. It has charge of the federal army affairs and all
other branches of administration which belong to the Confederation.
It examines those laws and ordinances of the Cantons which must be
submitted for its approval; it exercises supervision over those
branches of cantonal administration that are placed under its control.
It administers the finances of the Confederation, introduces the
budget, and submits a statement of the accounts of federal income
and expenditure. It supervises the conduct of all the officials and
employés of the federal administration. It submits to the Federal
Assembly at each regular session a report of its administration, and
a statement of the condition of the Confederation, internal as well
as external; and recommends to its attention such measures as in its
judgment are desirable for the promotion of the common welfare. It
also makes special reports when the Federal Assembly or either branch
thereof requires it.

9. The business of the Federal Council is distributed by departments
among its members. This distribution has the purpose only of
facilitating the examination and despatch of business; every decision
must emanate from the Federal Council as a body (a single authority).

10. The Federal Council and its departments are authorized to call in
experts on special subjects.

In the exercise of several of its most important functions the
action of the Federal Council is essentially judicial. This is
conspicuously so in its right to examine the agreements made by
Cantons among themselves or with foreign governments; and to judge
of their conformity with the federal constitution. Under the name
of “administrative law,” it passes in a judicial capacity upon the
validity of numerous cantonal laws and ordinances, such as school
affairs, freedom of trade and commerce, patent rights, rights of
settlement, freedom from military service, rights of religious bodies,
validity of cantonal elections, votes, etc. But there is no efficient
instrumentality for the enforcement of the decrees of the Federal
Council against the Cantons in these cases. If a Canton adopts a
measure which the Council on appeal holds to be unconstitutional, and
it declines to conform to the Council’s order, the latter has no direct
way of enforcing it. The two methods of coercing a refractory Canton,
so far tried, have been,--to send a special agent to negotiate with the
cantonal authorities, and should his efforts fail, to quarter troops
and the expense of their maintenance upon the offending Canton, until
it yields; the other method is to keep back from the Canton subsidies
which are to be provided for local purposes from the federal treasury.
Both of these methods have been found efficacious. The Federal Council
retains, however, under all circumstances, a very affectionate, if not
reverential, tone in its communications to the Cantons, addressing them
as “Faithful and dear confederates,” and closing, “We embrace this
occasion, faithful and cherished confederates, to commend you with
ourselves to divine protection.”

The Federal Council exercises wider discretionary authority, in the
matter of arrest, of temporary imprisonment, of expulsion from the
territory, and the like, than seems inferable from the terms of the
constitution. A recent decree of the Federal Council forbade public
exhibitions of magnetism and hypnotism. Wherever there is discretion
there is room for arbitrariness, and in a republic, no less than under
a monarchy, discretionary authority on the part of the government means
insecurity for legal freedom on the part of the citizen. The Swiss
constitution apparently is more democratic than that of the United
States, from the fact that it does not vest the veto in any official;
yet in the amount of authority which is allowed to the executive power
over the citizen it is less democratic. Every legislative measure
passes under the inspection of the Federal Council before action
by the Federal Assembly; and the measures adopted by the Assembly
are promulgated by the Council, signed both by the President of the
Confederation and by the Chancellor, the ministerial officer of the
Council; no doubt, in all cases, two signatures are safer than one.

The Federal Council, rather than to take the initiative, sometimes,
by means of a suggestion from itself, is requested to present to the
Assembly a measure; in this event a rejection of the measure would
not be regarded by the Council in the light of a defeat. During the
recesses of the Assembly the federal Councillors, at the head of
committees designated by the Assembly or with expert commissions,
meet in different parts of the country, to consider subjects that
are to be brought before the Assembly. The bills are then prepared,
which, with full and careful explanatory reports, are published in the
official journal and carried by the newspapers to every corner of the
Confederation. They are discussed by the people, and when the Assembly
meets it is ready to take action with but little, if any, debate by the
prompt enactment of these recommendations into law, the chief to whose
department the subject-matter appertains being present, when it is
taken up in the Assembly, to give any further information that may be
desired.

All Swiss citizens eligible to the National Council are declared to be
eligible to the Federal Council. But practically the qualification of
a federal Councillor is _prior_ membership of the National Council.
Primarily the selection of federal Councillors is always made from
among the members of the National Council; and by a strange custom
invariably observed with only one exception since 1848, they are again
triennially returned to the National Council from their respective
districts while still serving as federal Councillors, and with the full
knowledge that within a few days after the convening of the Federal
Assembly they will be again chosen by that body for a new term in the
Federal Council. This necessitates supplementary elections to fill the
vacancies created in the Assembly. Again, at every recurring election
of the National Council, one of the sitting members from each district
wherein a federal Councillor resides, must make room for this temporary
appearance of the federal Councillor in the National Council, as a
condition precedent to his re-election. The sitting members cheerfully
yield to this exigency, conscious that they are standing aside for a
mere _locum tenens_, and in no wise imperilling the ultimate return
to their seats, after a traditional custom has been accommodated. One
district has of late years disregarded this custom, declining to go
through the empty form of electing to the National Council the federal
Councillor residing there, and whose re-election as federal Councillor
is conceded. This one obdurate district may, by persisting in its
course, be the means of the final overthrow of a practice, which at
present involves a double election for six seats every three years
at considerable expense and trouble: and apparently incapable of any
intelligent explanation. Like many customs, it has simply taken root
without any inquiry, and propagates itself without any opposition. A
partial explanation may be discovered in the desire to preserve the
identity of the federal Councillor with his Canton, and as a renewed
declaration that he continues to enjoy the confidence of, and is in
accord upon questions of public policy with, that local constituency
which in all probability he served for many years in the National
Council, before his promotion to the Federal Council. A federal officer
holding his office directly from the Federal Assembly, and at the same
time invested with the popular confidence of a local constituency
equally with the other members of that assembly, presents a most
remarkable assertion of local political autonomy in a purely national
affair.

Originally these federal Councillors, when during their term elected
to the National Council for the purpose of re-election to the Federal
Council, took their seats in the former when it convened, and exercised
all the functions of a member, yet concurrently holding their
portfolios in the Federal Council for an unexpired term. This twofold
service continued until their re-election for a new term took place,
when they resigned their seats in the National Council, and resumed the
single service of federal Councillors. It is related that one member
of the Federal Council, some years since, only secured re-election by
means of his own vote during his transition service as above described
in the National Council. Of late years the exercise of these dual
rights and privileges incident to this most singular condition of
things, while not in violation of any law, has been regarded with
disfavor, and the federal Councillors, during the few days of their
membership triennially in the National Council, confine themselves to
the privileges and rights that attach to a Councillor.

The geographical assignment of the members of the Federal Council is
well established by an unwritten law, which is faithfully observed; a
well-established usage in the election of the Federal Council assigns
one member to each of the Cantons of Bern, Vaud, Zurich, and Aargau,
and St. Gallen or Thurgau, then one each to the Catholic and Italian
Swiss. The constitutional inhibition of the choice of more than one
member from the same Canton may be regarded as a restriction that
limits the choice without any adequate counter-benefit; it may exclude
from the government statesmen of high merit, and thus diminish the
resources of the state.

The members of the Federal Council can be and are continually
re-elected, notwithstanding sharp antagonisms among themselves,
and it may be between them and a majority in the Assembly. They
also continue to discharge their administrative duties, whether
the measures submitted by them are or are not sanctioned by the
voters. The rejection of measures approved and proposed by them does
not necessarily injure their position with the country. The Swiss
distinguish between men and measures. They retain valued servants in
their employment, even though they reject their advice. They retain in
the service Councillors whose measures the voters nevertheless often
refuse to sanction. Valuing the executive ability of these men, still
they may constantly withhold assent from their suggestions.

The Council substantially in its present form came into existence
with the Constitution of 1848; the first election of its members
taking place in November of that year. The election, therefore,
which occurred on the 13th of December, 1887, was the fourteenth
triennial renewal of the Council, and covered a period of thirty-nine
years. During this period the complete roster of the members embraces
only twenty-seven names; even this small ratio of change resulted
in seven cases from death, and eleven from voluntary retirement;
leaving only two who failed to be re-elected on the avowed ground
of political divergence. This most remarkable conservatism on the
part of the Assembly, in retaining the members of the Council by
repeated re-elections, has survived important issues of public
policy, including several revisions of the constitution, upon which
there was a wide diversity of opinion in the Council; some of whom
actively participated in the discussions, antagonizing the views of
a majority of the Assembly; the Assembly to which they owed their
election and upon which they relied for their retention in office.
Their periodical re-election, though seemingly _pro forma_, carries
with it a salutary sense of accountableness. This sure tenure of
service in the Federal Council makes those chosen look upon it as
the business of their lives. Without this permanence attached to the
position, such men as now fill it could not be induced to do so.
They are men trained to vigorous personal and intellectual exertion,
who often surrender pursuits yielding a much more profitable return.
Precariousness of tenure in responsible positions discourages one
from engaging in those measures of long-sighted policy or those plans
of necessarily slow accomplishment, in which he might be so shortly
interrupted, and his labors rendered abortive and unavailing. Political
science, the science of wise government, is perhaps that department of
intellectual exertion which requires the greatest powers of mind and
the intensest application. Its facts are multifarious and complicated,
often anomalous and contradictory, and demanding the guidance of clear
perceptions. Its principles are many of them abstruse, and to be
developed by long and close processes of reasoning; and the application
of these principles requires the sagacity of quick observation and
long experience. It is a business which requires as long and arduous
preparation as any profession which can be named; and as entire
devotion to it, with freedom from all other serious or momentous
occupation, when its duties are once undertaken, as the calling of
a lawyer, a physician, a merchant, or an engineer. One chief reason
why there are so many needless, blundering, crude, mischievous, and
unintelligible actions in public life, is that men have not dedicated
themselves to its requirements as a separate study or profession; but
have considered it to be a business which might be played with in their
hours of leisure from more serious pursuits.

A member of the Federal Council cannot, during his term, “occupy any
other office in the service of the Confederation or a Canton, or
follow any other pursuit, or practise any profession.” He devotes his
entire time and attention to his department, and not a mere casual,
intermitting, and brief attention; or merely giving the refuse of his
time and abilities in passing judgment on what others have devised and
executed. He is obliged to attend to the routine, the detail, and all
the technical niceties of its daily administration.

The salaries paid to these distinguished officials are not relatively
higher than the wages of the people at large; and are very
insignificant when compared with the compensation accorded for like
services in other countries. Each of the seven members receives an
annual salary of 12,000 francs or $2316; the President of the Council
is given 1500 francs additional, making his salary $2605. This increase
of salary to the President is made under the head of “expenses of
representation,” understood to mean entertainments and kindred purposes
devolving upon this official. The entire annual appropriation made for
the maintenance of the executive department will not exceed $17,000.[36]

The business of the Federal Council is distributed among seven
departments, as follows:

1. Foreign Affairs.

2. Interior.

3. Justice and Police.

4. Military.

5. Finance and Customs.

6. Industry and Agriculture.

7. Posts and Railways.

Each one of these departments is presided over by one of the
Councillors. When the Council is integrally renewed by the Assembly
there is no designation or assignment of any department; the members
are simply chosen as federal Councillors, and make the apportionment
among themselves; and an agreeable understanding has always been
reached. According to the constitution this departmental division is
only “to facilitate the examination and despatch of business; all
decisions must emanate from the Council as a whole.” Regular Council
meetings are generally held twice a week. A decision is not valid
unless at least four members are present, and no decision can be
reversed except by four out of the seven, in a session attended by more
than four. The Councillor presides over his department, conducting it
much as an ordinary Secretary would under a cabinet system. In theory,
each is responsible for all, and all are responsible for each. There is
no question of rank, each department is of equal dignity.

The _Bundespräsident_, or President of the Confederation, is merely
the chairman for a year of the Federal Council. He is only the chief
of the executive; he is not himself the whole of it, and therefore can
hardly be called the executive chief of the nation. His commission
as President simply enhances his dignity, and does not confer upon
him any additional power or responsibility. The other members are
his colleagues, not his mere agents or advisers; he is only _primus
inter pares_. He has no appointive power or patronage, no veto, no
right of even nomination to any position. Not a single Swiss official
at home or abroad is disturbed by the annual change in the executive
head. Few republics have invested a single magistrate with such large
powers as the President of the United States; few commonwealths have
given a nominal chief magistrate so small a degree of power as belongs
to the Swiss President. He is not a chief magistrate. He is chief
of a board, which board, in its collective capacity, acts as chief
magistrate. The central authority in Switzerland, since the birth of
the republic, has always been vested in a committee; and a committee
it is to-day. The small addition to the salary, giving audience for
letters of credence and recall from diplomatic representatives,
precedence on state and ceremonial occasions, and the right to be
addressed as “_Son Excellence_,” about exhaust the special privileges,
power, and dignity of the President of the Confederation. He is just as
accessible to the public as any of his colleagues. He has no guards,
no lords in waiting, no liveried ushers, no gewgaws and trappings.
You may go to his official quarters with as little ceremony as you
may call on a private citizen. The stranger may knock at the door
and the chief magistrate of the Confederation bids him to come in.
The new President enters upon the discharge of his duties on the 1st
of January, following his election.[37] There is no formal or public
installation, no demonstration, civic or military. The newly-elected
President repairs to his modest chambers in the federal palace at noon,
where alone he receives all who desire to call and pay their respects.
This opportunity is availed of very little beyond the members of the
diplomatic corps, who are expected to tender their congratulations
personally and on behalf of the governments they represent. The writer
was told by a colleague, who had been recently transferred to Bern
from a post with an elaborate court, that on the announcement of the
death of the Swiss President he donned his full diplomatic uniform to
go and tender his official and personal condolence to the bereaved
family. With considerable difficulty he found the executive mansion
in apartments on the third floor of a building of a modest street.
There being no _portier_, he rang the bell at the street entrance
and ascended the stairs. Reaching the floor of the apartments he was
met at the door by a woman who was wiping her mouth with the corner
of her apron, evidently having been disturbed in a meal. She invited
the diplomat in, and receiving the card, to his surprise, instead
of leaving the room to deliver it, she invited him to be seated and
opened the conversation. He soon discovered that she was the widow
of the deceased President, and a woman of good education, force, and
character. All the organs of the Swiss government have an unassuming
and civic appearance, retaining in a degree the wisdom, moderation, and
simplicity of their ancient manners; those who are invested with high
trusts are ever ready and willing to retire to complete equality with
their fellow-citizens, from the eminence of civil or military station
to which their talents and the call of their country have raised them.
There is nothing of pomp and majesty; the soil is too natural for the
artificial forms of court diplomacy. The manly consciousness of freedom
which creates and finds expression in the constitution elevates the
middle classes who form its chief support; while the direct or indirect
contact with public affairs develops the intelligence and strengthens
the character of the citizen.

In its organization and practical workings, the Swiss executive is
claimed by some to be modelled after a better pattern than that
of the United States, in so far as escaping the great quadrennial
contests, and the passions, ambitions, and disappointments born of them
constituting, as more than once illustrated in the past, the greatest
national peril.

Previous to 1888, the President of the Confederation _ex officio_
became chief of what was called “The Political Department,” including
the conduct of foreign affairs. A reorganization was found to be
advisable, and, being formulated by the Federal Council and approved
by the Federal Assembly, came into force on the 1st of January, 1888.
Under this rearrangement of portfolios “Foreign Affairs” is placed on
a new and separate footing and no longer falls to the President of
the current year. This new department retains what belonged to the
“Political Department,” with the exception of the former presidential
functions. It is charged also with the management of commerce in
general, with work preparatory to the negotiation of commercial
treaties, and co-operation in drawing up the customs tariff; also with
matters relating to industrial property, copyright, and emigration; and
covering all the more important relations of Switzerland with foreign
countries. It is the uniform practice for the Vice-President to succeed
the President. In this way every member of the Federal Council in turn
becomes President and Vice-President once during each septennial period.

Belonging to different political parties, the Councillors frequently
antagonize one another on the floor of the Assembly, but this is not
found to interfere with their harmonious working as an administrative
body. The right of the members of the Federal Council to participate in
the debates and make motions in the Federal Assembly, gives that body,
what the Congress of the United States has not, the advantage of a
direct ministerial explanation. Yet that ministerial explanation cannot
be, as it may be in England, mixed up with fears of votes of censure
on one side or of a penal dissolution on the other. Irremovable by the
existing Assembly,[38] with the question of their re-election dependent
on an Assembly which is not yet in existence, they have less need than
either American or English statesmen to adapt their policy to meet any
momentary cry. Is it not a most excellent political system? Is not this
relation between the legislature and the executive, both in theory and
practice, happily devised? It brings a quick and close communication
between these two great branches, and tends to promote a good
understanding between them. Elected by the Assembly, coming into office
along with it, there is every chance of the Council acting in harmony
with it; and their power of taking a share in the debates at once
enables the Assembly to be better informed on public affairs. There
is much in the Swiss experiment to refute the belief that there can
be no executive power proper, unless it derives its authority from an
independent source, and is made directly by the people, so it may claim
to be equally representative of the people, and to have received still
greater proof of the public confidence. The choice of the executive by
the legislative body may be susceptible to the objection that it fails
to furnish the limit and restraint that each of these powers should
exercise on the other; and that it is entitled to be regarded as only a
_Cabinet d’Affaires_,--a purely administrative committee. The history
of the Swiss system has developed no unusual dissensions between these
powers, and none are likely to occur. With the legislature governed as
a rule by motives of public utility, there is little room for want of
harmony with the executive, the simple function of which is to carry
into effect the measures which the legislature has decreed.

The present Federal Council of Switzerland is composed of men of
high order of ability, instructed by education and disciplined by
experience. They are men of crystalline integrity, trained familiarity
with the duties of their post, and profoundly patriotic in motive.
Among all the changes and complications of late years, no government
in Europe in its executive action has displayed a higher degree of
practical wisdom than the Federal Council of Switzerland. It acts with
sterling good sense and moderation, the result in a great measure of
that slow and cautious temperament which has ever marked the Swiss
character; traits which perhaps may be traced back to the privations
and distress through which, during a long course of years, they
struggled to the attainment of a dear-bought independence. It presides
over the national interests in an equitable and impartial spirit,
dealing wisely and temperately with the people without encroachment
or oppression, and, if we may judge from the insignificance of their
emoluments, without desire of advantage. The Councillors move in the
surest way, both to the attainment and preservation of power, through
the medium of those qualities which secure the esteem and gain the
confidence of the people. The people, on the other hand, behold
with content and satisfaction the absence of all selfish or ignoble
purpose in the labors of the Councillors; and sacrifice all factious
opposition and interference to the public benefit which they know to be
identified with the vigor, stability, and welfare of the government. It
is not too much to say that in the Federal Council of Switzerland an
honest attempt is made to follow the wise admonition of Cicero in his
“Offices:” “Those who design to be partakers in the government should
be sure to remember the two precepts of Plato; first, to make the
safety and interest of their citizens the great aim and design of all
their thoughts and endeavor without ever considering their own general
advantage; and, secondly, to take care of the whole collective body of
the republic so as not to serve the interests of any one party to the
prejudice or neglect of all the rest; for the government of a state is
much like the office of a guardian or trustee, which should always be
managed for the good of the pupil, and not of the persons to whom he is
intrusted.”

There has been some movement to change the mode of appointment to
the executive power of the Confederation. Like other human things,
it is not absolutely ideal in its working. The relations between the
executive and judicial departments are not what they should be, though
much better than they were at the beginning of the constitution. Yet,
on the whole, the working of the Swiss executive during the forty-two
years of its trial has been such that it need not shrink from a
comparison with the working of either of the two better known systems.
The fact of the Council being not directly chosen by the people is
claimed by some to be inconsistent with the “democratic theory.”
Surely it is not wise to exchange at the bidding of a certain abstract
doctrine a system which has worked well for so long, for one which is
not certain to work better, and which might work a great deal worse.
By many constitutional students the actual form of the Swiss executive
is looked on as the happiest of the political experiments of the
present half century. It seems to have escaped both some of the evils
which are incident to kings and some of the evils which are incident
to presidents. It seems more wisely planned, in all events for the
country in which it has arisen, than those forms to which we are better
accustomed.




CHAPTER V.

THE FEDERAL TRIBUNAL.

Bundesgericht; Tribunal fédéral.


The Swiss Federal Tribunal, in its present form, dating from 1874,
was originally set up in 1848. It is, however, the product of an
historical development extending over nearly six hundred years, and
the history of this period only will explain the exact meaning of the
carefully-balanced and guarded phrases which describe its jurisdiction.
Previous to 1848 there existed two methods for peaceably settling
disputes among members of the Confederation,--_friendly remonstrance_
and _arbitration_.

1. _Friendly Remonstrance._--This was the plan adopted in the two
earliest treaties of alliance, those of 1291 and 1315. In both cases
there were only three parties to the treaty,--Uri, Schwyz, and
Unterwalden,--and the object was to settle disputes between neighbors,
and in a friendly and informal way. The “Witan,” or wise men, met
together to heal the quarrel according to the rules of equity and
right. If either party refused to accept their decision, the other
confederates were to enforce obedience.

2. _Arbitration._--This first appeared in 1351, when Zurich joined
the League. It became more common as the number of the confederates
increased, and was the method employed when friendly remonstrance
failed, and when war was not declared. The arrangement as to the place
of meeting, the number and the method of choosing the arbitrators,
and other details, varied according to the stipulations contained in
the various treaties by which each Canton had been admitted into the
Confederation. The number of arbitrators was usually fixed at two for
each party, and, in case of disagreement, they selected an impartial
foreman or umpire; “the question of the choice of the foreman,” says
a contemporary historian, “was unquestionably the main point in the
whole system of the Courts of Arbitration, for, generally, he was
the only real and impartial judge.” This method was substantially
the only one employed from 1351 to 1798. During the existence of
the Helvetic Republic, there was established a Central Judiciary
along with a Central Executive and Legislature. It consisted of a
member and an assistant, nominated by each Canton, one-fourth being
renewed annually. It had original jurisdiction over the members of
the executive and of the legislature, and in criminal cases involving
the penalty of death or of imprisonment and banishment. It acted as a
Court of Appeals in civil matters, when the decisions of the inferior
courts were invalid by reason of want of jurisdiction, whether through
informality or violation of the constitution. This court practically
subsisted under Napoleon’s Act of Mediation, set up in 1803. With
the partial restoration of things in 1815 to the _status quo ante_
1798, came naturally the restoration of the arbitration system, with
reference to which the most elaborate regulations were laid down in
the Federal Pact. This codification legally subsisted till 1848. A
revision was attempted in 1832, when, after the Paris Revolution of
1830, more liberal ideas began to assert themselves in Switzerland, but
it failed through the opposition of the Conservatives. The Reformers,
however, were successful in 1848, and by the constitution adopted that
year, a Federal Court was created, with jurisdiction in civil and
criminal cases, and also a limited jurisdiction in cases where rights
guaranteed by the constitution were alleged to have been infringed;
_provided_ that the Federal Legislature referred such cases to it.
The court consisted of eleven judges and eleven substitutes, elected
by the Federal Assembly for a term of three years. The president and
vice-president of the court were appointed by the same body annually.
Another attempt at revision was made in 1872, by which the functions of
the court as an interpreter and upholder of rights guaranteed by the
federal and cantonal constitutions would be very much extended, but it
was rejected. There was an appeal on questions of public law to the
Federal Council, from which there was a further appeal to the Federal
Assembly. If the two chambers agreed, the decision was final; if they
disagreed, the decision of the Federal Council prevailed. This system
was found unsatisfactory, as a large part of the time of the chambers
was occupied in the discussion of mixed questions of law and politics.
When the Constitution of 1874 was adopted, this and many other defects
were in a measure remedied.

The fourth or last division of Chapter II. of the Swiss constitution,
“Federal Authorities,” is devoted to the Federal Tribunal, and declares:

1. There shall be a Federal Tribunal for the administration of justice
so far as it belongs to the Confederation. There shall be, moreover, a
jury for criminal cases.

2. The members of the Federal Tribunal and their alternates shall be
chosen by the Federal Assembly, which shall take care that all three
national languages are represented therein. The organization of the
Federal Tribunal and of its sections, the number of its members and
alternates, and their terms of office and salary shall be determined by
law.

3. Any Swiss citizen who is eligible to the National Council may be
chosen to the Federal Tribunal. The members of the Federal Assembly or
Federal Council, or officials appointed by those authorities, shall not
at the same time belong to the Federal Tribunal. The members of the
Federal Tribunal shall not during their term of office hold any other
office, either in the service of the Confederation or any Canton, nor
engage in any other pursuit, nor practise a profession.

4. The Federal Tribunal shall organize its own chancery, and appoint
the officials.

5. The judicial authority of the Federal Tribunal shall extend to civil
cases:

(_a_) Between the Confederation and the Cantons.

(_b_) Between the Confederation on the one part and corporations or
private persons on the other part; when such corporations or private
persons are the plaintiffs, and when the amount involved is of a degree
of importance to be fixed by federal legislation.

(_c_) Between Cantons.

(_d_) Between Cantons on the one part and corporations or private
persons on the other part upon the demand of either party, and where
the amount involved is of a degree of importance to be fixed by federal
legislation. It further has jurisdiction in suits concerning the status
of persons not subjects of any government (Heimathlosen), and conflicts
between Communes of different Cantons respecting the right of local
citizenship (_droit de cité_).

(_e_) The Federal Tribunal shall, moreover, decide other cases upon the
demand of both parties to the suit, and when the amount involved is of
a degree of importance to be fixed by federal legislation.

(_f_) The Federal Tribunal, with the aid of juries to pass upon
questions of fact, shall also have jurisdiction in criminal cases:

(1) Involving high treason against the Confederation or rebellion or
violence against the federal authorities.

(2) Involving crimes and misdemeanors against international law.

(3) Involving political crimes and misdemeanors which are the cause of
the result of such disturbances as call for armed federal intervention.

(4) Involving charges against officials appointed by a federal
authority upon the application of the latter.

(_g_) The Federal Tribunal further has jurisdiction:

(1) Over conflicts of jurisdiction between federal authorities on the
one part and cantonal authorities on the other part.

(2) Disputes between the Cantons involving questions of public law.

(3) Complaints concerning violations of the constitutional rights
of citizens, and complaints of private citizens on account of the
violation of concordats or treaties. Conflicts of administration are
reserved and are to be settled in a manner prescribed by federal
legislation. In all the forementioned cases the Federal Tribunal shall
apply the laws passed by the Federal Assembly, and those resolutions
which have a general import. It shall in like manner conform to all
treaties which have been ratified by the Federal Assembly.

(_h_) Besides the cases mentioned, the Confederation may by law place
other matters within the jurisdiction of the Federal Tribunal; in
particular, it may give to that court powers for securing uniformity
in the application of all federal laws passed in accordance with
provisions of the constitution.

In 1874, within one month after the new constitution came into force,
the Federal Assembly passed a very elaborate law relating to the
Federal Tribunal. The jurisdiction of the court was extended to:

1. Cases of expropriation for the construction of railways and other
works of public utility.

2. Questions between the Confederation and railway companies, and the
winding up of the latter.

3. Cases which by the constitution or the legislation of a Canton are
intrusted to its competency, when such cantonal provisions have been
approved by the Federal Assembly.

As a Court of Appeals under the same federal law it sits:

4. In cases where federal laws have to be applied by Cantonal
Tribunals, and the amount of the matter in dispute is 3000 francs
at least, or cannot be estimated; where either party appeals from
the judgment of the highest Cantonal Court (by agreement the parties
can make the appeal directly from the lower Cantonal Court, without
going to the Cantonal Court of Appeal). It also decides in cases of
extradition, when the demand is made under an existing treaty, in so
far as the application of the treaty is questioned; it settles boundary
questions between two Cantons, and questions of competence between the
authorities of different Cantons. In questions of jurisdiction between
the Federal Court and cantonal authority, or as to whether it should be
settled by a court of arbitration, the Tribunal itself decides as to
its own competence. In cases where questions between Cantons or between
a Canton and the Confederation come before the court, they come on
reference from the Federal Council. If the Council decides negatively
as to whether a matter ought to come before the court, the Assembly has
the final determination on the point.

This general organizing act of 1874 fixes the number of members of the
court and the alternates; their terms of office, salaries, and other
details. The number of judges is reduced from eleven to nine, and the
court shall never contain, at any given time, two or more persons
from the same family; the term is extended from three to six years.
The president and the vice-president are to be elected by the Federal
Assembly from among the judges, for the term of two years. The salaries
are fixed at 10,000 francs a year for the judges; 11,000 francs for
the president (or chief justice), and from 6000 to 8000 francs for
each of the secretaries. There must be two secretaries at least, one
from German-, the other from French-speaking Switzerland; both must
speak German and French, and one also Italian. They are chosen by the
court by ballot, and for a term of six years. The assistant judges or
alternates receive twenty-five francs a day when serving, and a fixed
travelling allowance. These assistant judges only sit in the place of
the judges who are prevented for some reason from sitting in person.
The judges and the secretaries when away from the seat of the court
on official business are paid fifteen francs a day additional, and a
travelling allowance. The vacations of the court must not exceed four
weeks in the year; but either the president or vice-president must
always remain at the permanent seat of the court. Temporary leave
of absence may be granted to the members of the court and to the
secretaries. The judges (but not the assistant judges) are required to
reside where the court is fixed. In cases of elections and in civil
and constitutional causes, seven judges form a quorum, and the number
present must always be uneven (apparently because the president has
no casting vote). A judge, ordinary or assistant, cannot sit when his
relatives of blood, or by marriage in an ascending or descending line,
or collaterals up to and including cousin-german or brother-in-law, are
in any way interested in the case. A judge is similarly disqualified
from sitting, when the affairs of his wards are under consideration,
or in a case in which he has taken any part personally as federal or
cantonal official, or judge, or arbitrator, or counsel; or in affairs
relating to an incorporated company of which he is a member; or when
his Commune or Canton of birth is a party; or when a suit is brought
against the executive or legislature of his Canton of birth. A judge
of either kind, ordinary or alternate, may be objected to by a party
to a suit, if the said judge is an enemy of or dependent on one of
the parties; or since the institution of the suit, as a member of the
court, has expressed his opinion on it; but the Federal Court as a
whole must be accepted by the parties. If by reason of such objections
there are not enough members to form a quorum, the chairman selects
by lot from among the presidents of the Supreme Cantonal Courts a
sufficient number of “extraordinary assistant judges,” _pro hac vice_.
The act designates three thousand francs as the minimum amount for
“degree of importance” to give jurisdiction in cases where a money
value must be fixed by federal legislation.

All members and officials of the court must be bound by oath to fulfil
the duties of their respective offices; the oath to be administered
to the judges in the presence of the Federal Assembly. This oath may
be taken by a “_Handgelübde_,” or raising of the hand, in the case of
persons objecting on conscientious grounds to take an oath. The court
is to sit and give judgment in public; this does not apply to the
juries or to preliminary inquiries. The president settles the order
of business and maintains order in court; being empowered to imprison
disobedient persons for twenty-four hours; and in extreme cases to
fine up to a hundred francs and to imprison up to twenty days. Every
year the court must submit an account of the business transacted by
it to the Federal Assembly, which has a right to criticise any act of
the court, but can alter only by a federal law any of its decisions
of which it may disapprove. The officials of the court have the right
of transacting in any Canton, without asking leave of the cantonal
authorities, all business which falls within their jurisdiction. Each
judge is permitted to deliver opinions in his own dialect. Another
federal law regulates with great detail the costs of the court,
which are defrayed out of the federal treasury, and likewise the
fees which are to be paid by parties to the suits. In the exercise
of the criminal jurisdiction the court goes on a circuit. For this
purpose the Confederation is divided into five assize districts. One
of these districts embraces French Switzerland; a second, Bern and
surrounding Cantons; a third, Zurich and the Cantons bordering upon
it; a fourth, central and part of east Switzerland; and the fifth,
Italian Switzerland. The court annually divides itself for criminal
business into three sections; a Chamber of Accusation and a Criminal
Chamber, each composed of three judges and three alternates, and a
Court of Criminal Appeal (_Tribunal de Cassation_), with five judges
and five alternates. Sentences are only valid when the court consists
of five members. The Criminal Chamber decides at what places in the
several districts assizes shall be held. The localities selected
furnish at their own cost places of meeting. The cantonal police and
court officials serve as officers of the court. The court elects every
six years, to hold for the whole term of the court, two “Judges of
Inquest” (_Untersuchungsrichter_), who are charged with the preparation
of cases. The federal assizes are composed of the Criminal Chamber and
a jury of twelve, elected in the Cantons by the people, and drawn by
lot from the list of the district in which the assizes are to be held.
There is one juror for every one thousand inhabitants in the first four
districts as above given; and one for every five hundred in the fifth
district. With certain exceptions, every citizen having the right to
vote in federal matters is eligible as a juror. The exemptions are:
those of the full age of sixty, those whose names were placed on the
previous list of jurors, and those who are incapacitated by sickness
or infirmity. The names of all the jurors of the district are placed
in an urn, and fifty-four are drawn by lot. The _Procureur-général_ or
states-attorney, appointed by the Federal Council for the case, has the
right to challenge twenty and the accused also twenty; the remaining
fourteen are summoned, and two of this number are selected by lot to
act as substitutes in case of need. In order to acquit or condemn a
prisoner there must be a majority of at least ten out of the twelve;
otherwise, a new trial must take place with another jury. These federal
assizes are of rare occurrence, the last one being at Neuchâtel in
1879, when an anarchist was condemned for a crime against international
law (instigation to the assassination of sovereigns).

The power of the court in the matter of claims for violation of rights
of citizens has been exercised with much latitude. The most usual
and proper cases arising under it are: infringements of the federal
guarantee to the citizen of equality before the law, of freedom of
settlement, of security against double taxation, of liberty of the
press, etc. But the court has gone much beyond these; its jurisdiction
has been extended to the hearing of complaints against cantonal
authorities, for ordinary alleged failures of justice, such as could
hardly have been contemplated by the constitution. It has even taken
jurisdiction of cases where the appellant asserts a denial of his claim
by a cantonal judge, grounded upon merely obstructive motives or an
arbitrary application of the law.

The Constitution of 1874 had as one of its chief objects the
strengthening of the federal judiciary; and by statutes, enacted in
pursuance of the constitutional authority given to the Federal Assembly
to place other matters within the competence of the court, there have
been transferred generally to it the appeals heretofore made from
the Federal Council to the Federal Assembly. There is no purpose to
entirely exclude the legislative branch from judicial action; for the
constitution, in dealing with the Federal Tribunal, expressly provides
that “administrative” cases are reserved to the Assembly; and the act
of 1874 defined the jurisdiction of the Federal Council and Federal
Assembly, under this reservation, to embrace disputes respecting
public primary schools of the Cantons, liberty of commerce and trade,
rights of established Swiss, religious disputes relating to matters of
public law, questions as to the calling out of the cantonal militia,
consumption taxes and import duties, exemption from military service,
and the validity of cantonal elections and votes. In all these cases
an appeal lies from the Federal Council to the Federal Assembly. Thus a
wide field of judicial action is withheld from the sphere of the court,
and upon questions which do not appear to possess any “administrative”
character; producing a division of functions which is very anomalous.
There has always existed in Switzerland a very strong current of
opinion, that the court should be occupied exclusively with questions
of public law, and should possess no jurisdiction in matters of private
law. The Federal Tribunal has no officers of its own to execute its
judgments; but its judgments, as well as the decrees of courts of
arbitration in intercantonal conflicts, are executed by the Federal
Assembly; and the Federal Assembly in turn is obliged to resort to
cantonal machinery for the purpose of doing this; so that, in fact,
these judgments finally are executed by the cantonal authorities.

The Federal Tribunal had no permanent seat from 1848 to 1874, and
met in different places. In 1874, by action of the Federal Assembly,
Lausanne was chosen for its permanent location; the Canton of Vaud, in
consideration of this honor, erected and presented to the Confederation
a _palais de justice_, the most elegant and commodious public building
in Switzerland.

No professional qualification is required for eligibility to the
Federal Tribunal; any Swiss citizen eligible for the lower branch
of the Federal Assembly may be elected to the Tribunal. There is
no qualification for any federal office in Switzerland higher than
that for a member of the _Nationalrath_, or lower House of the
Federal Assembly. Any vote-possessing Swiss, twenty years of age
(except a naturalized citizen, who must wait for five years after his
naturalization), may be President of the Confederation or president
of the Federal Tribunal,--_i.e._, chief justice of the Confederation.
It naturally occurs that there should be some better guarantee for
the depth of knowledge and solidity of judgment necessary for the
intelligent consideration and discreet determination of the responsible
duties attached to these high positions, and which can be the result of
nothing but the thought and experience of more mature years. Certainly
in high judicial life there should be a tact, a ripeness, and a nicety
of judgment, an intuitive apprehension of the relations of things, and
a wisdom, which age indeed does not always bring, but which age alone
can bestow.

The courts in Switzerland have no place in the political government of
the country. The Federal Tribunal does not simply owe its existence to
the Federal Assembly, but is constitutionally forbidden to pass upon
the validity of the acts of its creator. It is not empowered to judge
of violations of the constitution, or to keep the legislature within
the limits of a delegated authority, by annulling whatever acts exceed
it. According to the Swiss theory, the legislative department wields
supreme power; is the sole judge of its own powers; and if, therefore,
its enactments conflict with the constitution, they are nevertheless
valid, and must operate _pro tanto_ as modifications or amendments of
it. The legislature is deemed to have the right of taking its own view
of the constitution. Its utterance is the guide for the court, which
is always subordinate to it, and bound to enforce every law passed by
it.[39] How different from the authoritative position of the courts in
the United States, where there is no department of the government in
which sound political views are more valuable than in the judiciary. No
lawyer can be found with the requisite strength of mind and character
to make a good judge on the Supreme Bench who is not a man of clear,
well-defined, and vigorous political opinions. The interpretation of
the more difficult legal problems calls for the application of those
fundamental principles of government upon which the great parties
are founded. In the history of the United States, parties have been
broadly characterized by their attitude towards the constitution. Their
greatest victories have been won in the decisions of the Supreme Court,
as each in turn has been represented there, and has impressed its views
upon the decisions of the judicature. Marshall, Taney, Chase, are the
names which stand as the high-water marks of the juridic-political
history. De Tocqueville, referring to the Supreme Court, says, “That
the peaceful and legal introduction of the judge into the domain of
politics is perhaps the most standing characteristic of a free people.”
The Supreme Court of the United States is universally regarded as the
most perfect instance of a court exercising the office of guardian
and interpreter of the constitution. It must not be forgotten that,
as such, it came into existence only under the second constitution;
previous to 1787, it was a mere committee of appeals, the judges
appointed directly by Congress, and dependent on it, or on its
indirect action. To-day it is the pivot on which the constitutional
arrangements of the country turn. It determines the limits to the
authority, both of the government and of the legislature; its decision
is without appeal; completely filling the idea held by some writers,
that federalism implies the predominance of the judiciary in the
constitution. It is a tribunal which can set aside a law of Congress,
and enjoin the executive from proceeding, when it is satisfied that
either law or proceeding is contrary to the constitution. It spurns
the warning of Lord Bacon to his ideal judge, in consulting with the
king and the state, “to remember that Solomon’s throne was supported
with lions on both sides; let them (the judges) be lions, but lions
under the throne, circumspect, that they do not check or oppose any
point of sovereignty.” Such power no other tribunal in any country
of the world possesses. No other country has a court whose power is
absolute to thwart, even the present will of the nation, by declaring
it out of harmony with a fundamental law adopted a century ago. Caleb
Cushing thus addressed the Supreme Court: “You are the incarnate mind
of the political body of the nation. In the complex institutions of
our country, you are the pivot upon which the rights and liberties of
all government and people alike turn; or, rather, you are the central
light of constitutional wisdom around which they perpetually revolve.”
The question of the court being identical with or independent of the
legislature of the supreme or federal government, and the separation of
the legislative and the judicial functions of government, is strongly
set forth in No. 78 of the “Federalist,” written by Alexander Hamilton:

“Some perplexity respecting the rights of the courts to pronounce
legislative acts void, because contrary to the constitution, has
arisen from an imagination that the doctrine would imply a superiority
of the judiciary to the legislative power. It is urged that the
authority which can declare the acts of another void, must necessarily
be superior to the one whose acts may be declared void. There is no
position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of
a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under
which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary
to the constitution, can be valid. If it be said that the legislative
body are themselves the constitutional judges of their own powers,
and that the construction they put upon them is conclusive upon the
other departments, it may be answered, that this cannot be the natural
presumption, where it is not to be collected from any particular
provisions in the constitution. The interpretation of the laws is the
proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact,
and must be, regarded by the judges as a fundamental law. It must
therefore belong to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the
meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If
there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two,
that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course,
to be preferred; in other words, the constitution ought to be preferred
to the statute. Nor does the conclusion by any means suppose a
superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes
that the power of the people is superior to both; and that where the
will of the legislature declared in its statutes, stands in opposition
to that of the people declared in the constitution, the judges ought
to be governed by the latter, rather than the former. They ought to
regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those
which are not fundamental.”

Jefferson apprehended encroachments by the Supreme Court, and declared
that it had the power “to lay all things at its feet.” This alarm
proved to be unfounded, and Mr. Jefferson himself, when the court in
his judgment passed beyond the undoubted limits of its authority, did
not hesitate to disregard the opinion of Chief-Justice Marshall, that
it was the duty of his secretary to deliver a judicial commission which
had been signed by his predecessor.[40]

To many the Supreme Court in its inception seemed the weakest of the
three departments; and it is doubtful if either Madison or Hamilton,
both of whom expected the court to exercise the power of declaring
laws unconstitutional, appreciated the mighty force passing into the
hands of the hitherto subordinate power. The judiciary act of 1789
provided for a review in the Supreme Court of cases where the validity
of a State statute or of any exercise of State authority should be
drawn in question on the ground of repugnancy to the constitution,
treaties, or laws of the United States, and the decision should be in
favor of the validity.[41] Though in the line of natural development,
and previous to the convention of 1787, asserted in New Jersey,
Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina, the exercise
of the full measure of this power in constitutional law presents an
interesting study in the history of the national and State governments.
A resolution was introduced in Congress in 1824 (Letcher, of Kentucky),
so to amend the judiciary act as to require more than a majority of
the judges to declare a State law void; and in 1830 an attempt was
made to repeal that section of the act, but it failed by a vote of one
hundred and thirty-seven to fifty-one. The doctrine of a co-ordinate
judiciary met with violent opposition in some of the States, notably
in Ohio in 1805, and in Kentucky in 1824 (“old court and new court”
struggle), and in the State of Pennsylvania as late as 1843. This power
to disregard the acts of the legislature and declare them null and void
because contrary to the supreme law of the constitution has been a
source of endless wonder to foreign students of the American system. In
speaking of it, Sir Henry Maine says, “There is no exact precedent for
it, either in the ancient or in the modern world.”[42] It is a new and
original idea in political science, introduced and applied exclusively
in the courts of the United States. The elevation of the judiciary to
equal rank with the executive and the legislature was the outgrowth of
a natural process of political evolution through a written constitution
and a federal system of government. Kent, in referring to the case
of Marbury vs. Madison, writes: “The power and duty of a judiciary
to disregard an unconstitutional act of Congress or of any State
legislature were declared in an argument approaching to the precision
and certainty of a mathematical demonstration.”[43] The power was
never seriously questioned in the federal courts after that clear and
conclusive opinion, and it was gradually established in all the States.

The Swiss Federal Tribunal, as a copy, is neither so consistent with
sound theory, nor so safe in practice, as its prototype in the United
States. The two systems meet by very different devices the problems
peculiar to federalism, and especially as concerns the interpretation
of the fundamental pact, or articles, or constitution, on which the
union rests. In the United States, this function is performed in the
last resort by the Supreme Court, and there is perhaps no other part
of our system which has extorted more admiration from foreign critics
than this exalted prerogative of the judiciary. But the Federal
Tribunal of Switzerland is a body of much more limited power and far
less dignity. Even its jurisdiction is determined in part by the laws
rather than by the constitution. In short, this tribunal appears as a
mere instrumentality of the other organs of the government, and not,
like the United States Supreme Court, a mediator between them, or even
a superior above them. The statesmen of Switzerland felt that a method
fit for the United States might be ill-fitted for their own country,
where the latitude given to the executive is greater; and the Swiss
habit of constantly recurring to popular votes makes it less necessary
to restrain the legislature by a permanently enacted instrument.
The Swiss constitution itself almost precludes the possibility of
encroachment upon its articles by the legislative body. When the
sovereign power can easily enforce its will, it may trust to its own
action for maintaining its rights; when, as in the United States, the
same power acts but rarely and with difficulty, the courts naturally
become the guardian of the sovereign’s will expressed in the articles
of the constitution. The right to declare laws void is not regarded
throughout Europe generally as judicial in its character, and hence
has not been intrusted to the courts; this may furnish a partial
explanation of the incompetence of the Swiss court in that respect.
The Federal Tribunal has been much improved since it was originally
set up, and will doubtless, with the decay of unreasonable jealousy of
the central government on the part of the Cantons, approach more and
more closely the Supreme Court of the United States, of which it is
an avowed copy, so far as Swiss political traditions and prejudices
would permit in 1848 and 1874. It rests with the Federal Assembly to
determine by statutes the particular questions which shall be submitted
to the court; these have already been greatly extended, and the court
will ultimately be given a still more independent and influential
position. The essence of judicial power consists not in judging, but
in laying down the law, or, according to the Roman expression, not _in
judicio_, but _in jure_. The purity of justice, the liberty of the
citizens, have gained by the change, and government has not lost in
security. Judicial power should be removed as far as possible from all
warping influence. It should be the great defender of established order
against the legislative and executive departments of government. Its
relation to the law-making and the law-executing powers is peculiarly
delicate and important. There is need that some other power, not
political, removed from the struggles of the present, having no ends
of its own to answer in the future, should have the function to decide
what is the meaning and application of a law; and whether there is any
positive conflict between a new one and a received one, or between a
new one and a constitution. This should be a power able to watch over
the constitution, and prevent invasions of it. The highest court can
exercise this guardianship better than any other board of control that
can be devised. The power of the judiciary, under certain conditions,
to pronounce upon the constitutionality of the laws is “a security to
the justice of the state against its power.”[44] The supreme power of
the court becomes the servant of the federative principle, which as
a mediator between opposing forces is pre-eminently a principle of
justice. The decision is now national, now in favor of the state, and
thus, through interpretation, the constitution is developed, and the
two forces have as free play in the judicial as in the more strictly
political action.

We speak of three co-ordinate branches and of their working, each in
a separate and defined province; and yet, as must of necessity be
the case in human affairs, the lines of demarcation are not always
clear, and unless confusion is to be endless, a power must exist
somewhere to determine the limits of the separate provinces, and to
decide controversies in regard to them. The power to do this has been
confided under the system of the United States to the courts, in
accordance with the principles of the common law, if not by the express
provisions of the constitution. To the United States Supreme Court is
confided the duty of deciding questions involving the limitations of
the different branches of the government. It diminishes the danger of
collision between the different political bodies among which power
is distributed, because these bodies are not brought into direct
contact, but act each in its own way directly on the people; the
courts regulating conflicts of authority as they arise. The peace,
the prosperity, and the very existence of the Union are invested in
its hands; the executive appeals to it for assistance against the
encroachments of the legislative power, and the legislature demands
its protection from the designs of the executive; it defends the Union
from disobedience of the States, and the States from the exaggerated
claims of the Union, the public interests against the interests of
private citizens, and the conservative spirit of order against the
fleeting innovations of democracy. This form of government, with the
immense power it gives to the courts, could not exist among a people
whose reverence for law and submissiveness to its mandates were not
very great, and would not be possible, moreover, if it did not rest on
a popular basis.




CHAPTER VI.

THE CANTONS.


Prior to the year 1798, the condition of a Swiss Canton was that of
a great feudal lord, with an aggregate of many separate seigniorial
properties; acquired partly by conquest, partly by purchase. In the
town Cantons, such as Bern, Basel, and Zurich, the town was the
lord, and the country districts were attached to each as dependent
properties. In the rural Cantons, such as Uri and Schwyz, it was an
aggregate of democratic communities, which exercised lordship over
other dependent communities in their neighborhood. The conquered
districts, instead of being created into new Cantons, remained subject,
in some cases to individual Cantons, in others to associations of
Cantons for their members jointly. In the rustic communities the
government was a pure democracy; in the cities it was tempered with a
small mixture of aristocracy. Each Canton had a separate coinage, its
batzen and rapps, kreutzers and schillings, sous and centimes, that
would not pass beyond its frontier.[45] Each Canton had its own agents
accredited to foreign powers. Each Canton kept a custom-house, and
manned a tower at every bridge, at which each load of grass, butt of
wine, sack of corn, and pound of cheese that passed the boundary was
taxed. Every Canton was a distinct body, independent from any other,
and exercising the sovereign power within itself; looking upon the rest
as mere allies to whom it was bound only by such acts to which it had
consented, and when any new thing not comprehended in this agreement
happened to arise, each Canton retained the power of determining the
matter for itself. The idea that the minority of Cantons was bound by
the decision of the majority took root slowly, and internal affairs
depended for settlement on remonstrance and mediation. They were kept
together by the peculiarity of their topographical position, by their
individual weakness, by their fear of powerful neighbors, by the few
sources of contention among a people of such simple and homogeneous
manners, and by their joint interest in their dependent possessions.
The conditions of the country and of its society contributed to
divide instead of to unite the different Cantons. Mountains and lakes
separated them into almost distinct nationalities; they were peopled
by different races, with differences of language, religion, customs,
industries, material interest, and social development,--more than a
hundred parcels of territory, each having its separate history, and
in many cases a far greater difference between the inhabitants than
between the people of Maine and Texas, of Massachusetts and California,
for they were a polyglot people without a community of language,
to which, as a cohesive force, nothing can compare, especially in
a democratic state governed by opinion expressed through universal
suffrage. Many were the difficulties and dangers through which
the Cantons had to struggle to break up this system and overcome
these causes of dissension. This was gradually accomplished by the
principles of confederation, judiciously and temperately applied to the
circumstances of the country.

The Swiss Cantons of to-day have very much the political organism of
the United States. They are sovereign in so far as their sovereignty
is not limited by the federal constitution; and as such they exercise
all the rights which are not delegated to the federal government.
The Cantons are units of a federal state, possessed within certain
limits of independent and supreme power. The Swiss constitution,
after guaranteeing to the Cantons their sovereignty, their territory,
their constitutions, etc. (as pointed out in the chapter on the
constitution), again and again reverts to the rights, powers, and
duties of the Canton with that remarkable detail which characterizes
the text of that instrument in everything it touches. These cantonal
provisions are, viz.:

1. The Cantons have the right to make conventions among themselves upon
legislative, administrative, or judicial subjects; in all cases they
shall bring such conventions to the attention of the federal officials,
who are authorized to prevent their execution if they contain anything
contrary to the Confederation or to the rights of the Cantons.
Should such not be the case, the respective Cantons may demand the
co-operation of the federal authorities in their execution.

2. By exception, the Cantons preserve the right to conclude treaties
with foreign powers, respecting the administration of public property,
and border and police intercourse; but such treaties shall contain
nothing contrary to the Confederation or to the rights of the Canton.

3. Official intercourse between the Cantons and foreign governments or
their representatives shall take place through the Federal Council.
But the Cantons may deal directly with the subordinate officials and
officers of a foreign state in regard to the subjects enumerated (in
Section 2).

4. In the case of sudden danger of foreign attack, the authorities of
the Canton threatened shall request the aid of other members of the
Confederation, and shall immediately notify the federal government,
without prejudice, however, to the action of the latter. The Cantons
so summoned are bound to give aid. The expenses shall be borne by the
Confederation.

5. In case of internal disturbance, or when danger threatens from
another Canton, the authorities of the Canton threatened shall
immediately notify the Federal Council, in order that it may take
the necessary measures within the limits of its power, or may summon
the Federal Assembly. In urgent cases the authorities of the Canton
notifying the federal government of its action, may ask the aid of
other Cantons, to which the latter are bound to respond. If the
cantonal government is unable to call for aid, the federal authority,
having the power, may, and if the safety of Switzerland is endangered
shall, intervene without requisition. In case of federal intervention,
the federal authorities shall take care that the provisions of the
constitution guaranteeing the sovereignty of the Cantons be observed.
The expenses shall be borne by the Canton asking the aid or occasioning
federal intervention, except when the Federal Assembly otherwise
decides on account of special circumstances.

6. In the cases mentioned (Sections 4 and 5), every Canton is bound to
afford undisturbed passage for the troops. The troops shall immediately
be placed under federal command.

7. The Cantons may require proofs of competency from those who desire
to practise the liberal professions; federal legislation may provide
for certificates of competency valid for the whole Confederation.

8. Cantons, under the supervision of the Confederation, shall enforce
the federal laws relating to weights and measures.

9. Every citizen of a Canton is a Swiss citizen. As such (after
furnishing evidence of his right to vote) he can take part at his
place of residence in all federal elections and votes. No one shall
exercise political rights in more than one Canton. Every Swiss citizen
shall enjoy where he is domiciled all the rights of the citizens of
the Canton, as also all the rights of the citizens of the Commune. He
shall, however, have no share in the common property of the citizens or
of the corporation; nor shall he exercise the right to vote in matters
pertaining purely to such affairs unless the Canton by legislation has
otherwise provided. In cantonal and communal affairs he gains the right
to vote after a residence of three months. The cantonal laws relating
to the right of Swiss citizens to settle outside the Cantons in which
they were born, and to vote on communal questions, are subject to the
approval of the Federal Council.

10. No Canton shall expel from its territory one of its own citizens,
nor deprive him of his rights, whether acquired by birth or settlement
(_origine ou cité_).

11. Every Swiss citizen shall have the right to settle at any place
within Swiss territory, if he possesses a certificate of origin or
some similar paper. In exceptional cases the right of settlement may
be refused to, or withdrawn from, those who, in consequence of a penal
conviction, are not entitled to civil rights. The right of settlement
may, moreover, be withdrawn from those who, in consequence of serious
misdemeanors, have been repeatedly punished; and also from those who
become a permanent charge upon public charity, and to whom their
Commune or Canton of origin refuses adequate assistance after having
been officially asked to grant it. In Cantons where the system of local
relief obtains, the permission to settle, if it relates to natives of
the Canton, may be made dependent on the condition that the parties
are able to work, and have not hitherto been a permanent charge upon
public charity in their previous place of residence. Every expulsion
on account of poverty must be approved by the cantonal government,
and previous notice given to the government of the Canton of origin.
A Canton in which a Swiss establishes his domicile shall not require
security nor impose any special obligations for such establishment.
Nor shall the Commune in which he settles require from him other
contributions than those which it requires from its own citizens. A
federal law shall fix the maximum fee to be paid the registration
office for a permit to settle.

12. Persons settled in Switzerland shall, as a rule, be subjected to
the jurisdiction and legislation of their domicile in all that pertains
to their personal status and property rights. Federal law shall
determine the application of this principle, and shall also make the
necessary regulations to prevent double taxation of a citizen.

13. A marriage contracted in any Canton or in a foreign country,
according to the laws there prevailing, shall be recognized as valid
throughout the Confederation.

14. The Cantons by law shall provide against all abuse of the freedom
of the press, but such legislation shall be subject to the approval of
the Federal Council.

15. Citizens shall have the right to form associations, so far as they
are not, either in their purpose or methods, illegal or dangerous to
the state. The Canton by law shall take the measures necessary for the
suppression of abuses.

16. All the Cantons are bound to treat the citizens of the other
confederated states like their own citizens, both in their legislation
and in judicial procedure.

17. Civil judgments, definitely pronounced in any Canton, may be
executed anywhere in Switzerland.

18. The exit duty on property leaving one Canton for another
(_Abzugsrechte_; _la traite foraine_) is hereby abolished, as well as
rights of first purchase (_Zugrechte_; _droit de retrait_) by citizens
of one Canton against those of another Canton.[46]

19. The administration of justice remains with the Cantons, save as
affected by the powers of the Federal Tribunal.

20. The Cantons may, by correspondence, exercise the right of
initiative as to measures in either council of the Federal Assembly.

The duty of the federal government to intervene for the enforcement
of its guarantee of the “constitutional rights of citizens” in the
Cantons has been declared by the Federal Council in these words:
“When complaints are made regarding the violation of the constitution
in a Canton, and these are brought before the federal authorities,
the latter become in duty bound to investigate them and to form a
decision as to their foundation or want of foundation, and as to
necessary further regulations. For the Confederation guarantees
the constitutional rights of the citizen as well as the rights of
the authorities. The earlier articles of union also guaranteed the
constitutions, but this guarantee was otherwise explained, and many
complaints of unconstitutional proceedings and circumstances were
raised and disregarded. It was desired that these should be no longer
endured, and there was demanded an effective guarantee against
violations of the constitution. Thus arose Article 5 of the federal
constitution, which guaranteed with almost pedantic care the rights of
the nation and the constitutional rights of the citizen. It would, in
fact, be a remarkable relapse into the old view and order of things, a
striking denial of the principles contained in Article 5, if we were to
assume that, in case of a formally presented complaint, the federal
authorities were free to interfere or not. We hold rather that in such
cases the federal authorities are obliged to take up the complaints and
render a decision regarding them.”

If a cantonal law violates the federal constitution or a federal
law, the Federal Tribunal will declare it invalid; but in some cases
recourse must be had to the Federal Council. The protection guaranteed
by the constitution applies to disturbances of the peace within a
Canton, to attacks of one Canton on another, or to a foreign attack.
The appeal, as a rule, is to the Federal Council, exceptionally to
other Cantons; with the existing facilities for communication with the
Federal Council, aid is now demanded exclusively from that body. This
feature in the relation of the general government to the Canton, and
Canton to Canton, is very different from that of the United States
to the State, and State to State. The State is more independent than
the Canton of this external interference. It is not obliged to obey
the summons of any other State for help; it has, in fact, no right
to render any such aid. The government in the United States may not
intervene even to preserve order in a State except on the request of
the legislature or the executive of the State.

A special federal law enumerates the crimes for which one Canton may
demand from another the extradition of criminals. It embraces both
statutory and common-law crimes, and only stops at the limitation
fixed by the constitution, which declares that extradition may not be
rendered obligatory for political offences and those of the press. But
extradition may be refused, in any case, of persons who have acquired
citizenship, or who have settled in a Canton, when this Canton binds
itself to try and punish the accused according to its own law; or
allows a sentence already pronounced in another Canton to be executed
by its own officials.

The Cantons, not being limited by the terms of the federal
constitution, are left sovereign in matters of civil law (except as
regards the civil capacity of persons), the law of land, land rights,
descent and distribution, criminal law, cantonal and local police,
organization of the Communes, public works in general, organization
of schools (within limits of the constitution), the conclusion of
conventions with each other (called concordats), respecting matters
of administration, police, etc. The changes introduced by the
present constitution have had the effect to supplant many of the
cantonal laws, often very dissimilar and conflicting, by federal laws
applicable to the whole Confederation; establishing a uniformity
upon many important relations between the citizens and the state.
Revisions of the fundamental laws of the Cantons have been frequent;
most of the cantonal constitutions are of a recent date. From 1830
to 1874 there have been twenty-seven total or partial revisions of
the cantonal constitutions. In a large measure these were required
to harmonize them with the federal constitution, first of 1848 and
then of 1874. An amendment to a cantonal constitution becomes valid
only when ratified by the federal authorities; no concrete case being
necessary to test it,--the Swiss procedure to assure the supremacy
of the federal constitution being political, not judicial. Cantonal
constitutions present an infinite variety in their organisms and
operations; but it will be sufficient to give the general features
of one of the two distinctive types, the representative system; the
other, the _Landsgemeinde_ or open Assembly, composed of all the people
possessing votes, is reserved for a separate chapter. In the Cantons
of the representative system the legislative department consists of
but a single house, called the Greater or Grand Council (_Grosser
Rath_), and in a few of the Cantons known as the _Kantonsrath_ or
_Landrath_. The members are elected by direct popular vote, and, with
few exceptions, by the secret ballot; from electoral districts and by
_scrutin de liste_. The average representation is about one to every
one thousand inhabitants. In a few Cantons, representation is not
based upon the population, but is determined by the number of active
citizens; and in the Canton of Luzern, the number of representatives
is fixed by the constitution without any regard to the population, or
provision for future reapportionment. Every vote-possessing citizen
is ordinarily eligible for the Greater Council; the last vestiges
of property-qualification having disappeared. The Canton of Geneva
limits eligibility to those who have attained their twenty-sixth year.
In some Cantons functionaries salaried by the state are excluded.
There is a curious diversity presented in the federal and cantonal
age-qualification. A citizen of the Grisons attains political majority
for cantonal electoral purpose at the age of seventeen, or three years
before he can participate in federal elections. In the Canton of Geneva
the citizen only attains his political majority for cantonal purpose
at the age of twenty-one, or one year after he is a voter at federal
elections; and a Genevese can be a member of the Federal Assembly or
the federal supreme court or even President of the Confederation six
years before he is eligible to his cantonal legislature.

The terms in the Greater Council vary from one year to five. In many
of the Cantons the members receive no pay; the highest amount paid
is in the Canton of Geneva, and it is only six francs for each day
that there is a sitting. The Greater Council, besides drafting the
laws and decrees, and interpreting, suspending, and repealing them,
is ordinarily invested with legislative power over the organization
of administrations; the supervision of the execution of the laws;
the right of pardon; the ratification of cantonal agreements; the
establishment of cantonal taxes and the mode of their collection;
naturalization; ratification of loans contracted by the Canton; the
acquisition and alienation of cantonal property; public buildings;
the fixing of salaries and emoluments; the surveillance of the
executive and judicial powers, and the settlement of conflicts of
jurisdiction between these powers; the fixing of the annual budget;
the appointment of the members of the Lesser or State Council, as
well as the members of the Supreme Tribunal. In Geneva, Basel-rural,
Zurich, and Thurgau, the members of the Lesser Council are elected
directly by the people. This Lesser Council, which constitutes the
executive power, is variously called, in the different Cantons,
_Conseil d’État_, _Staatsrath_, _Standeskommission_, _Kleinerrath_.
Originally it was quite a large body; but recent revisions of the
cantonal constitutions have made a reduction in the number, and it now
consists of from five to seven members, who distribute among themselves
the different departments on the same system as that described of
the Federal Council. The terms vary from two years to four. In some
Cantons the members must be divided as far as practicable among the
several electoral districts. In all the Cantons this executive power
is collegiate,--that is, not vested in a single individual, but in a
commission. Nowhere does the chief magistrate hold the independent
position of an American State governor, but, like the President of
the Confederation, is mere chairman of the council. The salary paid
the members of the executive council is from three to five thousand
francs a year. This Council proposes laws and decrees to the Greater
Council, and watches over the maintenance of public tranquillity and
security, as well as over the execution of the laws, decrees, and
regulations of the Greater Council. It administers the funds of the
state; appoints those executive and administrative functionaries who
are immediately subordinate to it, and watches over them; it has also
the higher surveillance of the communal administrations, the poor,
the schools, and the churches. The qualification for a member of the
executive or Lesser Council is the same as that of the Greater Council;
and in both instances it is uniformly limited to active citizens and
laymen, and they are re-eligible without limit. The executive council
in the larger Cantons is represented, in districts established for the
purpose, by _Prefects_, or _Regierungsstatthalter_, or _Statthalter_,
who, associated with two Councillors, compose a commission for many
purposes. Although agents of the executive council, they are not always
appointed by it, but sometimes by the Greater Council, and often
directly by the people. The constitutions of most of the Cantons say
that the legislative, executive, and judicial functions shall be kept
distinct; yet in practice the line of demarcation is often ignored.
The legislative bodies are given an important share both in the
administration and interpretation of the laws. As in the federal, so
in the cantonal constitutions, there is not to be found that delicate
adjustment of the political forces, forming so conspicuous a feature
in the national as well as in the State system of the United States;
that great ingenuity and skill in the contrivances which prevent the
different representative bodies from being mere fac-similes of each
other, and at the same time preserve their equality in point of power.

A cantonal constitution usually opens with the declaration that the
“sovereignty resides in the people as a whole” (“_auf der Gresammtheit
des Volks beruhe_”); and then follows the further declaration that
the people, by virtue of that sovereignty, “give it [the Canton] the
following constitution;” also that this sovereignty is to be “directly
exerted by the active citizens and only indirectly by the magistrates
and officials;” that “the people exercise the legislative power in
co-operation with the cantonal council” (referring to the right of
_Initiative_ and _Referendum_); and that in this “it is the duty of
every citizen to participate.”

All the cantonal constitutions contain, in a more or less explicit and
elaborate manner, provisions of this nature, viz.:

All citizens are equal in the eye of the law and enjoy the same civil
rights; free expression of opinion by word or in writing; the right
of association and of assembly is guaranteed, subject to no other
restrictions than those of the common law; in libel suits, alleged
defamatory publications must not only be proven to be true, but must
appear to have been made from “honest motives and a righteous purpose;”
house and home right inviolable; house-searching by an official vested
with this power must be in advance carefully explained by the official,
as to the reason for and the extent of the proposed search; innocent
persons sentenced are entitled to restitution and just satisfaction
from the state; father and son, father-in-law and son-in-law, two
brothers, or two brothers-in-law cannot serve at the same time as
members of the executive or judicial department; all citizens subject
to taxation must contribute to the burdens of the state and the
community in accordance with their respective means; small estates
of persons disabled for work, as well as a sum absolutely necessary
for support, shall be exempt from taxation; tax exemptions in favor
of private persons or industrial companies forbidden; no new taxes
on the consumption of any of the necessaries of life to be levied;
cantonal and district officers to receive fixed salaries, all fees
going into the state treasury; organization and management of charity
left to the community;[47] the state to make suitable contributions
to lighten the burdens of poor communities, and especially to extend
its influence and aid in the education of the children of the poor,
improving the hospital service, and reforming the character and
ameliorating the condition of the neglected and dissolute; to render
assistance and facilities for the development of trades-unions based on
the principle of self-help; to pass laws essential for the protection
of the laboring classes; judicial sentences not to be set aside or
modified by any legislative or administrative authority, except in so
far as the pardoning power is vested in the cantonal council. There
are also numerous provisions relating to church affairs and education,
on parallel lines with those of the federal constitution, with the
addition that the former includes the organization and management of
the church communities which are exclusively under cantonal authority.

The Cantons are left quite free to organize their courts as they
please; justice, in general terms, being administered by the Canton
with recourse in specified cases to the Federal Tribunal. The cantonal
judicial organization presents two well-defined courts: the district
courts (_Bezirksgerichte_ or _Amtsgerichte_), which are courts of
first instance; and a supreme or appellate court (_Obergericht_ or
_Appellationsgericht_), which is the court of final instance. Some
of the Cantons have justices of the peace; these are elected by the
Communes for a term of six years, and have jurisdiction up to fifty
francs. Either party to a suit, or the justice, may demand that
two jurors elected by the casting of lots be summoned to assist in
the trial. For the hearing of criminal cases, there is a trial in
a few Cantons by a jury under the presidency of a section of the
supreme-court justices, but in the others a special criminal court
acts without a jury. In three of the large Cantons, Geneva, Zurich,
and St. Gallen, there are special _Cassation_ courts put above
the _Obergericht_. Zurich and Geneva have also special commercial
courts (_Handelsgerichte_). In many of the Cantons the supreme court
exercises certain semi-executive functions, taking the place of a
ministry of justice, in overseeing the action of the lower courts, and
of all judicial officers, such as the states-attorneys. The courts
make annual reports to the legislative council, containing a full
review of the judicial business of each year, discussing the state of
justice, with criticisms upon the system in vogue, and suggestions of
reform. These reports are important sources of judicial statistics.
The terms of cantonal judges vary from three to four and six years.
The judges of the inferior courts are elected directly by the people;
those of the supreme courts by the legislative council. In Bern the
legislative council also elects the presidents of the district courts.
No qualification for election to the bench is required except that of
being an “active citizen.” But invariably, to the higher courts at
least, competent lawyers are chosen; and re-election is the rule. The
district courts render final judgments on claims from fifty to two
hundred francs. Either party to the suit has the right to demand that
two district judges preside as associate judges. The district courts,
consisting of a president and four judges, decide as of first resort,
and the appellate chambers of the supreme court, as of second and final
resort, all claims exceeding two hundred francs. The commercial court
decides finally all claims exceeding five hundred francs, provided
the defendant is entered in the commercial register. In proceedings
before the district and commercial courts the claim is first submitted
to a justice acting as _propitiator_; he summons the parties for the
purpose of effecting an amicable adjustment of their difficulties; if
no agreement can be reached, a lawsuit permit is issued by the justice
and handed to the plaintiff, which he in turn presents to the court. In
a majority of cases the court proceedings are oral; only in exceptional
cases, involving difficult and novel questions or intricate accounts,
an order will be made for written preparatory proceedings. After the
court hears an oral statement of the claim and the defence, it decides
whether further evidence shall be produced, and issues an order setting
forth what must be established by each party in the form of written
testimony; and this must be presented to the court in an accurate and
carefully-prepared form. The judgment of the court is first rendered
orally, and written notice of the same given to the parties. When an
appeal lies, it must be taken within ten days from the receipt of the
above notice. In all cases the plaintiff must make a deposit to cover
the costs, but the costs are to be finally paid by the party cast in
the suit.

Under the constitutional provision, that final civil judgments rendered
in one Canton are executory in any other Canton, sometimes a question
arises as to the obligation of one Canton to carry out the decree of
the court of another Canton. This question must be referred for final
decision to the federal authorities. In only one Canton, that of Uri,
is there a departure from the federal system, and there the cantonal
courts have the power to declare invalid a cantonal legislative
enactment.

Trial by jury, even for felony, does not universally exist in the
Cantons. The substitution of a tribunal or judicial body instead of
the unitary system, though claimed to be almost tantamount, is far
from fulfilling the essential purpose of a jury. Knowledge, skill,
and strict impartiality belong to the judge; common sense and common
feelings to private individuals on a jury. The judge is deaf, blind,
and inexorable, and knows only the law; the jury is under the influence
of public opinion, or even of public prejudices, which must not be
overlooked altogether, and for the sake of the law itself, of peace
and good government. The jury is, in fact, a legislative as well as a
judicial power, negatively at least, for deciding on law as well as
on fact; they may and do silence the law when they please. Unforeseen
cases occur sometimes where an undue advantage is taken of the law.
The jury may suspend, in fact, its application until it is altered; in
other cases, less uncommon, the strict application of the law would be
directly in opposition to public feelings and prejudices, to the extent
of threatening popular violence and revolution. A judge cannot make the
law bend to circumstances; government cannot yield without disclosing
weakness and encouraging the factious; but the jury, being supposed to
participate in these public feelings, may preserve the peace without
disgrace, by a sort of innocent denial of justice. A jury of judges,
as the silent part of the bench may be deemed, cannot be ignorant of
the law, and would make themselves gratuitously contemptible if they
pretended to participate in the feelings of the multitude. Besides
the obvious use of juries as a check on judiciary proceedings for the
safety of individuals, the institution is of high political importance.
It is one of the hidden springs upon which the cumbrous machine of
society is, as it were, suspended, and enabled thereby to sustain
accidental shocks without coming to pieces.

There was abundant justification in the early cantonal criminal
codes for the abolition, by the federal constitution, of capital
punishment[48] and corporal pains. Many of the codes were not
distinguished for justice, gentleness, or rationality. Nowhere were
witches more relentlessly pursued than in some of the Cantons of
Switzerland. The laws denouncing them were of Draconian severity. Stern
were the ordinances and strange the customs of the older Cantons.
In 1666 an entire family, mother, son, and daughter, were burned in
Unterwalden for practising forbidden arts. No less than one hundred
and fifty individuals were executed at Geneva, in a period of fifty
years, during the seventeenth century, for the capital offence of
witchcraft, denominated _lèse-majesté divine au plus haut chef_. The
last execution for sorcery was in Glarus in 1782. So late as 1824 a man
was racked in Zug, and in the archives of Obwald appears an entry, in
1840, of a payment of thirty francs to the executioner for beating a
prisoner, who had proved refractory under examination, with rods, in
the torture-chamber. The Swiss historian Müller relates that one Sak,
at Bern, was sentenced to be whipped, and led out of the gate by the
executioner, for returning from banishment, and if he returned again
he should be drowned; also Hanns, the public executioner of Bern, was
banished two miles from the jurisdiction of the town for having spoken
immodestly to respectable men and women, and if he returned he should
have his eyes put out. An inn-keeper of Bern, having procured the
seal of a councillor who lodged at his house, made use of it to forge
obligations for sums of money which, supported by false witnesses, he
claimed after an interval of several years; the fraud being discovered,
he was broken upon the wheel, and the witnesses “boiled in a kettle.”
In Zurich, any one clipping the coin, had his fingers clipped off, and
was then hanged. In the council-room of the old Rathhaus of Appenzell
can still be seen an instrument known as the “bocksfutter”; it consists
of a long bench, on which delinquents, ordered to be punished with
stripes, and prisoners, who were obstinate about admitting their
guilt, were wont to be placed, with legs and arms outstretched as if
they were going to swim; but every attempt to move these members was
prevented by enclosing them in iron clamps firmly fastened to the
bench; this preliminary completed, the executioner was called in,
and ordered to give the victim as many strokes with “_ochsenziemer_”
on the bare body, as the judges might think necessary, to loosen his
tongue or purge him of his offence. Another so-called truth-finder
(_wahrheitserforschungsmittel_) was a cage, in which one could neither
stand upright nor stretch his legs, but only cower on the floor in a
constrained position. At Freiburg the punishment for stealing five
sous was death by decapitation; and a stranger striking a burgher was
fastened to a post and scalped, while a burgher striking a stranger
paid three sous. Capital punishment was inflicted by cutting off the
head, which was done in this manner: the culprit was made fast in an
arm-chair, and a cap placed on his head with a hole in the top, by
which an assistant took hold of his hair, while the executioner, placed
behind, struck off his head with a broadsword.

There is little or nothing in the Swiss cantonal institutions to
tempt unworthy men into official life. The salaries are nominal, with
very remote chances for any personal aggrandizement. In the local and
municipal administrations, it is difficult, if not impossible, for any
one class to employ the powers of government for purely selfish ends.
Many of the officials serve the Canton, municipality, and community
with motives as honorable as their services are intelligent and
efficient. The Cantons and communities are comparatively free from
debt, and not burdened by excessive taxes. There is a general aversion
to incurring public debts, common to the Swiss, from the federal head
down through the cantonal, municipal, and community administrations.
The revenues of these little states are small, and require strict
economy in every branch of expenditure. Nothing is wasted on useless
consumers and their retainers; an exact account must be rendered of
the employment of the public funds; and precision and publicity in the
keeping of public accounts. The people yields its servants, indeed,
some compensation, but it does not reward them with pensions or with
superabundant influence. It builds up no official class who forget
their citizenship and separate themselves from the mass of the people,
squeezing as many advantages as possible out of their offices, even
to the prejudice of efficient service. The Cantons, upon enumeration,
number not twenty-two but twenty-five, because three of them have
been divided into half-Cantons, making nineteen whole and six half
Cantons. Basel is divided into Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft (urban
and rural); Appenzell, into Ausser-Rhoden and Inner-Rhoden; and
Unterwalden, into Obwald and Nidwald (above and below the forests
which formed the boundary between them). The rending of these Cantons
into half-Cantons was the work of party feuds; in one place springing
from political causes, in a second from religious strife, and in the
third from wrangles about wood and grass. Unterwalden was divided
as early as 1366. The division of Appenzell occurred in 1597; the
Catholic magistrates having turned out some Protestant ministers,
so serious a quarrel ensued between the two communions, that other
Cantons were called in as mediators; to restore peace they resorted to
a sort of political divorcement; the Canton was divided between the
two parties, and a river marked the boundary; the Catholics passed
on one side and the Protestants on the other, selling or exchanging
reciprocally their fields and houses. The separation in Basel took
place in February, 1832; the city of Basel maintained that the country
people should either accept the constitution which pronounced them
dependent and inferior, or renounce all connection with her: in vain
the Diet protested against this division, but the city persisted in
the separation rather than put itself on a level with the peasants.
Only in one case, that of Basel, was the division accompanied by any
violence. There is not a great difference between the population of the
halves in the Cantons of Basel and Unterwalden; the urban half, of the
former, having an excess of 12,000, and Obwald, of the latter, 3000;
but the population of Ausser-Rhoden is four and a half times that of
Inner-Rhoden. There is a wide diversity in the area of these several
half-Cantons, not easily accounted for, except in the case of Basel,
where one-half is composed of the city of Basel. Each half-Canton
keeps its own share of sovereign power; each is practically complete
in its state autonomy, the original cantonal integral having little
recognition beyond the representation in the Council of States. In
that body the members from these half-Cantons display, more or less,
the antagonism which originally led to the division of their Cantons;
Catholic Appenzell is almost certain to oppose Protestant Appenzell; so
with all of the members from the fractional Cantons, they are arrayed
on different sides of all local questions, seriously impairing their
influence. In extent, population, and wealth, the Cantons are about
equal to a county; still, each is one of the twenty-two confederate
states. The official order of the Cantons corresponds with the
historical date of their entry into the Confederation, except that
Zurich, Bern, and Luzern, after joining the league of small Cantons,
were placed at the head. Uri occupies the first place in chronological
order, and anciently Luzern took the lead, but when Zurich entered
the Confederation, as an imperial city, in 1351, it displaced Luzern
by virtue of its great wealth; and two years later Bern joined the
league, and was awarded the second place on account of its military
power. The standards of the three original Cantons are very suggestive
of their history. The one of Uri represents a bull’s head, with the
broken links of the yoke hanging around the neck; that of Schwyz a
cross, the double symbol of suffering and deliverance; and the banner
of Unterwalden bears two keys, symbolical of the keys of the apostle
St. Peter, and destined to open the iron gates of their long slavery.
Emile de Laveleye, in his “Primitive Property,” gives the following
touching legend as to the method in which the boundary between the
_Marks_ or Communes of Uri and Glarus was formerly fixed: “The two
Cantons are separated by frozen peaks and a lofty chain of mountains
everywhere except at the Klaussen passage, through which one can easily
pass from the valley of the Linth to that of the Reuss. In times past,
there were disputes and struggles between the people of Uri and Glarus
as to the debatable boundary of their pastures. To decide the question,
they agreed that, on St. George’s day, a runner should start at the
first cock-crow from the bottom of each valley, and that the frontier
should be fixed at the point where they met. The start was to be
superintended by inhabitants of Glarus at Altdorf, and by inhabitants
of Uri at Glarus. The people of Glarus fed the cock, which was to give
the signal to their runner, as much as possible, hoping that, being in
full vigor, it would crow early in the morning. The people of Uri, on
the contrary, starved their cock; hunger kept it awake, and it gave
the signal for the start long before dawn. The runner started from
Altdorf, entered the _Schaechenthal_, crossed the top, and began to
descend on the other side towards Linth. The Glarus cock crowed so
late that their runner met the one from Uri far down the slope on his
side. Desperate at the thought of the disgrace which would be reflected
on his countrymen, he begged earnestly for a more equitable boundary.
‘Hearken,’ answered the other, ‘I will grant you as much land as you
can cross, ascending the mountain with me on your back.’ The bargain
was struck. The Glarus man ascended as far as he could, when he fell
dead from fatigue on the banks of the stream called _Scheidbaechli_
(the boundary line). This is why Urner Boden, situated on the slope
facing Glarus, beyond the division of the water, belongs to Uri. It is
a curious legend in which, as so often in Swiss history, the citizen
gives his life for the good of his country.”

Individual Cantons have a national character, either because all
their inhabitants belong to one people, as in the German Cantons
of northern and eastern Switzerland, or in the French Cantons of
western Switzerland, or in Italian Ticino; or because one nationality
decidedly prevails, as the Germans in Bern and Graubünden, and the
French in Freiburg and Valais. The result of holding different
peoples together without transforming them into one nationality has
been attained only by allowing each people free course in its local
and inner life. The drift of Switzerland’s history and its political
trend are unquestionably towards a more compact nationality. The
constitution was a compromise between the advocates and opponents of
nationalism. Every change from 1814 down to 1874 has taken something
from the Canton and Commune and bestowed it on the Confederation.
In every stage of its historical growth it has been a fight of the
Confederation against the Canton, on behalf of general rights; those
interests of the citizen which are claimed to lie beyond the proper
sphere of local laws and customs. The national government has steadily
extended its influence, every step increasing the authority of the
nation at the expense of the cantonal independence; a steady growth
in national feeling, a constant drift towards a stronger federal
government. Many branches of legislation have been taken away from
the Cantons, which under the constitution of the United States
adhere to the States. The federal government has absorbed numerous
matters of social and economic importance, such as those relating
to railways, telegraph, factories, insurance, debts, marriage, the
law of contract, and general measures of sanitary precaution. “Swiss
democratic federalism tends towards unitarianism. This is no doubt
in part due to the desire to strengthen the nation against foreign
attack. It is also due, perhaps, to another circumstance. Federalism,
as it defines and therefore limits the power of each department of the
administration, is unfavorable for the interference or to the activity
of government. Hence a federal government can hardly render service
to the nation by undertaking for the national benefit functions which
may be performed by individuals.”[49] Wherever in the history of the
world we find a federation having an internal organization sufficiently
strong to maintain its own existence, we observe an inevitable drift of
power from the several states to the central government, striving to
ascertain over how broad a field it is expedient and right to extend
the activities of government. Yet it is impossible to study attentively
the march of Swiss affairs without seeing that what really lie next to
the hearts of the people are their cantonal and local institutions;
and while a well-assured nationality is kept up, in event of foreign
danger or common peril, nevertheless, the citizens look for protection
as well as for command to their own cantonal authority. A familiar
colloquialism is often used, which illustrates the relation of the
cantonal to the national feeling,--“My shirt is nearer to me than my
coat.”

Switzerland, though not extensive in point of superficial surface,
embraces such an extraordinary variety of climate, soil, race, and
occupation as to render the rule of a single central democratic
government, in an especial manner, vexatious. It must of necessity
adhere to a system of Federal Union in preference to that of a
central and universally diffused authority; because in small states,
having each the power of internal legislation, the interests of the
inhabitants are nearly the same, and their influence can be felt and
their wants receive due consideration.

The Cantons have deep-rooted and peculiar local institutions, in
many cases of great vitality; laws handed down traditionally from
generation to generation, often without having ever been committed to
paper, much less to print. Until 1848 there was not one written and
accepted cantonal constitution. A country where self-government has
longest subsisted, and political institutions been most the subject of
popular discussion and decision, it is at the same time a country in
which innovations are with the most difficulty introduced. You might
alter the whole political frame of government in the French republic
with more facility than you could introduce the most insignificant
change into the customs and fashions of the Swiss democracy. They seem
as immovable as the mountains in which they were cradled. The French
directory, in the ardor of their innovations, proposed to the peasants
of the Forest Cantons a change in their league, and made the offer
of fraternization, which had seduced the allegiance of so many other
states, but these sturdy mountaineers replied, “Words cannot express,
citizen directors, the profound grief which the proposal to accede
to the new Helvetic League has occasioned in these valleys. Other
people may have different inclinations, but we, the descendants of
William Tell, who have preserved, without the slightest alteration, the
constitutions which he has left us, have but one unanimous wish, that
of living under the government which Providence and the courage of our
ancestors have left us.”

The Confederation, in striving to make the general organization more
systematic and uniform, must tenderly regard cantonal susceptibilities.
The Swiss federal organization is firmly founded on cantonal
precedents, traits, and features; and their self-assertive vitality and
their direct influence make them the central subject of Swiss politics.
The federal constitution designates the members of the Confederation
as “sovereign Cantons;” and each of the cantonal constitutions says
in effect, “This, under federal supremacy, is a sovereign Canton,”
and each declares that the sovereignty within the Cantons rests on
“the people as a whole.” “Sovereign state” is conspicuous in the
constitution, federal and cantonal. It expresses national instincts,
national experiences, and political education. All the elevating
memories of national history, all the inspiring traditions which
had bred into national sentiment, generation after generation, were
connected with a league of states of almost insulated independence.
Each Canton has always jealously clung to its own individuality and
ancient customs. Every now and then the republic would be split up into
smaller confederations for the purpose of maintaining the rights of
state sovereignty; by these sectional strifes, the idea of isolation
and individuality was handed on, gaining strength as it went, and
becoming more and more a political instinct of the Swiss people.

Switzerland is a microcosm. In these five and twenty little states we
have a miniature resemblance of all the phases of social and political
life; every Canton contributes with friendly emulation to improve
the domestic policy and strengthen the political relations of the
Confederation; if they present no example worthy to be followed as a
whole, there is still much in their detail that will most abundantly
repay our study.




CHAPTER VII.

THE LANDSGEMEINDE.


In the republics of the ancient world, where representative assemblies
were unknown, legislative power vested with the citizens, the sovereign
power being exercised by the whole people, acting directly in their
own persons. They met in what we should now call primary assemblies.
This early democracy found its most logical expression in the _Comitia_
of Rome and the _Ecclesia_ of Syracuse. The _Ecclesia_ embraced all
citizens over twenty-one years of age, unless they had become liable to
any loss of civic rights; it met so frequently, often once a week, that
it would be inconceivable, if we did not remember that ordinary and
professional labor was carried on not by the free citizens, but by the
numerous slaves. The same plan prevailed in the early Teutonic tribes.
Tacitus describes such an assembly, almost in the words of Homer: “In
matters of inferior moment the chiefs decide; important questions are
reserved for the whole community. When a public meeting is announced,
they never assemble at the stated time; regularity would look like
obedience; to mark their independent spirit, they do not convene at
once, but two or three days are lost in delay. Each man takes his
seat, completely armed. The king or chief of the community opens the
debate; the rest are heard in their turn, according to age, renown in
war, or fame for eloquence. No man dictates to the assembly; he may
persuade, but cannot command. When anything is advanced not agreeable
to the people, they reject it with a general murmur; if the proposition
pleases, they brandish their javelins; this is the highest and most
honorable mark of applause; they assent in a military manner, and
praise by the sound of their arms.”

Montesquieu is of the opinion that, in this treatise on the manners of
the Germans, by Tacitus, an attentive reader may trace the origin of
the British constitution; a system which he claims was found in the
forests of Germany. The Saxon _Witenagemot_ was beyond all doubt an
improved political institution, grafted on the rights exercised by the
people in their own country. The author of the “European Settlements in
America” writes: “The Indians meet in a house, which they have in each
of their towns for the purpose, on every solemn occasion, to receive
ambassadors, to deliver them an answer, to sing their traditionary war
songs, or to commemorate the dead. These councils are public. Here they
propose all such matters as concern the state, which have already been
digested in the secret councils, at which none but the head men assist.”

During the Middle Ages these assemblies died out, and the right of
making laws passed either to the sovereign or to a representative
body; the older method surviving only in some of the Swiss Cantons.
In Uri, in the half-Cantons composing Unterwalden and Appenzell,
and in Glarus, the law-making body is the Landsgemeinde, the free
assembly of all the qualified voters, the _folk-moot_. The whole people
come together to pass laws, to nominate magistrates, to administer
affairs, just as was formerly the case with the Germans of Tacitus
and the Achaians of Homer; with less pretensions, however, than the
assembly of a Greek city, for it is rather an agricultural democracy,
such as Aristotle commended. It is the direct government dreamed of
by Rousseau, who in his dislike of representative systems wrote the
“Contrat Social,” demanding that the entire community should meet
periodically to exercise its sovereignty. Rousseau suggests that he
was led to the opinions advanced in this work, by the example of the
ancient tribal democracies; yet at a later date he declared that he
had the constitution of Geneva before his mind; and he cannot but have
known that the exact method of government which he proposed still lived
in the oldest Cantons of Switzerland; where by the raising of hands
offices and dignities were distributed, and sanction given to the laws;
where feudalism and royalty had never penetrated, and where the most
perfect liberty reigned, without class struggles or social strife. The
assemblies in the Cantons named are called Landsgemeinden,--that is,
“National Communes.” It is a strictly precise term, implying that the
whole country forms, so to say, a single Commune. This was the case
originally. Later, as different villages were formed, they constituted
separate autonomic Communes; but the great Commune of the Canton, with
the General Assembly of all the inhabitants, the Landsgemeinde, was
maintained. Under the Helvetic republic of 1798 the Landsgemeinde was
abolished, in order to make way for the representative system. It was,
however, re-established under Napoleon’s act of mediation, promulgated
in 1803. The sagacity with which the First Consul discriminated the
most important features in the condition of the Swiss Cantons, may be
appreciated by the following extract from the speech he delivered on
the formation of the internal constitution of the Confederacy: “The
re-establishment of the ancient order of things in the democratic
Cantons,” said he, “is the best course which can be adopted, both
for you and me. They are the states whose peculiar form of government
renders them so interesting in the eyes of all Europe; but for this
pure democracy you would exhibit nothing which is not to be found
elsewhere. Beware of extinguishing so remarkable a distinction. I
know well that this democratic system of administration has many
inconveniences; but it is established, it has subsisted for centuries,
it springs from the circumstances, situation, and primitive habits
of the people, from the genius of the place, and cannot with safety
be abandoned. When usage and systematic opinion find themselves in
opposition, the latter must give way. You must never take away from a
democratic society the practical exercise of its privileges. To give
such exercise a direction consistent with the tranquillity of the
state, is the part of true political wisdom.”

Through a strange and happy combination of circumstances this ancient
custom may still be seen in the Cantons of Uri, Unterwalden, Glarus,
and Appenzell. The homely peasants who tend their own cows and goats
upon the mountain-side, and by patient industry raise their little
crops from the narrow patches of soil, hemmed in by rock and glacier,
meet to discuss the affairs of their Canton, to make its laws, and to
swear to observe them; a parliament of Swiss peasants, differing little
in manner or habits from their forefathers of the thirteenth century.
It affords a rare study in politics; an example of pure democracy
such as poets might imagine, and speculative philosophers design.
It was my privilege to have seen one of these primitive assemblies,
held on the hill-side market-place of Trogen, the seat of government
of Appenzell-ausser-Rhoden. Trogen is in the rolling, grassy, breezy
Appenzell Alps, the home of primitive virtue, the stronghold of Swiss
simplicity, honesty, and courage, and the region of light hearts and
merry tongues. It was the first Sunday in May, from which day the
Appenzellers date all the events of the year. Leaving St. Gallen for
Trogen, some seven or eight miles distant, in a carriage, about nine
o’clock in the morning of a bright and beautiful day, the main road
and the many branches that entered it, as far as the eye could reach,
were full of peasants making their way on foot to Trogen; every man
carrying in one hand the family umbrella, and in the other an old sword
or ancient rapier, which, on this occasion the law at once commands
him to carry and forbids him to draw, and which is brought out for
this day only from its dignified seclusion; each one wearing a short
green coat, with a stiff high collar, and a silk hat, both bearing
unmistakable evidence of being venerable heirlooms. The convening of
the Landsgemeinde was announced at twelve o’clock M. by heralds, as
a drum and fife corps, with a wonderful uniform of black and white,
the cantonal colors. There were estimated to be present six to seven
thousand voters. No provision was made for seating them, and all stood
during the proceedings, which lasted nearly three hours. The assembly
opened with a silent prayer, the Landammann setting the example, and
instantaneously the thousands of heads were uncovered and bowed, with
an indistinct but audible wave of sound from the speechless lips; then
a national song in which all joined; the Landammann and his colleagues
of the council mounted a rough platform erected in the centre of the
field, draped with black and white, and with two ancient-looking swords
crossed before it. Close attention was given to the Landammann while he
addressed them as “Trusty, faithful, and well-beloved confederates.” He
submitted a report of the administration of affairs for the past year,
and proposed a few new laws and some amendments to the old laws. These
were five in number, only two of which were accepted, by the raising
of hands, the vote being taken without discussion; though each man had
full right to speak his own mind as long as he pleased. The President,
on behalf of the council, took from a bag, not of silk, but of plain
homespun material, the seal of state and surrendered it into the hands
of those by whom it had been given; and in delivering up this official
charge he concluded with the statement, that he had not voluntarily
injured any one, and asked the pardon of any citizen who might think
himself aggrieved. The President and the members of the council then
retired and took their places as simple citizens in the ranks of their
fellows, leaving the Canton for the time being, without any executive
official, an absolute interregnum. In a few moments some one in the
crowd placed in nomination for re-election the retiring President, and
he was unanimously chosen; the same process was repeated as to all the
other members of the council; they then returned to the platform and
resumed possession of the seal of state. Some subordinate officials
were chosen in a similar manner, all without opposition except in the
case of the _grossweibel_, for which place, owing to some charges of
intemperance against the incumbent, there had arisen quite a contest,
resulting in a half-dozen names being placed in nomination, each one
of whom submitted his claims in a few remarks. The vote was taken for
the several candidates, in turn, by uplifted hands, and the executive
council found it impossible to decide who had received the most
votes, until five trials were had, when the old official was declared
re-elected. Neither the voting nor the result of this unusual contest
was accompanied with the slightest manifestation of feeling. The entire
proceeding was marked by an earnest, serious, reverent decorum, as
could be found in any church service. When the newly-chosen Landammann
enters upon his office, he first binds himself by an oath to obey the
law, and then administers to the multitude before him the same oath.
There was a heart-stirring solemnity in hearing the voice of these
thousands of freemen, beneath the canopy of heaven, in firm, clear
accent, pledging themselves to obey the laws which they themselves had
made. The Landammann’s oath was: “To promote the welfare and honor
of his fatherland, and to preserve it from injury; to enforce the
constitution and laws of his country, to protect, defend, and assist
widows and orphans, as well as all other persons, to the best of his
power, and as the law and his conscience teach him; and that neither
through friendship, enmity, nor bribe, nor for any other reason will he
be moved to deviate therefrom. Likewise that he will accept no gifts
from any prince or lord, except for the public purse.” The people
swear: “To promote the welfare and honor of their fatherland, and to
preserve it from injury, to protect its rights and liberties to the
best of their power, to obey the laws of the magistrates as well as to
defend the council and court, likewise to accept presents, bribes or
gifts from no prince or lord, except for the public purse; and that
every one to whatever position elected shall accept it, and do as well
as he is able and has the power to do.” The foregoing oath, after being
read to the multitude, was sworn to in a loud, distinct voice in the
following form: “We have well understood what has been read to us. We
will keep it truly and steadfastly, faithfully, and without fear, so
truly as we wish and pray that God may help us.” The laws adopted by
the Landsgemeinde of Appenzell in reference to these official oaths are
very peculiar. They bear date 1634, and read: “Because an oath is a
thing through which good law and order must be maintained, so for that
reason it is highly necessary to consider it, in itself, seriously and
well, humbly praying to God, the heavenly Father, that through his Holy
Spirit he may enlighten our hearts, so that we may know what a true
and false oath is, and may in time with the chosen ones live up to it
eternally: Amen! A genuine oath is a considerate and solemn invocation
and declaration to the true God, as the proper guardian of my heart,
to be witness and judge of my sworn declaration or promise, to bless
my body and soul if I swear in truth and sincerity, and if, on the
contrary, I swear falsely, to punish my body and soul. At the same
time every Christian who swears an oath shall lift up three fingers,
by which will be signified the supreme power of God the Father, God
the Son, and God the Holy Ghost; but the two last fingers shall remain
bent back against the hand, and thereby will be represented the entire
submission of soul and body to the supreme power of God. Now the man
who is so forsaken and so hostile to himself as to reject in his heart
what he professes in such a way with his mouth, in the face of the
all-seeing God, swears a false oath. He swears, as if he said, I will
rather be shut out from the community and benefaction of Christendom;
or as if he said, the name of God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ shall
never prove a help and comfort to me at the time when soul and body
shall be separated; or as if he said, the grace of God, the redemption
of Jesus Christ, and the strength of the Holy Ghost shall be entirely
lost and thrown away on me, poor sinner. Finally, whoever swears
falsely speaks as if he said, as I swear false to-day, so do I make
myself guilty of this judgment, that my soul, which is indicated by the
fourth finger, and my body, which is indicated by the fifth finger,
shall be separated from every claim of the All Holy, and be deprived
eternally and forever of the refreshing sight of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Hereby can every Christian perceive and understand what is the meaning
and effect of a false oath, and take heed against it, for the salvation
of the soul. God guard us all eternally and forever from sorrow and
grief: Amen!”

The Landsgemeinde at Uri is attended with much more display and
elaborate ceremonial than that of Appenzell, and a description of it
is here taken from Mr. Freeman’s essay on the “Growth of the English
Constitution:”

“It is one of the opening days of May; it is the morning of Sunday;
for men there deem that the better the day the better the deed; they
deem that the Creator cannot be more truly honored than in using, in
his sphere and in his presence, the highest of the gifts which he has
bestowed on man. From the market-place of Altdorf, the little capital
of the Canton, the procession makes its way to the place of meeting at
Bözlingen. First marches the little army of the Canton, an army whose
weapons never can be used save to drive back an invader from their
lands. Over their heads floats the banner, the bull’s head of Uri, the
ensign which led men to victory on the fields of Sempach and Morgarten.
And before them all, on the shoulders of men clad in a garb of ages
past, are borne the famous horns[50] whose blast struck such dread into
the fearless heart of Charles of Burgundy. Then, with their lictors
before them, come the magistrates of the commonwealth on horseback,
the chief magistrate, the Landammann, with his sword by his side. The
people follow the chiefs whom they have chosen to the place of meeting,
a circle in a green meadow, with a pine forest rising above their head,
and a mighty spur of the mountain-range facing them on the other side
of the valley. The multitude of freemen take their seats around the
chief ruler of the commonwealth, whose term of office comes that day
to an end. The assembly opens; a short space is first given to prayer,
silent prayer, offered up by each man in the temple of God’s own
rearing. Then comes the business of the day. Thus year by year, on some
bright morning of the springtide, the sovereign people, not intrusting
its rights to a few of its own number, but discharging them itself in
the majesty of its corporate person, meets in the open market-place
or in the green meadow at the mountain’s foot, to frame the laws to
which it yields obedience as its own work, to choose rulers whom it can
afford to greet with reverence as drawing their commission from itself.
You may there gaze and feel what none can feel but those who have seen
with their own eyes, what none can feel in its fulness more than once
in a lifetime, the thrill of looking for the first time face to face on
freedom in its purest and most ancient form.”

The Landsgemeinde exercises two equally important functions. First, it
elects the principal officers of the Canton, the Landammann and his
substitute, the treasurer, and the chief of the cantonal militia; it
also appoints the deputies for the Federal Assembly. These cantonal
functionaries are paid but nominally; their duties are light, and the
small claim which they make on the individual causes them to appear
a universal duty of the citizen. It belongs to the Landsgemeinde to
sanction all cantonal laws, and all treaties which are concluded with
other Cantons or with foreign states. With the exception of Glarus,
the legislative power is exercised in this sense, that it accepts or
rejects as a whole the propositions which are made to it, without the
power to introduce changes in them. In Glarus the constitution invests
the Landsgemeinde with power to modify or reject the propositions
which are made to it, or refer them to the triple council finally,
either to report on them or to decide. The constitution of Glarus also
contains this provision: “The people are responsible only to God and
their consciences for the exercise of their sovereignty in the May
Assembly. What must guide the May Assembly is not, however, caprice
without limit and without condition; it is justice and the good of
the state which are alone compatible with it. The people are obliged
to vote according to these principles in taking annually the oath of
the May Assembly.” In all of the Cantons, having these assemblies,
the proposition to be submitted must be made public a certain time in
advance. The administrative power is ordinarily confided to quite a
numerous council, called Rath or Landrath. The functions of this body
are extensive. It watches over the enforcement of the constitution,
federal and cantonal; regulates in their general organization public
instruction, financial, military, and sanitary administration, public
works, charity, except the legal provisions regarding the province
and obligations of inferior authorities; receives the reports of the
administration of all the functionaries of the Canton; deliberates
upon the proposed laws to be presented to the Landsgemeinde, through
the intermediary of the triple council; and watches over the execution
of what the laws or decrees of the Landsgemeinde prescribe to it. In
Nidwald the council has, besides, judicial function. In Glarus, Uri,
and Obwald there have been organized, side by side with the Landrath,
special authorities to which have been transferred all the judicial
functions formerly granted to the Landrath. About the Landrath are
grouped various bodies, evidently formed from it by addition or
reduction. The double and the triple or Great Council are nothing but
the council of the Landrath itself, doubled or tripled by the addition
of new members, whom the territorial divisions appoint in the same
manner and in the same proportion as the first. In Glarus, for example,
each local assembly (_tagwen_) adds two members to the one which it
appoints to form a simple council. Thus the triple council is composed
there of one hundred and seventeen members, as follows:

(1) Of the nine members of the Commission of State.

(2) Of thirty-five members appointed by the _tagwen_ following fixed
proportions.

(3) Of seventy members appointed by the same assemblies, following the
same proportions.

(4) Finally, of three Catholic members, appointed by the same council,
and of which one forms a part.[51]

The principal functions of the triple council are to watch over the
council and the tribunal, to establish the project of the budget
of receipts and expenditures, and to convoke the Landsgemeinde in
extraordinary assembly. The process of addition is applied in many
ways in Appenzell-interior; it is applied in particular to the little
council, which is charged with the principal judicial powers. This
body judges sometimes as a weekly council; it is then only a section
of the little council; sometimes with a simple addition, again with
the reinforced addition. Finally, with a last reinforcement, it forms
what is called the council of blood (_Blutrath_). As there are councils
formed by addition, so there are others formed by reduction, as,
for example, the weekly council of Unterwald-lower. It is appointed
by the Great Council (Landrath) and chosen from its body. It is the
executive, administrative, and police authority, subordinated to the
Great Council. It is composed of the Landammann, as President, and
of twelve members appointed for two years. It assembles in ordinary
session on Monday of each week, and in extraordinary session, when
convoked by the President, and as often as there is need. The third
and remaining authority in this pure democracy is the Commission of
State. It is appointed by the Landsgemeinde, and replaces the council,
for affairs of lesser importance. In Glarus this commission is divided
into two sections, to expedite business. The first is composed of
all the members of the commission; and the second, of three members,
the President included, alternating among themselves after a manner
of rotation, established by the commission. The first section (or
the commission _in pleno_) is charged with the correspondence of
foreign states, the federal authority, and the Confederate states;
with giving preliminary advice upon questions referred to it, or even
with deciding them by the council. The second section is charged
with the ratification of deeds of sale and of wills, with decisions
upon the prolongation of the terms for the liquidation of bankrupt
estates, etc. The Commission of State of Appenzell-exterior has also
the surveillance of the administration of the Communes. The Landammann
presides over the Landsgemeinde, the double or triple council, the
council or Landrath, and the Commission of State. He receives all the
despatches addressed to the authorities presided over by him, and he
is bound to make them known at the next session. He keeps the seal of
state, signs and seals concordats and conventions. He watches over the
execution of the decrees of the Landsgemeinde, the Councils, and the
Commission of State, in so far as the execution is not intrusted to a
special authority. The re-election of the Landammann is universal; and
the office, though always filled by an annual selection, becomes almost
hereditary in a single family.

Customs still exercise a considerable empire in these Cantons, and
the Landsgemeinde makes but few laws; there is none of the confusion
and uncertainty that come from a multiplicity of laws; a source to
which was imputed a great part of the miseries suffered by the Romans
at the time when “the laws grew to be innumerable in the worst and
most corrupt state of things.”[52] The people of these Cantons fill
the idea of Bacon, as to innovation, “to follow the example of time
itself, which indeed innovateth greatly, but quietly and by degrees
scarce to be perceived.” Changes in established institutions must be
considered in reference to existing interests, habits, manners, and
modes of thinking. In vain should we try to promote the common weal
by introducing alterations, however well designed, which have no
hold on the feelings of the people, or are at variance with them, or
which shock their deeply-seated prejudices. There are two different
considerations involved: the propriety of retaining institutions merely
because they have been sanctioned by our ancestors, or transmitted
to us through a series of ages; and the propriety of retaining them
because they are strongly settled in the actual habits, tastes, and
prejudices of the people. While it would argue extreme imbecility,
to spare cumbrous or hurtful institutions on no better ground than
the former, it is absolutely indispensable to pay a cautious regard
to the latter. The existing habits, tastes, and prejudices of the
community, equally with the universal properties of human nature,
are material elements of the politician’s calculations. They are all
sources of pleasure and pain, all springs of action which call, on
his part, for tender handling and accurate appreciation. There is
scarcely a question in the whole compass of politics on which there
is a greater unanimity among philosophers and statesmen than there
is on the policy of cautious and gradual, in opposition to rash and
sudden, reforms on the one hand, and to a pertinacious retention of
incongruities and abuses on the other. As to the improvements which
are to be introduced into a political system, their quantity and
their period must be determined by the degree of knowledge existing
in any country, and the state of preparation of the public mind for
the changes that are to be desired. A passage in the correspondence of
Mr. Jefferson contains a highly instructive exposition of his opinion
on this subject, expressed in his happiest manner: “I am certainly,”
says he, “not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and
constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne,
because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find
practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also that
laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the
human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened; as new
discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions
changed with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance
also, and keep pace with the times.” It is well to stand fast in the
old paths; but the old paths should be the paths of progress; to
shrink from mere change for the sake of change; but fearlessly to
change, whenever change is really needed. All mountain races love the
past, and suspect new things. Their fundamental laws are few and slowly
formed; as slowly formed as they are stoutly held. The constitutions
of the Swiss Cantons were originally of the simplest forms of ancient
democracy. The old democracy, whether absolute or modified in form,
was always direct; modern democracy is, as a rule, representative. It
is obvious that the former presupposes great simplicity of life and
occupation, as in the small communities of mountain valleys; nothing
could render it consistent with the public peace, but the simple
habits of a people of shepherds and husbandmen among whom political
dissensions do not prevail. This substitution of the many for the one
or the few, of the totality of the community for a determinate portion
of it, is an experiment perhaps of insuperable difficulty, except for
very small states, and especially for agricultural or pastoral peoples.
The Landsgemeinde is only able, at most, to announce the general
opinion, to express its approval or its disapproval of a proposition
already known; but altogether incapable of deliberating seriously
on a projected law, or of solving the more complicated problems of
politics. On a wider field and with a more complex society, no such
polity would be possible. To a great nation with extended territories
and large population, the application of the federal principle is
necessary. Therefore in all but four Cantons of Switzerland this
primitive type of government has passed away. That it contains the
germs out of which every free constitution in the world has grown
cannot be denied. A cognate influence, if well considered, will go far
towards accounting for that prodigious resolution and success with
which the ancient commonwealths maintained their national rights. The
whole territories of the Athenian, Spartan, and Roman republics,
were originally but a single province; and the whole strength of the
province was concentrated in a single city, the embryo of their future
greatness, the nucleus around which all their subsequent acquisitions
were formed. Within the sacred walls of Rome and Athens, all classes
of citizens assembled like one great united family; they lived, they
consulted, they transacted business together, and together repaired
for public debate or religious devotion, for manly amusement, or
philosophical speculation, to the forum or the temple, the circus or
the portico. Virtuous emulation was roused, the force of public opinion
increased, and the importance of the individual in the general scale
visibly exalted. The Landsgemeinde is self-government in its noblest
reach and simplest form, where every man is legislator, judge, and
executive. What rare simplicity! No wrangling after power, no intrigue
after place, no lust for fame; one thought alone, to live just as their
fathers did, in perfect liberty, and fearing none but God. These simple
democracies in the Cantons of Switzerland, which have existed for a
thousand years, little touched by the stream of European life, deserve
our respect for their long history that is rich in many episodes, and
for the peaceful and happy existence of their people. They furnish
us with a bit of realistic political education, a successful working
example of the purest democracy in the world. It throbs with a vital
sense of government at first hands; every citizen a very live political
entity, and the sense of government very individual. Obstinately
conservative, with a profound disbelief in theory, they remind one
of the ox, which walks straightforward with a slow, heavy, and firm
tread. They take no stock in the fallacy, that a new system, political
or social, can be ordered like a new suit of clothes, and would as
soon think of ordering a new suit of flesh and skin. With sincere
satisfaction and pride, they are given to exclaim, “Thanks to our
sublime resistance to innovations; thanks to the cold sluggishness of
our national character, we still bear the stamp of our forefathers:”

  “So have old customs there, from sire to son,
  Been handed down unchanging and unchanged;
  Nor will they brook to swerve or turn aside
  From the fixed, even tenor of their life.”




CHAPTER VIII.

THE REFERENDUM.


The student of politics may always look with advantage to Switzerland
for the latest forms and results of democratic experiments. Federal
laws, decrees, and resolutions require the concurrence of both branches
of the Federal Assembly; but the process does not always end at that
point. Such concurrence is not adequate in all cases for them to come
into force. Article 89 of the constitution declares that “federal laws
are submitted to the people for adoption or rejection on the demand of
30,000 active citizens, or eight Cantons; the same is the case with
federal decrees of a general bearing, and not of an urgent character.”

This is known as the Referendum, and is supposed to be derived from
the practice of the old Swiss Confederation, when the delegates of the
thirteen independent states of which it was composed had to _refer_
to their governments for confirmation the decisions of the Federal
Diet. It is one of the most characteristic of Swiss institutions,
and is by far the most original creation of Swiss democracy. “The
Referendum looks at first sight like a French _plébiscite_, but no
two institutions can be marked by more essential differences. The
_plébiscite_ is a revolutionary or at least abnormal proceeding.
It is not preceded by debate. The form and nature of the question
to be submitted to the nation are chosen and settled by the men in
power, and Frenchmen are asked whether they will or will not accept a
given policy. Rarely, indeed, when it has been taken, has the voting
itself been either free or fair. Deliberation and discussion are the
requisite conditions for rational decision. Where effective opposition
is an impossibility, nominal assent is an unmeaning compliment.
These essential characteristics, the lack of which deprives a French
_plébiscite_ of all moral significance, are the undoubted properties
of the Swiss Referendum. It is a real appeal to the true judgment of
the nation, and the appeal is free from the coercion, the unreality,
and the fraud which taint or vitiate a _plébiscite_. The Referendum, in
short, is a regular, normal, peaceful proceeding, unconnected with any
revolution, any violence, or despotic coercion.”[53]

The Referendum is a kind of substitute for the veto; it gives no power
to modify, no power to substitute; it is a pure negative. It does not
enable the electors to pass laws at their own will; it is a mere veto
on such legislation as does not approve itself to the electorate. It
is a veto lodged in the hands of a sovereign people. A question is
simplified as much as possible, and every citizen has the fullest
opportunity, from the public platform, or in the columns of the press,
or in private conversation, to advocate or deprecate its adoption;
and the entire enfranchised portion of the community is asked to say
“Aye” or “No,” as to whether the law shall become operative. It is a
reference to the people’s judgment of a distinct, definite, clearly
stated law. Under the Constitution of 1848, only such measures passed
by the Assembly as clearly involved constitutional changes were subject
to the Referendum. The jealousy of the Cantons, lest their own
civil and religious privileges should be invaded, and their fear of
influences, in the central government, adverse to their own sovereign
rights, demanded an unrestricted reference to the popular vote. This
was conceded in the revision of 1874, when the Referendum was extended
to all federal laws and federal decrees, “of a general nature and not
of an urgent character.” The matter now stands thus: no change can be
introduced into the constitution which is not sanctioned by the vote
of the Swiss people. The Federal Assembly, indeed, may of its own
authority pass laws which take effect without any popular vote; but
it is practically true that no enactment, important enough to excite
effective opposition, can ever become a law until it has received the
deliberately expressed sanction of the people. The words “decrees of
a general nature and not of an urgent character” have never received
even a quasi-judicial construction, either from the Federal Council or
from the Federal Assembly, the two organs supervising its execution.
There doubtless has been conflicting and arbitrary action taken under
it. The weight of opinion, as inferred from the line of precedence,
appears to be that resolutions are of a general nature, when they fix
permanent and obligatory rules, either for the citizens or the Cantons,
but not when they apply only to special cases. The whole detail of the
exercise of the Referendum is placed by the constitution, under the
regulation of the Assembly, and in June, 1874, soon after the adoption
of the constitution, a federal law was passed for carrying it out. All
laws and resolutions, on which the popular vote may be demanded, are
to be published immediately after their passage, and copies sent to
the governments of the several Cantons. Through the Cantons they are
brought to the attention of the Communes. The official publication
expressly calls attention to the “date of opposition,” or when the
period for Referendum expires. This period is ninety days, running
from the date of the publication of the law. The demand for a popular
vote must be made by written petition, addressed to the Federal
Council, all signatures must be autographic, and the chief officer of
the Commune must attest the right of each signer to vote. If, at the
expiration of the ninety days, the demand is found to have been made by
30,000 voters, the Federal Council fixes a date for taking the popular
vote; this date must be at least four weeks from the date of the notice
given by the Federal Council. The vote is “Yes” or “No,” and a simple
majority of those voting is decisive. Unless, however, the demand
for such a reference is made within the ninety days, the people are
presumed to have given a tacit assent, and the bill becomes a law, and
its execution ordered by the Federal Council.

Under this peculiar institution, a condition exists, in which the
sovereignty of the people is no longer a speculative doctrine, but a
living reality; it makes a very direct and thorough democracy, and its
application has proven neither ineffective nor unduly obstructive.
Since the adoption of the Referendum, in 1874, there have been vetoed,
among other laws passed by the Assembly, the following: “Modification
of the right of voting,” “Bank-notes law,” “Indemnities payable to the
Confederation by citizens dispensed from military service,” “Political
rights,” “A law respecting certain epidemics,” “Appointment of a
federal secretary of education,” “Creation of a special secretary in
the federal department of justice and police,” “Granting an annual
salary of 10,000 francs for a secretary to the Swiss legation at
Washington,” “Exempting native commercial travellers from taxation
which those of other countries had not to pay,” “Power to Federal
Council to remove criminal cases from a cantonal to the Federal
Tribunal, when there is reason to suspect the fairness of the former.”
The only important laws sanctioned under the Referendum, during the
same period, are the “Marriage law,” “Factories law,” “Subsidies to
Alpine Railways,” and a general “Banking law.” Also three modifications
of the federal constitution respecting “Patent law,” “Capital
punishment,” and “Spirituous liquor monopoly.”

At the time of the introduction of the general Referendum, one of
Switzerland’s ablest public men declared that it would be “the greatest
trial to which a republic was ever subjected.” It was apprehended by
some that it would invite, on the part of the populace, interference
with a prudent and independent direction of affairs. Others held it to
be scarcely consistent with the true theory of representation; that it
is of the very essence of representation that the representative body
should stand in the place of the people, possessing their confidence,
exercising their plenary powers, speaking with their voice and acting
with their full consent; otherwise the legislative function is wanting,
and it becomes a mere deliberative council. There is, however, nothing
to show that the Swiss Assembly from this cause lacks weight or
respectability; it compares favorably enough with the law-making body
in any country. It is the primary doctrine of the Swiss Confederation,
that the sovereignty of the people must be absolute, whether exercised
personally, as in some of the rural Cantons, or through their
representatives and the Referendum. This doctrine has been maintained
in Swiss institutions from the earliest time until the present day. So
elaborate a scheme for the passing of federal laws cannot be without
inconvenience; but it is a fundamental principle of the nation, and at
once satisfies the democratic traditions of the people and the natural
jealousies of the several Cantons. It is a true check and safeguard in
making the legislative power directly responsible to public opinion,
and in giving the nation an easy and simple opportunity of marking
that opinion; of testifying their disavowal and rejection. If it, as
alleged, produces a diminution of the feeling of responsibility in
the representative, that possible disadvantage is outweighed by the
educative effect which it exercises on the great bulk of the citizens.
It tends to give them a keener interest in political questions. Through
it the citizen becomes conscious of his individual influence, and
that his vote contributes appreciably both to the maintenance and
direction of the laws under which he lives, and he is impressed with
the necessity of a careful discharge of his political rights.

To the confusion and dismay of the strongest advocates of the
Referendum, the measures which they most prized, when so put, have
been negatived. Contrary to all expectations, laws of the highest
importance, some of them openly framed for popularity, have been vetoed
by the people after they have been adopted by the federal and cantonal
legislatures. This result is sufficiently intelligible. It is possible,
by agitation and exhortation, to produce in the mind of the average
citizen a vague impression that he desires a particular change, but
when the agitation has settled down, when the subject has been threshed
out, when the law is before him with all its detail, he is sure to find
in it something that is likely to disturb his habits, his ideas, his
prejudice, or his interest, and so he votes, “No.” Thus it serves as a
guarantee against precipitate legislation in matters of vital concern
to the community; and is considered thoroughly successful by those who
wish that there should be as little legislation as possible. In short,
the Swiss experience with this popular veto on legislation is evidence
that, under certain circumstances, it produces good effects. It does
not hurry on a law, nor facilitate any legislation; it merely forms
an additional safeguard against the hastiness or violence of party;
it is a check on popular impatience. It secures the laws against any
change which the sovereign people do not deliberately approve. The
object of such safeguard is not to thwart the wishes of the democracy,
but to insure that a temporary or factitious majority shall not
override the will of the people. It tends to produce permanence in the
tenure of office; it is a distinct recognition of the elementary but
important principle, that in matters of legislation patriotic citizens
ought to distinguish between measures and men; and this distinction
Swiss voters have shown themselves fully capable of drawing. It is an
institution which admirably fits a system of popular government. It is
the only check on the predominance of party which is at the same time
democratic and conservative, as it has demonstrated. It is democratic,
for it appeals to and protects the sovereignty of the people; it is
conservative, for it balances the weight of the nation’s common sense
against the violence of partisanship and the fanaticism of over-zealous
reformers.

The history of the Referendum in Switzerland confirms the fact that,
as a rule, the people are not favorable to legislation; and that
the necessity must be very great and the good ends aimed at very
manifest, to withstand a direct consultation of the constituencies.
The ancient republics hardly legislated at all. Their democratic
energy was expended upon war, diplomacy, and justice; putting nearly
insuperable obstacles in the way of a change of law. From fundamental
and permanent causes springs this legislative infertility in republics.
Changes are at once conservative and progressive; conservative because
progressive, progressive because conservative. The Referendum reserves
to the people, as the old Swiss expression ran, _höchste und grösste
Gewalt_, the highest and greatest power. The foremost statesman in
Switzerland, a member at present of the Federal Council,[54] calls it
_l’essai le plus grandiose qu’une République ait jamais tenté_, the
grandest attempt ever made by a republic. The constitutional provision
that when a certain number of voters demand a particular measure, or
require a further sanction for a particular enactment, it shall be put
to the vote of the whole country, certainly presents a considerable
future before democratically governed societies. Peradventure the
United States may realize the prophecy made by Mr. Labouchère in the
House of Commons, in 1882, that the people, tired of the deluge of
debate, would some day substitute for it the direct consultation of the
constituencies.

The Referendum is practically in use in the United States for
constitutional amendments, but so far American publicists seem to
regard it quite out of place for ordinary laws, and allege that its
introduction would obscure the distinction on which the whole American
system rests. For this reason the growing tendency of the people, in
the several States, to take a direct part in legislation, even by
means of constitutional amendments, is regarded by the same school of
thinkers as a danger, which, if it goes too far, will be a serious
injury to the American theory of government.

The principle behind the Referendum is as old as the Swiss nation, the
word coming from the usages of the old Federal Diets, in which the
delegates did not decide matters themselves, but voted _ad referendum_,
and submitted their actions to the home governments. The power to veto
an ordinary law made by representatives was established for the first
time in modern days, in 1831, in the Canton of St. Gallen. It was a
compromise between the party which wanted to establish pure democracy,
and the party of representative government. It is, however, only the
same old Swiss voter of centuries ago, telling his member of the Diet
to conclude nothing important without his consent. The demand of
50,000 electors to amend the constitution, or to repeal or to modify
an existing law, is called a “popular initiative,” and, when made,
the Federal Assembly must submit the question to a vote of the people
and the Canton. In every cantonal constitution, except Freiburg, the
right of the people to have all important legislation subjected in
some form to popular confirmation or rejection is recognized. While
general assemblies of the people in the Cantons to make the laws fell
into desuetude, popular franchise and complete freedom of election
were not enough to satisfy the democratic sensibilities of the Swiss.
They were still jealous of the plenary powers of their delegates,
and insisted that their deliberations when formulated into laws,
should be referred to the sovereign people. Previous to the French
revolution, the governments of the different Cantons had largely fallen
into the hands of a limited number of aristocratic families. The
laboring classes were crushed under enormous burdens by the nobility
in the rural districts, and by the rich _bourgeoisie_ in the cities.
Artificial barriers were placed about the freedom of commerce and labor
in the interest of these more powerful classes. The period of reaction
following the Napoleonic era was unfavorable to the development of
popular institutions. Since the cantonal revolutions of 1830 there has
been a general return to the principle known as the Referendum; and
after the federal Constitution of 1848, by which the constitution of a
Canton could only be revised on the demand of an absolute majority of
the citizens, the policy of extending the principles of the Referendum
to its fullest limits rapidly grew in favor. There are two forms of
Referendum existing in the Cantons, _compulsory_ and _optional_; the
one requiring the reference of every law passed by the Great Council
before it acquires validity; and in the other, a discretionary power of
reference is reserved to the people. The first is regarded as the more
practical and satisfactory; the chief objection to the latter being the
agitation occasioned in procuring the necessary signatures, producing
excitement, diverting the thoughts of voters from the real question at
issue, and thus giving an undue bias to public opinion, and a character
of partisanship to the resulting Referendum.

The number of signatures required in the optional Referendum varies,
according to the size of the Canton, from five hundred to one thousand
voters, and the time within which it must be made, usually thirty
days from the passage of the law and its official publication. The
compulsory Referendum exists in the seven Cantons of Zurich, Bern,
Solothurn, Grisons, Aargau, Thurgau, and the Valais, and in the rural
half-Canton of Basel. In Schwyz and Vaud both forms obtain. In Zurich
a popular vote must be taken upon all changes in the constitution, new
laws, concordats, and the appropriation of an amount exceeding 250,000
francs, or an annual expenditure exceeding 20,000 francs. The power of
the cantonal council in Zurich is further limited by the _initiative_.
Any voter, if supported by one-third of the members present at its
next sitting, or any 5000 voters, may demand the passing, alteration
or abolition of a law, or of a decision of the council. The optional
Referendum exists in the seven Cantons of Luzern, Zug, Schaffhausen,
St. Gallen, Ticino, Neuchâtel, Geneva, and the urban portion of Basel.
Generally speaking, laws, concordats, and sometimes resolutions of
cantonal councils are submitted to optional Referendum. It exists for
financial matters, in different gradations in other Cantons, from
500,000 francs in Bern to 50,000 francs in Schwyz. The _initiative_ as
to revision of the constitution prevails in all of the Cantons upon
certain conditions, and the demand of voters varying in number from
1500 to 5000; with the exception of Bern and Valais, where there is
no _initiative_. As before stated, Freiburg is now the only Canton in
which the sovereignty of the people is not thus directly exercised;
all the others, with the exception of those where there is still
a _Landsgemeinde_, possess either a _compulsory_ or an _optional
Referendum_; and in two instances both. A few Cantons have introduced
an _imperative initiative_, by petition from a fixed number of voters,
demanding action upon a certain matter by the cantonal council;
whereupon the council must take a vote upon it, and then submit it
to a popular vote, even if the action of the council upon it has been
unfavorable.

This combination of representative institutions with the direct
exercise of popular sovereignty is well calculated to promote the
welfare of the people, occupying the peculiar position in which the
Swiss are placed. The discipline of self-government in the Commune,
and the training afforded by an effective system of popular education,
have qualified them for the practice of direct democracy. With the
Swiss legislature standing above the executive and judiciary, we might
call Switzerland a parliamentary republic, if it were not for another
power, which stands not only in the final theory, but even in the daily
practice, of the constitution, above the legislature. This power is
the people themselves. The Referendum shows clearly where the seat of
sovereignty in Switzerland is located.




CHAPTER IX.

THE COMMUNES.


The lowest unit in the political system is that which still exists
under various names, as the Mark, the Gemeinde, the Commune, or the
Parish, the analogue of the precinct or township in the United States.
The communal system of Switzerland is peculiar in many respects, and
presents one of the most instructive lessons which modern political
life furnishes of the working of village communities.

The Swiss Commune, speaking comprehensively, is a political and
civil division, standing midway between a political body and a joint
stock company: a corporation, in one sense, endowed with perpetuity,
and holding landed and other property; also a political entity,
embracing all the burghers for economical purposes,--that is, for
the administration and enjoyment of the usufruct of the communal
property; and embracing all the inhabitants for legislative and
administrative purposes, with a great variety of local exceptions and
limitations. The right of the Cantons and the several Communes to
modify these features results in endless divergencies. Being an area
of local self-government, and possessed, to a high degree, of freedom
in self-direction, the Commune is not far from being an independent,
autonomous entity, forming an _imperium in imperio_, both politically
and economically. Forming the simplest division in the Confederation,
still it is of vital importance; its personality to the Canton being
what the Canton is to the nation. It inspires with its common life,
not simply a life of political activity, but of common social and
economical interests. It is so intimately bound up with all existing
rights that its wishes are largely paramount in federal and cantonal
action. Having so genuine and vigorous a political, social, and
economical life of its own, in which the faiths, hopes, passions, and
duties of the citizen are involved, the Commune may be considered a
small republic with indefinite rights.

The Swiss Commune is of very ancient origin, and claims to have been
founded on the idea that civic rights and freedom were disconnected
from mere birth or ownership of land, stress being laid instead on
quasi-corporate union; one of the many forms of the _gens_ or clan, in
which it is no longer a wandering or a merely predatory body; but when,
on the other hand, it takes the form of an agricultural body, holding
its common lands, and forming one component element of a commonwealth.
The independence of the Swiss Commune has survived from the days of
the primitive village community; that gathering of real or artificial
kinsmen, made up of families, each living under the rule, the _mund_,
of its own father; that _patria potestas_ which formed so marked and
lasting a feature of the Roman law, and is to-day respected by the
Confederation, designedly preserved by legislation, and jealously
guarded by the people.

The integer of Swiss political society is not the individual, not
the household; the Commune is the Switzer’s ideal of a social and
political system. The Swiss Society of Public Usefulness, in a pamphlet
published in 1871, called “Souvenir de la Suisse,” with the purpose of
presenting the Swiss republic as a model to the French soldiers, who
at that time under Bourbaki had retreated into Switzerland, declares:
“Our laws proceed from this great principle, that our institutions are
truly free and popular, only in so far as our Communes are free; we
move from low to high, the Commune is the centre of our life, and there
can be no true development of liberty, except so far as it proceeds
from the Communes, from the centre to the circling lines, from the
simple to the composite.” Mr. Numa Droz, chief of foreign affairs in
the Swiss Cabinet, in his “Instruction Civique,” a text-book in the
Swiss public school, says: “The Commune is almost the state in a small
compass; to employ an illustration from natural history, it is one of
the cells of which the social body is composed. It is certain that a
much-developed local right contributes to the strength and prosperity
of the state. The Communes must have perfect liberty in rivalling one
another in their efforts to satisfy and advance the interests they
have in charge. So, care must be taken not to reduce them to a uniform
level, which would stifle all spirit of initiative, every desire for
improvement. The Communes were the first and principal nurseries of
democracy, and are still so in many countries. In their bosom the
citizens are best able of training themselves for public life, of
familiarizing themselves with administrative questions, and learning
how to deal with them. They are the natural nursery grounds, whence the
state legislators and public servants come. A citizen, reared in the
practical school of communal life, will always understand better the
popular wants than one whose political education has been obtained in
the offices of federal administration.”

The commission appointed by the National Council to prepare a revised
constitution for the Confederation, in their report, May, 1871, say:
“The liberty of the Swiss Commune is justly considered as the school
and cradle of our political liberties.”

The Swiss constitution expressly recognizes communal citizenship and
rights. In declaring that every Swiss citizen shall enjoy at his place
of residence all rights of the citizens of the Canton, as also, all
rights of the citizens of the Commune, it makes this reservation: “He
shall, however, have no share in the common property of citizens or of
the corporation, nor shall he exercise the right to vote in matters
pertaining purely to such affairs, unless the cantonal laws determine
otherwise.” It further provides that “No Canton shall deprive any of
its citizens of his rights, whether acquired by birth or settlement,”
referring to the citizenship derived from his “Commune d’Origine.”
Every child born of registered citizens becomes, by birth, a citizen
of the Commune, and thereby also a citizen of the Canton, and of
the Confederation. He shares all political rights, exercises them
according to established rule, is supported by the communal funds
when in distress, and assists in bearing all Communal burdens. He
is therefore fully entitled to every Swiss privilege, when his name
once stands in the communal register, and of these sacred rights he
cannot be alienated. All whose names are not thus registered are of
the “homeless” (“Heimathlosen”), a word of melancholy significance in
Switzerland.

Membership of a Commune comes by descent or purchase; and marriage
confers on the wife the communal citizenship of her husband. In the
first, that of descent, the right of the Commune depends not on place
of birth or domicile, but on descent from parents who are citizens
of the Commune, even though they live outside of it. It is not unlike
the old Roman municipal law, which was also based on _origo_ from a
particular _municipium_. In the second, that of purchase, it is of the
essence of a Commune that the stranger should be admitted to membership
only on such terms as the Commune itself may think good. In every case
it is regarded as a privilege and an affair of sale. A man of any craft
or creed may apply for admission, but the Commune is the judge of
whether his prayer will be granted or not. More or less inquiry will
be made as to his antecedents, his ability to support himself, and
his belongings; but, at all events, it is a business transaction, and
the price varies according to the value of the communal property, the
age, condition in life, and number in the family of the applicant. So
much for a wife and each child; a boy is taxed more than a girl, for
in the course of time the one may add by marriage to the burden of the
Commune, and the other may lessen it by marrying into another Commune.
In some, the craft and calling are regarded; in a few, where they
are in part a congregation with a common faith in charge, religious
considerations may weigh more than any thought of worldly goods. A
foreigner is usually charged more than a native. In olden time this
discrimination extended to citizens of other Cantons, and the last
trace of this distinction was only abolished in 1871 by the Commune of
Lausanne. Some Communes are closed, but many remain open for additional
members. Under any circumstances, it is a privilege to be bought, and
the tariff varies from 50 to 5000 francs, or from ten to one thousand
dollars. This operates as a tax on Swiss citizenship, of which the
Commune is the necessary basis.[55]

Originally, entrance into the Guilds, or _Zünfte_, was the only road to
citizenship in the Commune. These corporations or guilds had certain
monopolies and political privileges. It was a prominent feature of the
time that every mass of men, in any way whatever associated, was also
incorporated. They were necessary for the protection of the humble
burgher and infant industry against an unruly aristocracy, as well as,
in some cases, for the transmission of knowledge and skill. Without
them the cities would never have performed their high service in the
promotion of civilization, and the acknowledgment of the burgher’s
rights. The various trades were separated by these guilds, but within
them the employer and the employed had a common interest. Their effect
was to strengthen the rights of their members and to raise the dignity
of their masters. Under the reign of Henry I., surnamed the Fowler,
when that awful catastrophe came over all the central part of Europe,
the irruption of the terrible and ferocious Magyars, who swarmed
westward from Hungary, spreading horror and desolation wherever they
went, and Helvetia, being exactly in their course and unfortified
against such an invasion, suffered fearfully, he compassionated its
helpless condition and took pains to fortify the cities and towns.
The peasantry, however, were so attached to their free mountain lives
that often, in spite of all danger, they could not be persuaded to
come into the towns. So, in order to induce them to do so, Henry
conferred very many privileges on the citizens of the towns, and in
this way laid the foundation of the guild and burgher class. All the
members of the guilds had to be burghers of the particular Commune.
The systematic education and gradual development of the artisan class,
their progress in technical skill and in wealth, their privilege of
carrying arms under the banner of their corporation or guild, their
permanent connection with the interests and prosperity of the town,
all tended to awaken in the artisans a sense of their importance.
As the administration of justice became general, government became
national, and skill and knowledge were so diffused that no special
protection, by way of monopolizing guilds, was any longer deemed
necessary. In order to check the tendency of members of poor Communes
to establish themselves in more prosperous ones, a practice prevalent
when the property was held in common by all the inhabitants, there
was a close corporation constituted, called the Burgher Commune, to
the members of which the communal property was limited; the remaining
inhabitants being excluded from participation in it, as well as in the
local administration. It soon came to pass, with increased facility of
communications, that in most Communes the majority of the inhabitants
were not burghers. It was necessary to raise taxes to meet the public
expenditure, and it was not admissible that the burghers alone should
administer the Commune to the exclusion of all others who dwelt within
its limits. Hence in many Cantons there came to be a double Commune;
that of the burghers who kept their property and only looked after the
interests of their own members, especially of those who were poor; then
there was that of the inhabitants forming a municipality, embracing
the whole of the population and providing for the public service. The
former is known as the _Commune des bourgeois_ or _Bürgergemeinde_;
the latter, _Commune des habitants_ or _Einwohnergemeinde_. This dual
communal organism has given rise to much political contention, the
Radicals desiring to abolish all Burgher Communes and to establish what
is termed a “unique” Commune of all the inhabitants; but to this the
Conservatives of all shades are strongly opposed.

There is no limit as to the area or population of the Commune. In
the Canton of Bern there are 509 Communes, the largest embracing a
population of 44,000, and the smallest 35; many have less than 200
inhabitants. Some are rich and extensive, others are poor and small.
Rules and regulations differ, but each Commune is free and independent
in itself, subject only to the supervision of the Canton.

Every Commune owns some land, some wood, and some water-right, in
common fee. These constitute the communal fund, in which each member
has an equal share. The allotment of land is so made that every one may
have a part in the different kinds, forest, pasture, and arable. Each
Commune manages its common property very much its own fashion, but from
the general similarity of their circumstances and conditions, certain
uniform methods pervade their management. It is with these general
features we will deal. All the Communes which have arable lands, allot
them among their members upon an equitable basis; consequently one will
see a large number of small squares of land growing different crops,
and resembling a checker-board; each one constitutes the share of a
member of the Commune; and one hundred and twenty-nine gleaners have
been counted in a field, thus subdivided, of less than six acres. A
large part of the land of each Commune is preserved as a common domain,
called _Allmend_, signifying the property of all. It means land which
is held and used, as the word itself indicates, in common; and by
common usage the name _Allmend_ is restricted in some Communes to that
portion of the undivided domain situated near the village, and which
is under cultivation. These common lands may be divided into three
general classes, forest, meadow, and cultivated land (_Wald_, _Weide_,
and _Feld_). Some Communes have in addition lands where rushes are
cut for litter (_Riethern_), and others where turf is cut for fuel
(_Torfplätze_). The economic corporation, which owns the _Allmends_,
is distinct from the political body which constitutes the Commune.
The right exercised by the Communes over their domain is not a right
of “collective ownership,” it is a right of “common ownership.” The
domain does not belong to a collection of individuals, it belongs to
a perpetual corporation. The individual has no share in the landed
property, but merely a right to a proportional part of the produce.
Then in some are the old burghers and the new burghers. The former
are the lineal descendants of those who were burghers for hundreds of
years, and they only own these lands in common; the latter are those,
or the descendants of those, who, having come in from other Cantons
or Communes, settled in the place, and have no rights of any kind in
the common land. The land may be common to all the old burghers of a
Commune equally; it is then said to belong to the Commune; or it may
belong to sections of the old burghers, as, for instance, to those who
reside in a particular class of families; and again these may hold it
either simply for their own use or for the promotion of some defined
object. The right of common, with rare exception, cannot be assigned,
transferred, or let, except to Communers; it is a right inherent in
the person. As a rule, the right belongs to every separate couple of
hereditary usufructuaries, who have had “fire and light” within the
Commune during the year or at some fixed date. The girls and young men
therefore very commonly keep their own little _ménage_, even though
they have to go to their daily work at other people’s houses; and if
they have remained the whole week away from their home, they come back
on Sunday evening to make “fire and light” in their habitations. A
young man when he marries can claim the right; this rule is extended
to a widow or orphans living together, and sometimes to every son who
attains the age of twenty-five, provided he lives in a separate house.
Natural children, whose parentage is known, may also claim their share.
To the communer, his native soil is a veritable _alma parens_, a good
foster-mother. He has a share in it by virtue of a personal inalienable
right, which no one can dispute, and which the lapse of centuries has
consecrated. It does not simply give its members abstract rights; it
procures them also in some measure the means of existence. It provides
a valuable resource for indigent families, and preserves them at least
from the last extremity of distress. It supplies the expenses of the
school, the church, the police, and the roads, besides securing to
its members the enjoyment of property. In a few Communes the wine and
bread, which is the fruit of their joint labor, forms the basis of an
annual banquet, at which all the members of the Commune take part, and
is known as the _Gemeinde-trinket_.

In 1799 the Swiss republic forbade all partition of communal land,
declaring, “these lands are the inheritance of your fathers, the fruit
of many years of toil and care, and belong not to you alone, but also
to your descendants.” There are, however, indications of a tendency
in Switzerland--which stands alone in the world as a land that has
maintained both the free political institutions and the communal system
of property, of the times before feudalism--towards a disintegration
of the _Allmend_. Thus, in the Canton of Glarus, the commonable Alps
are let by auction for a number of years, and, in complete opposition
to the ancient principles, strangers may obtain them. A project
was recently submitted to the Grand Council of Bern, to facilitate
the dissolution of the Communes, and to allow of the realization
of their property by the members. It received little support, but
was significant of the existence of a sentiment that may some day
become formidable and aggressive. Common property still plays a very
important part in the economic life of the Alpine Cantons, but private
property is spreading considerably. Facilities for transportation,
the substitution of machinery for manual labor, the accumulation of
capital, and all the marvellous revolution and progress of industrial
life, have brought about conditions which render the system of
commonable lands no longer the best. Families can be supported without
this common use, and, in most cases, better without it than with it.
It might be shown that, when capital exists in abundance, this common
use is a hinderance to the greatest possible production of food for
the people. No system that has been assailed by such conditions has
ever been able to maintain itself. It will be no defence of it, to say
that it has hitherto been a good and workable system, and that the
long ages of its existence have proved it to be so. This is what might
have been said, and doubtless was said with truth, but without effect,
of every system, not only of agronomy, but of everything else that
was ever established in the world. This is the logic of sentiment, of
habit, of custom, of tradition, and of those who think that they have
interests distinct from and superior to the interests of the rest of
the community, and of those who cannot understand what is understood
by the rest of the world. It is, however, no match for the logic of
facts, and of the general interest, the public good. That must ever be
the strongest logic, as well as the highest law. If, then, this common
use of land should be overturned by capital, notwithstanding its long
history and all that may be said on its behalf, we may infer that it
was the absence of capital which brought it into being and maintained
it. The abolition of common lands, or _Allmends_, the disappearance
of communal property into private ownership, would not involve the
existence of the Commune or impair the value of its most salient
features. The Commune forms a distinct part of the state organism, as
constituted by the cantonal power; it is a society of citizens for
the purpose of exercising the rights of election, legislation, and
administration; it has functions, as to certain affairs, in which it
is vested with a certain autonomy; its institutions, estates, and
donations, within the limits of the cantonal constitution, being under
its exclusive authority and direction. It is as administrative units,
presenting an orderly and systematic arrangement, giving the population
an opportunity to exercise an immediate influence on affairs, and
quickly awakening the public spirit, that the Communes possess their
most essential importance. The reason that the republican system is
so firmly established in Switzerland is, that it has its roots in
these minute districts forming the principal forces of political
and administrative life. Freedom is best served by breaking up
commonwealths into small self-governing communities. They decentralize
the government. A free state is free, not so much because its executive
or even because its legislature takes a certain shape, as because its
people are free to speak their minds and to act as they choose, within
the limits of the law, in all matters, public and private. That is the
best form of government that best secures these powers to its people.
In Switzerland national freedom has grown out of personal and local
freedom. The Confederation is a union of independent Cantons, the
Cantons a union of autonomous Communes. Political life is localized,
centripetal, intense, expressing itself in social and civic forms.
The parts come before the whole, the smaller units are not divisions
of the whole, but the whole is made up by the aggregation of the
smaller units. Each stage--Commune, Canton, Confederation--is alike
self-acting within its own range. Many of the Cantons changed from
oligarchies to democracies, many rose from the rank of subjects to
the rank of confederates; in all, their institutions rested on an
ancient and immemorial groundwork of Communes; and whatever is new
in them has grown naturally and consistently out of the old. During
the time when the greater Cantons were aristocratically governed,
some by a hereditary class of patricians, others by the exclusive
corporation of burghers, communal liberty was retained as the basis of
the cantonal organization, and through its influence, the republic,
the political ideal of the people, had its deep root in the popular
character and customs; therefore the transition from an aristocratic to
a representative republic was easy and natural, when, in harmony with
modern theories, civil liberties were extended to all classes.

Switzerland has 2706 Communes, divided as to nationality, 1352
German, 945 French, 291 Italian, and 118 in the Grisons, where the
Romansch language is used. These Communes as an area of general state
administration serve for electoral districts, and as voting districts
for the Referendum. Their powers are numerous. They provide for all the
public services within their limits, much after the manner of a Canton;
they possess a sort of local police, which keeps order day and night
in their territory, is present at fairs and markets, having an eye to
the public houses, and watches over rural property. Other communal
officials maintain the public buildings, roads, fountains, look after
the lighting, take measures against fires, superintend schools and
religious matters, and supply aid to the poor both in sickness and
health. In the small Communes there is only a municipal council,
composed of not less than four, elected directly by the members of the
Commune in a general assembly (_Gemeinde-Versammlung_), one of whom
is made presiding officer and called the _Syndic_ or _Maire_. In the
large Communes there are two councils, one legislative and the other
executive. A greater or less number of Communes in each Canton form
a district, presided over by a _Prefect_ (_Regierungsstatthalter_)
who represents the cantonal government. The functions of the communal
assemblies extend to: voting the budget, receipts and expenses; the
determination and apportionment of taxes; the choice of president
and functionaries of every kind, with the right of controlling and
dismissing them; administration of property belonging to the Commune;
acceptance or modification of all communal regulations; foundation
of churches, charitable institutions, hospitals, school-houses and
prisons. The assembly or legislative council elects the communal or
executive council, and the president of this body is the chief official
of the Commune. Every citizen is eligible to the communal council, who
is domiciled in the Commune, and a qualified voter in the communal
assembly. The qualifications which entitle every citizen in the Commune
to vote in the communal assembly require that he must have attained
his twentieth year, be _sui juris_, in full enjoyment of the general
civil and political rights of the citizen, and be under no temporary
civil or criminal disability. Paupers and those who have not paid
their taxes cannot vote; those, too, who from intemperate habits have
been prohibited from frequenting public houses are not allowed to vote
during that probationary period. The principal matters assigned to the
supervision of a communal council embrace: the local police, including
residents and establishments in the Commune; guardianship, embracing
orphans and those not capable of managing their own property (for any
improvident citizen may be made a ward, and the control of his property
taken away from him); the poor, relieving them as far as possible from
the communal funds, and when this is insufficient, to seek voluntary
contributions; public instruction, appointing the teachers in the
primary schools and paying their salaries; levying taxes upon the
landed property, capital and revenue, for the administration of the
Commune, when revenues of communal property are insufficient. The habit
of borrowing money on the security of communal credit has obtained but
little footing; far from being disposed to spare themselves by throwing
burdens on their successors, they rather think it necessary to get
together and keep together a capital which shall produce interest, a
school fund, a poor fund, so the weight of annual taxation for these
purposes may be lightened. In general, every citizen of a Commune
must serve his two years in any office to which he is elected, unless
excused, from the fact that he is already filling some public position,
or that he is sixty years old or in bad health; every one takes his
turn of office, as he takes, in earlier days, his spell of school, and
in his later days, his spell of camp. Non-members of the Commune, if
Swiss citizens, by virtue of a constitutional provision, have within it
equal rights, excepting in respect of the communal property; nor can
they be subjected to taxes or other contributions than those imposed
on their own citizens. Every inhabitant of a Commune must be inscribed
at the police office, and be prepared at all times to show that he is
really a member of the Commune; if he removes to another Canton he
must be fortified with this evidence of his communal citizenship, or
he will not be allowed to remain. This regulation is strictly enforced
in every case, specially where the party is in any danger of becoming
a public burden. Every Commune, under this strict police surveillance,
is absolutely protected against being compelled to support the vagrants
or beggars of other Communes. The idea that it is the duty of the
Commune to take care of its poor, the unfortunate, and incapable is
firmly planted in the mind and breast of every member. They will try to
prevent an hereditary or professional pauper from acquiring a domicile
in the Commune, and to return to their own Communes shiftless persons
that are apt to need aid, but are ready to relieve every case of
destitution which fairly belongs in the Commune.

The control of the Canton over the Communes in early times was only
nominal; it consisted in finding fault and proposing amendments that
were not adopted; any semblance of cantonal interference, in the way
of inspection and suggestions, being resented by the Communes. Of
later years there has been a gradual and systematic improvement in
the relation of the Canton and the Commune; and increased activity
of cantonal superintendence has effected a better management of the
Commune. The common funds as well as the common obligations have
been subjected to more efficient rules, without at all extinguishing
the principle of distinct communal management. Communal accounts are
referable to the Canton for investigation and correction. Where great
irregularities are discovered (which occurred once), the Canton has the
right to put a Commune under guardianship; a Commune might, indeed,
under certain circumstances be forced into bankruptcy. The Constitution
of 1874 largely extended this cantonal supervision over the Commune,
and modified many extraordinary powers hitherto exercised by it. Some
writers look upon the Commune as representing an “antiquated form of
corporation,” to which the modern era is opposed; a sort of mediæval
fraternity for the existence of which no plausible ground can be
found. Others still contend that the Communes form the true unities,
through which, by equilibration of the interests of each, the wants
of the whole are more wisely and effectively served. The republic of
Switzerland can largely trace its foundation, historically, to a free
communal constitution. It forms the solid foundation of the whole
organization. In the Commune, the citizen himself feels that he is
connected with his fellow-members by the bonds of a common ownership;
and with his fellow-citizens, by the common exercise of the same
right. With him the fair motto of the French, “Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity,” is no empty formula inscribed on the tablets of public
documents. His liberty is complete, and has been handed down from
remote antiquity; equality is a fact sanctioned by all his laws;
fraternity is not mere sentiment, it is embodied in institutions which
make the members of the same Commune members of one family, partaking,
by equal right, in the hereditary patrimony. It would be unnatural
if he was not deeply attached to an administration in which he takes
so constant and essential a part. It is to him, also, the nursery
of independence, and the training-school for higher politics; not
controversial, office-seeking, electioneering politics, but politics
as including in one and the same comprehensive signification, as in
the vocabulary of a free country it should be, all the relations and
obligations of the citizen to the state. The rights and duties of a
citizen are themes of daily interest and discussion in the Commune,
and are taught in all its secondary and superior schools; every one is
instructed and encouraged to take a personal and intelligent interest
in what concerns the public weal, to be familiar with the public
business, to the interchange of ideas, and to the give-and-take of
civic life generally. He is taught that no man liveth to himself in a
republic, but every man has public duties, every man is a public man,
every man holds one high, sacred, all-embracing office, the office of a
free citizen.

Switzerland, with its Communes, fully answers Aristotle’s definition
of a state, as “the association of clans and village communities in a
complete and self-sufficing life.” Small bodies are more closely united
and more vigorous in the pursuit of their end than large communities;
this results from their leading more easily to personal friendships,
and from the circumstance that, in a limited circle, men are brought
more frequently and immediately into contact with one another. By this
means their sympathetic feelings become more deeply interested in the
common welfare; they see more clearly that they are pursuing a common
object, and perceive the importance of vigorous co-operation on the
part of each member of the association. Amid so small a number, each
person feels that his single vote and exertions are of consequence,
and the thought of this excites in him a sense of responsibility, and
inspires him with a more lively interest in that government of which
he himself is an efficient member. Every man who fills a communal
station, however humble, is conscious that he is playing his part in
the presence of the whole miniature republic, and that his conduct is
every moment exposed to a minute and jealous scrutiny. By all these
circumstances public virtue is stimulated, corruption checked, mutual
sympathy heightened, patriotic zeal inflamed, and the union of public
with private interests clearly and substantially demonstrated. “It
is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their
distribution, that good government is effected. Were not this great
country already divided into States, that division must be made,
that each might do for itself what concerns itself directly, and what
it can so much better do than a distant authority. Every State again
is divided into counties, each to take care of what lies within its
local bounds; each county again into townships or wards, to manage
minuter details; and every ward into farms, to be governed each by
its individual owner. It is by this partition of cares, descending in
gradation from general to particular, that the mass of human affairs
may be best managed for the good and prosperity of all.”[56]




CHAPTER X.

CITIZENSHIP.


In the old days of the Swiss Confederation, the days of the
_Staatenbund_, when no part of the internal sovereignty had been given
over to any central power, the citizen of any Canton was regarded
and treated as a foreigner in any other Canton; he was as strictly
a _metoikos_ as a Corinthian who had settled at Athens, having no
voice in the government either of the Canton or Commune into which he
removed. All Swiss citizens who settled in _Gemeinden_, or Communes,
of which they had not the hereditary burghership, answered exactly
to the Greek _metoikos_; being in every important respect strangers
in the places where they themselves dwelt, and where, perhaps, their
forefathers had dwelt for generations. Down to 1815, it was left to
each Canton to determine for itself the conditions under which persons
from without could settle and gain citizenship; and for the first
time, under the Constitution of 1848, a general law governing this
matter was adopted; and it was still further extended and elaborated
by that of 1874.[57] The good example of the United States, where it
had already been constitutionally provided that “the citizens of each
State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in
the several States,” was followed in the present Swiss constitution;
giving every Swiss citizen equal federal and cantonal rights, in
whatever part of the Confederation he may settle. The two higher
franchises, those of the Confederation and the Canton, are assured to
him at his place of domicile as fully as to a native thereof; but to
the lower franchise of the Commune he can be admitted only by a special
grant, or by the effect of some special cantonal enactment. Communal
questions, even including citizenship, are left to the legislation of
the Canton and of the Commune itself, the federal constitution only
providing that one domiciled in the Commune shall not be discriminated
against as to taxation. The mere fact of indefinite residence and
contribution to the local taxes no more gives one a right to communal
than it would to American citizenship. Membership in the Commune is
the determining factor of Swiss citizenship. Modern states generally
recognize nationality as a personal relation not mainly dependent
on place of birth or domicile, but on descent from members of the
nation and personal reception into its membership, place of birth and
domicile coming in to complete the notion. Midway between these comes
the Swiss principle of membership in the Communes, which forms the
basis of membership of the Canton (_Cantonsbürgerrecht_), and that, in
turn, of the Swiss Confederation (_Schweizerbürgerrecht_). Citizenship
in Switzerland is primarily an affair of the Commune, from which the
broader conception of citizenship in the Canton and the Confederation
must be reached. The “right of origin” is the great imprescriptible
right and muniment of Swiss citizenship, and the production of a
certificate of _Commune d’Origine_ secures the constitutional right
“to establish residence at any point in Swiss territory.” The lines
of distinction between these several conceptions are not clearly
presented, even to the minds of the Swiss themselves.

Under Article XIV., amendment of the Constitution of the United States,
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of
the State wherein they reside.” The two methods indicated in which
one may become a citizen of the United States are very simple and
intelligible; first, by birth in the United States;[58] and, second,
by naturalization therein. The only qualification as to either method,
applies to the first, requiring that a citizen by birth must not only
be born within the United States, but he must also be “subject to the
jurisdiction thereof,”--meaning that whole and complete jurisdiction
to which citizens generally are subject, and not any qualified and
partial jurisdiction, such as may consist with allegiance to some
other government. The process of naturalization, whereby one renounces
any foreign allegiance and takes upon himself the obligations of
citizenship, is equally simple, being effected by proceedings
under general laws prescribed by Congress; which is empowered by
the constitution “to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.”
The Fourteenth Amendment, in the clause above quoted, certainly
recognizes that there is a citizenship of the United States, and also
a citizenship of the several States; and that the two coexist in the
same persons. It is no longer possible to conceive of such a status
as citizenship of a State unconnected with citizenship of the United
States, or of citizenship of the United States, with a residence in a
State, unconnected with citizenship of the State. The States cannot
naturalize; the act of naturalization by the United States is the grant
of citizenship within the State where the naturalized person resides.
It is only in the Territories and other places over which the State has
ceded exclusive jurisdiction to the United States that there can be
a citizenship of the United States unconnected with citizenship of a
State. There are in the United States system:

1. The several bodies of electors which compose the several States, in
their character of sovereign and independent political communities,
united as such by the constitution, and which are alone invested with
political rights and charged with political duties.

2. The several bodies of citizens, which compose the several States in
their character of separate civil societies, each of which bodies is
immediately subject to the government and entitled to the protection of
the particular State to which it belongs, but does not necessarily have
a voice or share in the government, state or federal.

3. The common body of citizens of the United States, that is to
say, the citizens of each State and Territory, as “entitled to all
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.”

These privileges and immunities have always been construed to mean
such rights and privileges as are in their nature fundamental, such
as belong of right to the citizens of all free governments, such as
at all times have been enjoyed by the citizens of the several States
from the time of their becoming free, sovereign, and independent.
Recognizing the distinction between the inhabitants of a State and
its citizens, Mr. Caleb Cushing defines the latter as the “sovereign,
constituent ingredients of the government.” To the same effect speaks
Mr. Chief-Justice Waite in the United States vs. Cruikshank: “Citizens
are members of the political community to which they belong. They are
the people who compose the community, and who in their associated
capacity have established or submitted themselves to the dominion
of a government for the promotion of their general welfare, and the
protection of their individual as well as their collective rights.”

The political community in a State differs from the civil community; it
is less numerically, but it comprehends special privileges. Membership
therein implies the possession, not only of the civil rights, but of
the privilege of participating in the sovereignty. Whereas membership
in the civil community alone implies merely the possession of the civil
rights,--_i.e._, the rights of personal security, of personal liberty,
and of private property.[59] Under the Articles of Confederation,
the States constituting only a league, citizenship of the so-united
States was a thing inconceivable; accordingly the only citizenship
then possible, as a legal fact, was citizenship of the State. National
citizenship was introduced for the first time by the Constitution of
1787. Still that constitution contained no definition of citizenship
of the United States. Under the provision that “the citizens of each
State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States,” a person going from one commonwealth
into another, acquired no other status than that held by the race or
class to which he belonged in the commonwealth into which he went.
The only sense in which a citizenship of the United States existed
was in the provisions where it appears as a qualification for office.
The phrase “citizen of the United States” is employed three times, as
to eligibility for the several positions of President, Senator, and
Representative in Congress. From the adoption of the constitution to
the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment thereto, the
existence of such a thing as citizenship of the United States, in the
sense of a citizenship independent of the citizenship of the several
States, was hardly admitted. Then citizenship of the United States was
not primary and paramount, but secondary and subordinate; it was only
an incident of State citizenship. Story wrote in his Commentaries: “It
has always been well understood among jurists in this country that the
citizens of each State in the Union are _ipso facto_ citizens of the
United States.” Said Mr. Calhoun, in his speech on the “Force Bill,”
delivered in 1833, “A citizen at large, one whose citizenship extends
to the entire geographical limits of the country without having a local
citizenship in some State or Territory, a sort of citizen of the world,
such a citizen would be a perfect nondescript; not a single individual
of this description can be found in the entire mass of our population.”
Mr. Justice Curtis, in his dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott case,
took the position that citizenship of the United States was dependent
entirely upon citizenship of some one of the several States as such.
Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Curtis agreed that the power of Congress, under the
constitution, “to establish an uniform rule of naturalization,” was
simply the power “to remove the disabilities of foreign birth.” On the
other hand, Mr. Justice Marshall, in 1832, held, in the case of Gassies
vs. Ballon, that a naturalized citizen of the United States, residing
in any State of the Union, was a citizen of that State. Marshall and
Curtis, in their respective views, represented the difference which
obtained between the advocates of State rights and their opponents,
on the question of citizenship of the United States. By the adoption
of the Fourteenth Amendment this was all changed, and is now placed
beyond controversy. The principle is inverted.[60] Citizenship of the
United States now depends in no way upon citizenship in any State or
Territory, but merely upon birth in the United States, coupled with
subjection to the jurisdiction thereof, or upon naturalization. The
term “subject to jurisdiction,” must be construed in the sense in which
the term is used in international law, as accepted in the United States
as well as in Europe; and by this law the children born abroad of
American citizens are regarded as citizens of the United States, with
the right, on reaching full age, to elect one allegiance and repudiate
the other, such election to be final. If the Fourteenth Amendment
furnished an exhaustive and comprehensive definition of citizenship,
such children would not be citizens. That it does not furnish such
definition is intimated by Mr. Justice Miller in the Slaughter-House
cases, and by Mr. Justice Field in his dissenting opinion. In the same
cases it was decided that the privileges and immunities appurtenant
to citizenship of the United States were different and distinct from
those appurtenant to State citizenship; being merely those special and
limited privileges and immunities arising from the special and limited
scope under the constitution of the federal or United States authority.
The theory laid down in the Slaughter-House cases suggests a query as
to the converse. Cannot a person in a substantial sense be a citizen
of a State and at the same time not be a citizen of the United States,
the Fourteenth Amendment to the contrary notwithstanding? Is it not
within the power of a State to grant to an alien, residing within its
limits, all the rights and privileges enjoyed by its native-born or
naturalized citizens, so far as such rights and privileges are under
control of the State?--that is, to naturalize an alien to the extent
of its own exclusive jurisdiction, even to the extent of voting for
United States officials, thus practically making him a member of the
political community in the United States. Said the Supreme Court,
through Chief-Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case: “We must not
confound the rights of citizenship which a State may confer within its
own limits and the rights of citizenship as a member of the Union;” and
Mr. Pomeroy, in his “Constitutional Law,” writes: “While it is settled
that the Congress of the United States has exclusive authority to make
rules for naturalization, it must not be understood that the States
are deprived of all jurisdiction to legislate respecting the rights
and duties of aliens. They may permit or forbid persons of alien birth
to hold, acquire, or transmit property; to vote at State or national
elections, etc. These capacities do not belong to the United States
citizenship as such.” It is true that the constitution of the United
States makes no one a member of the _political_ body, a capacity which
comes only with citizenship of the State; and therefore it confers
the right to vote upon no one. That right comes even to the “citizens
of the United States,” when they possess it at all, under State laws,
and as a grant of State sovereignty. The amendment, Article XV.,
confers upon citizens of the United States a new exemption; namely,
an exemption from discrimination in elections on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude; and to the extent that,
should it be needful to protect this exemption, Congress may provide by
appropriate legislation. The Fifteenth Amendment endows the individual
with the potentiality of enfranchisement, not its actuality, and did
not absolutely make him an elector. It did not deprive the people of
the States of the discretion, in their primary capacity, to decide who
of their number should enjoy the political franchise. It simply forbade
them to adopt a particular rule of discrimination.

The Swiss constitution goes far beyond that of the United States in
dealing with citizenship, and the rights, civil and political, thereto
commonly appertaining. It practically reverses the system as it exists
in the United States. There are no citizens of Switzerland and _ipso
facto_ citizens of the Canton “wherein they reside.” To the contrary,
“every citizen of a Canton,” the constitution declares, “is a Swiss
citizen.” In the words of an eminent Swiss writer, “The national
citizenship proceeds from below.” As to the electoral body, while in
the United States it is determined by the State, within the limitations
of the Fifteenth Amendment, in Switzerland, with the exceptions as to
communal corporate matters, it is fixed by the Confederation in its
organic law, with provisions clear and full. Swiss political active
citizenship is derived from above, proceeding from the Confederation,
and from this source descending to the Canton and the Commune. The
individual once admitted to cantonal citizenship, the Confederation
steps forward and invests him with its nationality, and asserts its
exclusive dominion over him as an elector, declaring he may take part,
in any place where he has acquired residence, in all federal elections
and votes. Coming from any part of the Confederation and taking up his
residence in a Canton, he may, after a residence of three months there,
enjoy in his place of settlement all the rights of a citizen of the
Canton; and with these, also, the rights of a citizen of a Commune,
except as to the common property and corporation. The Confederation,
under the constitution, is charged with fixing, by law, “the limits
within which a Swiss citizen may be deprived of his political rights.”
Swiss citizenship, as defined in the constitution,--“Every citizen of
a Canton is also a Swiss citizen,”--is far from being so accessible
as the simple terms of its definition might imply. It is a difficult,
tedious, and expensive process. As the cantonal citizenship precedes
the federal, so the communal citizenship precedes the cantonal. Every
Swiss citizen must belong to some Commune. He must possess a Commune
of origin, which in French is called “_Bourgeoisie_,” and in German
“_Bürgergemeinde_.” If not obtained by inheritance, then he must
purchase it at what the Commune sees proper to charge; only a few
poorer Communes having free admission, or at least with trifling fees.

The foreigner, seeking Swiss citizenship, must first show that he has
resided in Switzerland during the two years preceding his application,
and that there is nothing in his relations to his native country
that will involve prejudice to the Confederation by his admission to
Swiss citizenship. These conditions being satisfactorily complied
with, he is granted by the Federal Council authority to be received
as a citizen of a Canton and of a Commune; and for which permit he
pays the Confederation thirty-five francs. The Federal Council, with
considerate regard for the serious undertaking of the applicant,
allows two years within which the permit may be used, and if, at
the expiration of that period, it be desired, will renew it upon
the payment of a small additional tax. On receiving the permit the
holder sets out to find communal citizenship, as the first essential
step. This, as described, is practically a matter of purchase. With
this acquired, he must supplement it with cantonal citizenship, and
of that Canton in which the Commune is located, otherwise it is of
no avail. The agreement for communal membership is always predicated
upon the favorable action of a Canton, and the consideration is not
paid until its action is had. The cantonal citizenship is the _pons
asinorum_,--it is the cap-stone, and the most difficult to secure.
The permit from the Federal Council is freely given; the communal
admission a question largely of francs, with some slight inquiry as to
character and condition; but the Canton considers the petition from
a different and higher stand-point. The Canton is not particularly
concerned about the applicant being able-bodied and possessed of those
qualities and conditions which insure contribution from him rather
than distribution to him from the common property of the Commune. The
Canton has regard to whether the applicant will be a desirable citizen,
and not to the material aspects which are paramount with the Commune.
It occurs, not infrequently, that a successful purchaser of communal
membership fails as a petitioner to pass the cantonal ordeal.[61] The
granting of a cantonal or communal naturalization without the previous
approval of the Federal Council is void; and the federal authority to
acquire citizenship is equally futile, until followed up by cantonal
and communal naturalization according to the laws of the Canton. This
involved process that hedges Swiss citizenship, and the cost of its
selection in a desirable Commune, have deterred many foreigners who
have taken up their permanent residence in Switzerland, from making
any attempt for its acquisition. The number of this class at present
is estimated to be nearly ten per cent. of the whole population; and
the Federal Council is considering the policy of amending the law, so
that naturalization may be more easily effected, in order to convert
a great portion of these strangers into Swiss citizens. When Swiss
citizenship is once obtained, by birth or naturalization, it is not
easily lost or set aside. In this the federal constitution determines
the conduct of the Canton, and does not permit it “to banish one
of its citizens from its territory, or deprive him of the right of
citizenship.” The “right of township or origin,” the highest and
firmest right of citizenship, is a sacred and imprescriptible right,
which the constitution places above any power to take away or impair.
By virtue of the constitutional authority of the Confederation, “to
fix the conditions upon which foreigners may be naturalized, as well
as those upon which a Swiss may give up his citizenship in order
to obtain naturalization in a foreign country,” a federal law was
enacted in 1876. It provides that “a Swiss citizen may renounce his
citizenship if he has no domicile in Switzerland, and if he is enjoying
fully all civil rights according to the laws of the country where
he resides, and that he has already acquired citizenship in another
country, or the assurance of its being granted for himself, his wife,
and minor children. The declaration of renunciation is to be submitted
in writing, accompanied by the required statement, to the cantonal
government, which will notify the respective communal authorities,
in order to inform such parties as are interested, and a term of
four weeks is fixed for presenting objections.” The Federal Tribunal
decides in such cases, where objection is made to the renunciation;
and in event of no objection being made, or if made and judicially
overruled, then the discharge from cantonal and communal citizenship
is pronounced and entered on record. This discharge includes Swiss
citizenship or denationalization, and dates from its issue and delivery
to the applicant; it also extends to the wife and minor children, when
they are domiciled or living together, and if no special exceptions
be made in regard to them. The widow or the divorced wife of a Swiss
citizen, who has renounced his nationality, and such children of a
former Swiss citizen, as were minors at the time of such renunciation,
may request of the Federal Council to be readmitted as citizens.
This privilege will not be granted to the widow or divorced wife,
unless the application be made within ten years after the dissolution
of the marriage; nor to the children, unless made within ten years
after attaining their majority. After the expiration of these
periods, the parties in either case must acquire citizenship in the
manner prescribed for aliens. The substance, indeed, the identical
phraseology, of this law was anticipated by the Federal Council in
its answer, made in 1868, to an appeal from the British government,
relating to expatriation and naturalization. The Council closed its
answer in these words: “The right of Swiss citizenship ceases only
with the death or by the voluntary renunciation, by the person who
possesses it, of his cantonal and communal right of citizenship, and by
the release which a competent authority, cantonal and communal, gives
him. But this emancipation from the ties which bind him to the state
is not granted until the proof exists, in due form, of the acquisition
of citizenship in a foreign country.” It is manifest that the entrance
to and exit from Swiss citizenship is by no means through a broad and
open door. The firm tie which binds him with “hoops of steel” to his
country is not loosed by the mere acquisition of citizenship in another
country; but proof must be submitted that he was under no disability
at the time of doing so, and that he is in the full enjoyment of all
the civil rights of his adopted country. In the event of a member of a
Commune moving to another Canton, who does not thereby divest himself
of his original communal citizenship, and fails to secure membership in
the Commune where he settles (for one may become a member of several
Communes), he assumes a citizenship of a twofold nature, and therefore,
as explained in the chapter on “Communes,” there exist in many Communes
two governments,--a citizens’ government and a political government,
distinguished as the community of citizens and the community of
inhabitants or settlers. This principle also results in a dual national
citizenship, and consequently conflicting claims of correlative rights
and duties. To provide against embarrassing contingencies that might
arise from this situation on the part of Swiss who have acquired
citizenship in a foreign state,--without the required formal and
expressed voluntary declaration of renunciation, with its equally
formal and expressed acceptance to render it valid,--the federal law of
1846 declares that “persons who, in addition to Swiss citizenship, are
citizens of a foreign country, are not entitled to the privileges and
the protection accorded to Swiss citizens, during their residence in
such a foreign state.”

It is this imprescriptible feature of Swiss communal citizenship, so
deeply embedded in the public sentiment of the country and engrafted in
the organic law, that has stubbornly blocked the way to all efforts,
on the part of the United States, to negotiate with that country a
naturalization treaty. Such treaties of reciprocal naturalization
exist between the United States and all the European nations, except
the two absolute monarchies of Russia and Turkey, whereby it is
stipulated that domicile of certain duration and naturalization shall
be recognized by both parties as terminating the previous relation. To
repeated invitations from the United States to Switzerland looking to
the conclusion of a similar treaty, the same answer always came from
the Federal Council,--“The conception of the imprescriptibility of the
Swiss citizenship, closely interwoven as it is with the views of the
Swiss people, and recognized by various cantonal constitutions as a
fundamental right, would make it impossible for Switzerland to conclude
a treaty, whereby a citizen, after a longer or shorter absence, would
lose his Swiss nationality.” In fact, to accede to this request, it
would be necessary to obtain an amendment to the Swiss constitution,
asserting federal control over the question. At present there is no
Swiss citizenship except as it is derived from the Canton and Commune;
and the Confederation is powerless to deal internationally with it.
The Swiss contention that a Swiss who becomes a citizen of any other
country, without specific exemption under the law, is held to the
obligations of Swiss citizenship, does not distinctly embrace the
doctrine of return and domicile _animo manendi_ in Switzerland. The
Swiss Federal Tribunal has even asserted jurisdictional powers with
respect to Swiss naturalized and resident in a foreign country.

The latitude given cantonal and communal officials in the construction
of the federal law of 1876, and the survival of a great body of
antiquated cantonal enactments and communal ordinances, which slowly
and reluctantly yield to federal legislation, complicate and render
almost impossible a compliance with its provisions. It has been held
that a renunciation, though presented in proper form, could not
be entertained, because the party was under “guardianship.” Not a
guardianship under which the law places a minor, but a guardianship
authorized by cantonal and communal laws; under which any improvident
adult citizen may be placed,--and these local officials are disposed to
classify under this head those who emigrate, and propose subsequently
to make a renunciation of Swiss citizenship, specially should any
inheritance fall to them in the Cantons or Communes. These persons are
coerced to return to Switzerland to obtain the possession and enjoyment
of such property; or by prolonged absence permit it to escheat, and
swell the common fund. Again, a very common ground of objection to
renunciation is the alleged fear that the party may at some time, in
the future, return to his native country and become a public charge;
and this is persisted on in spite of the assurance that he has become
a citizen, say, of the United States, a _bona fide_ resident therein,
invested with all the privileges and subject to all the obligations
pertaining thereto, and if from indigence, sickness, or other cause
he should become unable to maintain himself, he has a claim in common
with and to the same extent as other citizens of the United States in
the provisions made by law for persons reduced to that unfortunate
condition, in the State in which he might happen to reside at the time
of such contingency. In a recent case (1889), that of “Carl Heinrich
Webber (of Philadelphia) vs. The City Council of Zurich,” the plaintiff
had left Switzerland during his minority, and in due course of time
was naturalized in pursuance of the statute, and desired to secure
possession of his property in Zurich for purpose of transfer to the
United States. This was resisted by his guardian, on the ground that
while his renunciation in its preparation and presentation met the
requirements of the law, still he had left Switzerland without the
consent of his guardian, and therefore could not legally acquire the
domicile in the United States necessary for naturalization there.
This plea of the guardian was sustained by the Council of Zurich, and
Webber denied his property. On an appeal to the Federal Tribunal, this
decision was overruled, only on the ground that the guardian had given
an implied assent to the young man’s change of domicile; the court
adding that otherwise the plea, as made and sustained by the lower
court, would have been affirmed.[62] The judicial doctrine, which so
long obtained, that no one could expatriate himself without express
authority of law, has given way, in principle and practice, to the
natural and fundamental right to transfer allegiance, and that every
man should be allowed to exercise it with no other limitation than the
public safety or interest requires. The sound and prevalent doctrine
now is that a citizen or subject, having faithfully performed the past
and present duties resulting from his relation to the sovereign power,
may at any time release himself from the obligation of allegiance,
freely quit the land of his birth or adoption, search through all
the countries a home, and select anywhere that which offers him the
finest prospect of happiness for himself and posterity. This right
rests on as firm a basis and is similar in principle to the right
which legitimates resistance to tyranny. Two elements, each equally
important, enter into expatriation,--the one is emigration out of
one’s native country, and the other is naturalization in the country
adopted. All lexicographers and all jurists define naturalization in
one way. In its popular etymological and legal sense, it signifies the
act of adopting a foreigner and clothing him with all the privileges of
a native citizen or subject. This naturalization cannot do under the
Swiss contention; for the national allegiance of the Swiss cannot be
thrown off and another substituted in its place without the assent of
the sovereign holding the former. Naturalization in a foreign country
should operate, from the time of its completion, as an extinguishment
of the original citizenship; it should work absolute expatriation in
law as it does in fact. A citizen who has in good faith abjured his
country and become a subject of a foreign nation should to his native
government be considered as denationalized; leaving it to the law of
the land of his birth, whether or how he shall become repatriated. As
forcibly expressed by a former Secretary of State at Washington: “The
moment a foreigner becomes naturalized, his allegiance to his native
country is severed forever. He experiences a new political birth,--a
broad and impassable line separates him from his native country.”

The right of expatriation is fully and positively established in the
United States, by an act of Congress, in these words: “Whereas, the
right of expatriation is a natural and inherent right of the people,
indispensable to the enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness; and, whereas, in the recognition of this
principle, this government has frequently received emigrants from all
nations, and invested them with the right of citizenship; and, whereas,
it is claimed that such American citizens, with their descendants,
are subjects of foreign states, owing allegiance to the governments
thereof; and, whereas, it is necessary to the maintenance of public
peace that this claim of foreign allegiance should be promptly and
finally disavowed; therefore any declaration, instruction, opinion,
order, or decision of any officer of the United States, which denies,
restricts, impairs, or questions the right of expatriation is declared
inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the republic.”

Naturalization in the United States is a valuable privilege, which
is considerately granted to those who desire its advantages and are
willing to undertake its duties. The process is a decree of a court of
record, upon the satisfactory establishment by the applicant of his
lawful eligibility to the privilege of their nationality. The United
States cannot admit of qualified naturalization, subject to the consent
of the country of origin; nor can the United States Courts, in which
the judicial power of naturalization is vested, take cognizance of the
consent of a foreign state as a precedent condition to naturalization.
The admissibility of a change of allegiance in the United States,
without any co-operation or consent of the country of origin, is
plainly implied from the very statute itself; which requires conditions
of residence, of personal character, of publicity, and of abjuration
under oath of allegiance to every other government, and especially
to that of the country of birth, with sworn allegiance to the United
States. These are all indispensable for the completion of an act of
expatriation, and no more; and he who is in this manner endowed with
the nationality of the United States, thereby dissolves all ties of
native allegiance, and is clothed with all the rights and privileges
that pertain to a native citizen, and entitled to the same degree of
protection whether at home or abroad.

Citizenship is an attribute of national sovereignty, and not merely
of individual or local bearing. It is a sacred right, full of grave
consequences, granted with solemn formalities, and its existence should
always be well defined and indisputable. Between friendly States,
naturalization and expatriation should be reciprocal; and with an equal
measure of obligation. Conventional adjustment is alone adequate to the
removal of the most prolific source of constantly-recurring friction
and tension, inevitable, in the absence of treaty stipulation.

The persistency of Switzerland upon this question in a policy so much
at variance with all the liberal views of civilized nations, exhibiting
a stubborn conservatism and irrational disinclination to change her
laws to meet generally accepted principles and the requirements
of her external relations, might well subject the Swiss to the
characterization, applied at one time by Cobden to the English people,
as “the Chinese of Europe.”

All laws controlling States in their relations with one another are the
slow result of growth, coming from an ever-increasing and ever-varying
necessity; rendering any assumption of logical consistency not only
impossible, but in many instances wrong, if not dangerous, to the
inevitable concurrence of doctrines demanded by general usage and
international amity.




CHAPTER XI.

LAND LAW AND TESTAMENTARY POWER.


There can be no better security for the stability of the institutions
of a country than by enlisting a large number of the people in their
support, by giving them a stake in the prosperity of the soil. It is
the highest public interest that landed property should easily get
into those hands by which it can be turned to the best account; that
the title to property in land should be sure and incontestable; and
that there should be no legal obstacle to the subdivision of land,
when the natural economy tends to it, so that the number of small
land-owners shall not be artificially reduced by imperfection in the
law. The larger the number of land-owners in a country, the more who
have an interest in the soil they till, the more free and independent
citizens there are interested in maintenance of public order. There
is no ballast for a man like that of having a little earth, his own,
about his feet. Cultivating his own field, growing a part of his
food-supply, lodged under his own roof,--these make life pleasanter
and labor lighter. The thoughts, feelings, lives of those who live
under these conditions are of a higher order than the thoughts, the
feelings, the lives of those who do not. Property is the essential
complement of liberty. Without property man is not truly free. Whatever
rights the political constitution may confer upon him, so long as he
is a mere tenant he remains a dependent being; a free man politically,
he is socially but a bondsman. There is no country in Europe where
land possesses the great independence, and where there is so wide a
distribution of land-ownership, as in Switzerland. The 5,378,122 acres
devoted to agriculture are divided among 258,639 proprietors, the
average size of the farms throughout the whole country being not more
than twenty-one acres.[63] The facilities for the acquisition of land
have produced small holders, with security of tenure, representing
two-thirds of the entire population. There are no primogeniture,
copyhold, customary tenures, and manorial rights, or other artificial
obstacles to discourage land transfer and dispersion. No entails
aggregating lands and tying them up, so that no living person shall
be full owner, but a mere tenant for some unborn child. No family
settlements with “tenants in common in tail,” with “cross-remainders in
tail,” till some tenant-in-tail reaches the age of twenty-one years,
when he may be able with the consent of his father, who is tenant for
life, to bar the entail with all the remainders. There is no belief,
in Switzerland, that land was made to minister to the perpetual
elevation of a privileged class; but a wide-spread and positive
sentiment, as Turgot puts it, that “the earth belongs to the living,
not to the dead;” nor, it may be added, to the unborn. The natural
forces of accumulation and dispersion are not hampered by ninety-nine
years building leases, perpetual and irredeemable rent, or heavy
expense of conveyance; but are in every way encouraged, simplified, and
facilitated by the laws federal and cantonal. The wars of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries exercised, indirectly, considerable influence
on Swiss land tenure, by breaking up the large properties--monastic,
conventual, and private--which had for some time been steadily
augmented; and produced a reaction in favor of gradual redistribution.
This wider dissemination of land among the people was carried on
without rudely shocking or violating proprietary rights, as far as the
few recalcitrant owners permitted it to be done; certainly with not a
tithe of the legislative injustice or coercion, with which a greater
part of these accumulations had been made. It is from this period that
the existing system of land tenure in Switzerland may be said really
to date. The feudal rights asserted by certain Cantons over others,
which took the form of landed charges, were all swept away at the
time of the setting up of the Helvetian Republic, in 1798. Since the
commencement of this century, and especially since the constitutions
of 1830 were framed, the land throughout the whole of Switzerland has
been completely emancipated,--the system of peasant proprietorship
working side by side with that of small tenant farmers. The survival
of the Commune, intact with its various property rights in fee-simple
and usufruct, does not conflict with or impede the general tendency to
discourage the centralization of landed property in the hands of the
few. For it has come to be axiomatic with the Swiss that the effort to
acquire land is the mainspring of the life of the peasant, the root
of his industry, of his painstaking, frugal, and saving life. The
solid, sterling elements of the Swiss peasant’s character are traced
by all the native writers to their source in the educative power of
property,--property in land.

There exists no federal land code in Switzerland. Contracts relating
to the sale and purchase of lands, easements, and mortgages are
governed by the law of each Canton. In general, all questions as to the
devolution of property, by will or upon intestacy, are regulated by the
Cantons, and not within the competence of the Confederation. There is
an official survey containing a plan of each Commune, with the parcels
of land, their areas, annual values, and peculiarities indicated, of
which any one may have a copy under a fixed schedule of charges. The
federal code of obligations, adopted in 1861, contains twenty-five
articles relating to leases of land. It was claimed at the time of the
passage of this law, by some of the ablest lawyers, to be an assumption
by the government of a very doubtful power, an interference with the
ownership of the soil, and the infringement of an exclusive right
guaranteed to the Cantons. The friends of the measure contended that
its provisions did not involve the title or ownership of realty, but
only had to do with the rights of persons, which clearly fell within
the competency of the Federal Assembly. This view obtained. While
it is difficult to examine this elaborate act and its far-reaching
provisions, without a conviction that it bears a very close and strong
relation to the ownership of soil, in the popular apprehension of that
term, still its satisfactory operation has silenced all opposition,
and it is now believed to be accomplishing desirable ends that could
not otherwise be so efficiently done. It may be of interest to note
some of the leading provisions of this law. All contracts for leases
are required to be written. If the farm be delivered to the tenant
in a condition unsuitable for the purpose for which it was rented,
the tenant may renounce the lease. If deteriorations or restrictions
not mentioned in the covenant take place, without the tenant’s fault,
he may demand proportionate reduction of rent or renounce the lease,
if proper restitution is not made within a reasonable time. Urgent
repairs of any kind, required during the lease, are to be made by the
tenant. The lessor has the right to retain all the movables belonging
to the farm, as security for the payment of his rent, for the past
current year. This, however, does not include effects, which, under
the laws relating to debt and bankruptcy, are exempt from execution.
The lessor has the right to appeal to the authorities to compel a
tenant, who threatens to abandon the farm before paying the rent, to
leave property behind him on the place in value sufficient to cover the
amount due. A tenant cannot be relieved from rent when, through his own
fault or even from any accident in which he was directly concerned,
he is unable to enjoy the use or benefit of the lease. If implements,
stock, etc., are included in the lease, each party must furnish the
other with a specific inventory duly subscribed, with an estimate of
their value. The lessor must bear the expense of any repairs, on a
large scale, which may become necessary during the lease, as soon as
he receives notice of such from the tenant. The tenant must make a
conscientious use of the land, according to the stipulations of the
lease, and especially to keep it in a good state of cultivation. The
tenant cannot alter the existing mode of cultivation or cropping to
the damage of the land or the prejudice of a subsequent lease. He must
conform with all local laws and customs as to paths, foot-bridges,
ditches, dikes, hedges, roofs, aqueducts, etc., and must replace all
implements and tools of small value which may have become worn out.
The tenant cannot underlet without consent of landlord, regardless of
duration of lease. In absence of special agreement as to payment of
rent, it must be paid according to the local custom, and in event of
extraordinary accident by which he loses a considerable portion of
his year’s product, if in no way due to any fault on his part, and
if not covered by insurance, or taken into consideration in fixing
the rent, he may demand a proportionate reduction. In the absence of
agreement or well-defined custom, each party has the right to give the
other notice, which as to the land must be at least six months before
the 11th of November. With this notice in cases of long leases, where
circumstances arise to render its continuance intolerable to either
party, it may be terminated, with an equitable indemnity to the other
party; this indemnity, even when referred to the courts for adjustment,
must not be less than one year’s rent. If, on the expiration of the
lease, the tenant remains in possession with the landlord’s knowledge
and without his objection, the lease will continue in force from year
to year, until the six months’ notice is given by one of the parties.
When a tenant fails to pay his rent at the time it falls due, the
lessor may give him notice that if not paid within sixty days the lease
will be cancelled; in that event the tenant loses his right to the
growing crops, but he must be reimbursed for the expenses incurred in
their cultivation, to be credited on arrears of rent. The lessor has
the right to cancel a lease when the tenant neglects to keep the farm
in good order; or if, after receiving notice, he fails to execute any
necessary repairs within the period designated by the landlord. In
event of a tenant’s bankruptcy, the lease expires _ipso facto_, when
such bankruptcy is declared. At the expiration of a lease the tenant
must hand over the farm and everything specified in the inventory, just
as they are at the time of delivery, with indemnity for any injury
resulting from want of proper care on his part; and no compensation is
due him for improvements merely the result of ordinary care. The tenant
must leave on the land the straw and manure of the preceding year; if,
however, it exceeds what he received when taking possession, he can
claim compensation for the difference. The outgoing tenant, at the
expiration of the lease, has the right to compensation for any increase
on the original valuation of the farm which is the fruit of his labor
and outlay; this is sometimes ascertained to a nicety by means of a
system of chemical testing of the soil.

It seems almost incredible that a federal law should be so
circumstantial, rather than lay down the general principles upon
a question of the lease of land and leaving it to the Cantons or
Communes to supply the details, in conformity with the varying local
elements that must enter into it, from the great diversity of soil,
products, and customs. This law is but another illustration of that
patient and minute exactness which distinguishes all Swiss federal
legislation, aiming to cover every possible contingency that may arise
of construction or enforcement.

It is to the cantonal civil codes we must turn for the body of the land
laws. These codes appear to be derived from three distinct sources,
corresponding with the ethnical division of the people,--the Roman,
the Old Germanic, and the Napoleonic codes. The Cantons of Geneva,
Neuchâtel, and the western portion of the Canton of Bern, known as
the Jura-Bernois, have the code Napoleon almost in its entirety. The
codes of Vaud, Freiburg, Valais, and Ticino are based on the old Roman
law, harmonized in some features with the code Napoleon. The Cantons
of St. Gallen, Appenzell, Uri, Schwyz, Obwald, Glarus, and Basel-Stadt
are still governed by ancient statutes or customs, without any defined
codes. The remaining Cantons, constituting what is known as German
Switzerland, have their land laws framed on the old Germanic code, with
an admixture of the code Napoleon. There were no cantonal land codes
previous to 1819; the oldest one, that of Vaud, dates from that year.
A summary of the law, in a few of the representative Cantons, will be
sufficient.

Bern has two separate codes; the western or Jura district having
adopted the code Napoleon, while the other portion of the Canton
still adheres to the old Germanic code, with some alterations and
improvements grafted on to it. The sale of land is absolutely free and
unrestricted; the only formality consisting of a contract drawn up and
signed by both parties and deposited at the cantonal registry office,
for which there is a small registration fee, divided between the Canton
and Commune. The ordinary duration of an original lease is from five to
ten years. The lessee is in no way bound to any particular rotation of
crops, and any attempt to exhaust the soil unfairly is very unusual.
The outgoing tenant must deliver to his successor the farm in no worse
condition than that in which he found it; and if the requisite amount
of manure, etc., is not forthcoming, he must replace the deficiency.
Only one-third of the landed property is at the absolute disposal
of the testator, the remaining two-thirds must be divided in equal
portions among the children. The only way a testator may favor a child
is to bequeath to him that portion (one-third) which the law allows him
to dispose of _ad libitum_, as an addition to his distributable share.
Should, however, the wife survive her husband, she enjoys the absolute
use of all of his property for her life, with no power to alienate or
deal with it in any way, save with the consent of the Committee of
Wards, a body to be found in every Bernese Commune. Failing of wife
or children, the property is divided equally among the heirs at law,
should there be no will disposing of the available one-third. There is
an exception, not embodied in the code, but founded in an immemorial
custom, which prevails in the extensive valley of the Emmenthal, where
the youngest son inherits by right all the landed property at the
decease of both parents, subject to an annual indemnity paid to his
brothers and sisters, who in this way hold a preferred lien on the
land. The origin of this custom is thus explained: Motives of safety
formerly induced the proprietors of land to live within the walls of
Bern, where they had their house and establishment, which passed to
the eldest son, instead of land. The custom has held together the
exceptionally large farms in this valley, some running up to a hundred
and fifty acres each.

In the Canton of Vaud the sale and acquisition of landed property are
as unrestricted as in that of Bern. One-half of it is at the disposal
of the testator, the other half must go to the children in equal
proportions. Failing of issue, and if the deceased dies intestate, and
be unmarried or a widower, his brothers and sisters succeed to half
of the property and his parents to the other half. If none of these
members of the family survive, the property is divided equally among
the ascendants in the paternal and maternal line. In this Canton,
where the breeding of cattle forms so important an industry, certain
legislation closely allied to the occupation of the soil is worthy of a
passing notice. This is known as _Cheptel_,--the contract by which one
party undertakes to supply another with a certain number of cattle to
tend and feed under specified conditions. The _Cheptel_ is of several
kinds. In one, the hirer has the right to the milk, work, and manure of
the cattle, the increase and loss being equally divided. It is illegal
for the two parties to enter into any contract by which the hirer
undertakes to bear all losses. Then there is _Cheptel à moitié_,--where
two owners of cattle, who do not possess a sufficient number to lease
them, each on his own account, join together and lease their stock to a
third party, sharing the profit and loss with him on the same condition
and terms as in the case first described. The third class of _Cheptel_
is where the tenant farmer rents the landlord’s cattle in conjunction
with the farm, on the condition of his taking all risks, and that
when the lease expires he shall leave behind a herd of cattle of the
same value as that at which the original herd was estimated; all the
profits from these cattle go to the farmer until the lease expires;
the manure, however, belongs to the farm, and must be used for its
exclusive benefit.

In the Canton of Basel the testator can only dispose of that part of
his estate which falls to his heirs. If those heirs be children, he may
by will deprive them of at most one child’s interest or share, not in
any case to exceed the fourth part of the entire estate. If the heirs
be parents, he can dispose of one-half of the estate, or more by the
assent of the latter, written and properly authenticated. If the wife
survives, she is entitled, in the absence of a marriage settlement,
to two-thirds of the estate. A marriage settlement may entirely annul
the operation of the community of property which otherwise prevails.
In this case the entire estate of the deceased husband or wife falls
to the heirs. Sons and daughters share alike. Brothers and sisters are
regarded alike whether both or only one of the parents are the same.
In the absence of descendants, parents share equally as heirs; if one
of the latter is deceased, the survivor takes the whole. Descendants
of a deceased heir, who are within the fifth degree of consanguinity,
share equally the part which would have fallen to their ancestors.
Illegitimate children inherit from the mother, but not from the father,
unless legitimated by marriage of the parents.

In the Canton of St. Gallen a testator, in case he leaves but one
child, can dispose, by a will or otherwise, of one-half of the
property; if two children, only one-third; and if three or more, not
more than one-fourth. In event of having no legal heirs, he may dispose
of three-fourths of his property, the remaining one-fourth passing to
the Canton. If the heirs be father, mother, or other near relations,
he is not permitted to dispose by will of more than one-half. If there
are relations beyond that degree, and within the tenth degree, he
may dispose of two-thirds. If the wife survives, she is entitled to
one-half the estate; however, if there be children also, then the wife
takes only a child’s part. Sons and daughters share alike, with this
modification: the sons have the preference of the real estate; tools
and implements, if they are mechanics; books or libraries, if they are
professional men; for which, however, they must pay a fair price to the
other heirs. Two per cent. of all property disposed of by will goes to
the Canton. Any person eighteen years old and of disposing mind may
make a will. Every will must be attested by three witnesses, two of
whom must be able to write their names. A woman’s property brought into
the marriage remains her property; the interest only to be appropriated
by the husband for the benefit of the family.

In the Canton of Zurich there is no limitation as to right of testator
to dispose of his property by will, except as to interest of surviving
wife. When the wife survives she is first entitled to withdraw the
property she brought into the marriage, also the household furniture,
in case it does not exceed one-fourth of the net estate; and if there
be children, she takes the usufruct of one-half of the estate, or the
fee-simple of one-eighth; if there be no children, but parents of
the deceased living, she takes the usufruct of the whole estate, or
fee-simple of one-fourth; if only grand-parents living, the fee-simple
of one-half and the usufruct of the other half. If the wife marries,
the usufruct is reduced one-half. As to sons and daughters,--in
the father’s estate the sons have a preferred right to take the
real estate, with the appurtenances, against payment of a moderate
valuation; sons also have a preferred right to take the property
pertaining to the paternal industry, such as tools, professional
implements, cattle, etc., without, however, any deduction from the
actual value thereof; sons take without compensation the paternal
wardrobe, arms, outfit, and seal. Family records go to the oldest son
without charge. The common paternal inheritance is divided equally
among sons and daughters. In the maternal estate the clothing, house
linen, and washing utensils go to the daughters without charge; also
the jewelry, valuables, and savings of the mother, if they do not
exceed in value five-one-hundredths of the estate, any excess over that
must be paid for by them. The common maternal inheritance is divided
equally, but the sons have the preference of the real estate, against
payment of its full value.

In the Canton of Geneva the code Napoleon, or _Code Civil Français_,
substantially exists, that Canton having been a part of the French
_Département du Léman_ from 1798 to 1814.

The notion of family co-proprietorship prevails extensively in the
German Cantons, and testamentary power is much limited. In 1865 the
Canton of Appenzell relaxed so far as to decree that it was an anomaly
in this day of advanced civilization that a free citizen who enacted
laws for himself (referring to the Landsgemeinde of the Canton)
should be fettered, as in the benighted times of the past, in his
testamentary powers, and that, therefore, he should thenceforward have
the right to dispose by will of _one-fiftieth_ of his property, if he
had children, and of _one-twentieth_ if he had none. In the Canton
of Zurich, previous to the Bluntschli’s code, those who had children
were obliged to leave them all their property, and, failing of issue,
the relations, of whatever degree, had a right to their legitimate
share. In Glarus the consent of the heirs is necessary before the
smallest legacy can be made by the testator. In the Canton of Nidwald
the question of the validity of a legacy is submitted to a jury, who
are empowered to decide whether such legacy is just and in conformity
with the position of the testator, the testator’s children, and the
legatee. The three Cantons of Schaffhausen, Thurgau, and the Grisons,
which place restrictions on the free disposal of inherited property,
are more liberal as to acquired property. In Southern Switzerland,
except in the Cantons of Freiburg and Valais, the law goes so far
as absolutely to forbid special contracts made with regard to
successions,--except in the case of husband and wife,--so that the
testamentary power may remain free and untrammelled as to all property
at the disposal of the testator when he comes to die. There is a
manifest tendency to facilitate the disposal by will of property in
general, in view of the more extended movements of the population, and
the consequent dispersion of family. The laws of enforced succession
are being gradually modified or repealed. In point of fact, the Swiss
laws make little or no distinction between real, personal, and mixed
property in connection with testamentary power, and there is a vast
dissimilarity in the legislation and practice of the several Cantons.
Through all the varying degrees, in almost every Canton, there will
be found some limitation to parental freedom of bequest intervening
for the protection of the child. In some a distinction is made
between inherited and acquired property, but it is the same principle
asserting itself, the “_légitime_,” the portion secured by law to the
heir,[64] over which the testator is forbidden to exercise the power of
disposition, and under the term “children,” by some cantonal codes, are
included descendants of whatever degree, who, however, take together
as representatives of the stock from which they spring. No such
thing as a law of entail exists in any Canton. In reference to these
restraints on the power of bequeathing property by will, which at one
time existed in all the continental states, and in France restricted
within the narrowest limits, Adam Smith wrote: “By interfering to so
extreme an extent in the disposal of a man’s property, it lessens the
motives to accumulation; while, by rendering the children in a great
measure independent, it weakens the parental authority, and has the
same mischievous operation over an entire family that the law of entail
has over a single child. This, however, is not its worst effect. This
and every similar system inevitably tends to occasion too great an
increase of agricultural population, and to reduce landed property into
portions so minute that they neither afford sufficient employment to
the families occupying them nor allow of their being cultivated and
improved in the best and most efficient manner.” A few Cantons have
become alarmed at this infinitesimal subdivision of their soil, as
prejudicial to agricultural enterprise and causing emigration to take
place from the pastoral districts. The Cantons of Aargau, Thurgau,
and Solothurn have passed laws fixing the limit to the subdivision
of land at a minimum ranging from five thousand to twenty thousand
square feet. The excess to which subdivision may run is illustrated in
the Canton of Bern, where a case is reported of a cherry-tree in the
Oberland found to belong to seven different proprietors; and it is also
related that the people of that section are distinguished for being so
stiff-necked in sticking for their rights that an article of furniture
has been known to be sawed into so many parts that each member of a
family might have his share. Notwithstanding the opinion of political
economists, the Swiss know that this subdivision has worked as an
efficient auxiliary in making their soil a source of national comfort
and well-being, and a barrier against land accumulation to prop up a
ruling class, so common in many of her neighbors. No sort of social
distinction or political privilege is associated with land-ownership in
Switzerland. The cultivator, who, as a rule, is the proprietor,--for it
is rare to find a farm which is not worked by the owner,--is shorn by
neither rent nor taxes. The land fulfils its duty and guarantees the
tiller a fair enjoyment of the produce, a fair share in the sheaves
he reaps. Poets, historians, and philosophers, who love to dwell on
the simple virtues of the children of nature, find their Utopia in
Switzerland, where the households, each with its little tract of land,
represent a larger proportion of the population than can be found
in any other country. This distribution of small properties among
the peasantry forms a kind of rampart and safeguard for accumulated
property in other forms. It may be called the lightning conductor that
averts from society dangers which might otherwise lead to violent
catastrophes. The concentration of land in large estates among a small
number of families, is a sort of provocation of levelling legislative
measures. There are no influences more conservative, or more conducive
to the maintenance of order in society, than those which facilitate
the acquirement of property in land by those who cultivate it,--“’Tis
wonderful sweet to have something of one’s own.”

There is no influence fraught with more danger than that which
concentrates the ownership of the soil in the hands of the few, by
impediments, legal or fiscal, to prevent lands freely passing from
the hands of the idle into those of the industrious. Neither extreme
poverty nor extreme opulence is the thing to be desired. Pauperism and
plutocracy alike are the parents of vice in private and revolution
in public life. The genius of revolution truly exclaims, “With
wings twain do I fly;” of these wings one is discontented labor,
the other is over-reaching wealth. The system of the subdivision
of the soil among a multitude of small proprietors, for the most
part energetic, industrious cultivators of their own holdings, is
eminently conservative in its influence, and contributes in no small
degree towards maintaining the national spirit of independence and
self-reliance, the happy and contented condition of the Swiss peasant
proprietors; at once the strength and the safety of the Confederation.
This Swiss peasant has not only the responsibilities of a capitalist
on a small scale, but also those qualities of foresight, thrift, and
sobriety that such responsibility inspires. He has his home with the
dignity, stimulus, and all the civilizing influence of ownership.

“A great proprietor is seldom a great improver.” Private appropriation
of land is deemed to be beneficial; because the strongest interest
which the community and the human race have in the land is that it
should yield the largest amount of necessary or useful things required
by the community. The spectre of “excessive subdivision” of the soil,
once so potent an influence, has lost all its terror. It was Cobden
who wished to remove all remonstrances to the easy and economical
transfer of land, and to develop a process by which, under the natural
operation of a free exchange, the laborer might be re-settled on the
soil from which, in his energetic and suggestive phrase, the “laborer
had been divorced.” It was Mill who, in his powerful chapters on
peasant proprietors, clearly showed that “free trade in land” was the
condition under which the economic good of man can be best effected;
that a small or peasant proprietary is the most thriving, the most
industrious, the most thrifty of cultivators, and that under small
free holdings the capacities of the soil are developed to the fullest
possible extent, and the rate of production raised to the very largest
amount. Those who fancied that peasant proprietors must be wretched
cultivators have seen that some of the best agriculture in the world
is to be found in Switzerland, where such properties abound.[65]
These peasant proprietorships have neither bred over-population nor
converted the country into a “pauper warren.” The existence of peasant
properties has come to be regarded by philanthropists as eminently
desirable, and the removal of all obstacles to it has become an aim of
advanced politicians. Daniel Webster, in an address delivered before
the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention in 1821, referring to the
relation of civil liberty to property, as regards its security and
distribution and that the degree of its distribution settles the form
of government,--aristocratic, if the property is held by the few, and
popular, if held by the many,--said in reference to France: “A most
interesting experiment, on the effect of a subdivision of property,
is now making in France. It is understood that the law regulating the
transmission of property in that country now divides it, real and
personal, among all the children equally, both sons and daughters;
and that is, also, a very great restraint on the power of making
dispositions of property by will. It has been supposed, that the effect
of this might probably be, in time, to break up the soil into such
small subdivisions, that the proprietors would be too poor to resist
the encroachments of executive power. I think far otherwise. In respect
to this recent law of succession in France, I would, presumptuously
perhaps, hazard a conjecture, that if the government do not change
the law, the law in half a century will change the government; and
that this change will be, not in favor of the crown, as some European
writers have supposed, but against it. These writers only reason
upon what they think correct general principles in relation to this
subject. They acknowledge a want of experience. Here we have had the
experience; and we know that a multitude of small proprietors, acting
with intelligence, and that enthusiasm which a common cause inspires,
constitute not only a formidable, but an invincible power.”

Just fifty years from the date of Mr. Webster’s prophecy the present
republic was set up,--the government not having changed the law, the
law changed the government. It is this race of peasant proprietors
that has given France her wonderful recuperative power, enabling
her to emerge again and again _per varios casus, per tot discrimina
rerum_. From them her national life receives a vigor and unity which no
reverses seem to dominate and no blunders to ruin. Upon them she must
rely for the maintenance of her liberties, so gloriously conquered in
the past and embodied in her present institutions.

If men have but some share of comfort and property in the country,
they will abide there, for that is really the place provided for them.
“Towns, the haunt of pride, luxury, and inequality, foster the spirit
of revolt: the country begets calm and concord, the spirit of order and
tradition.” Under the old Roman system the city was the important unit;
under the Teutonic element the land was brought into prominence and
the possessor of it into power. The dominant member of society was the
landowner and not the citizen. In ancient society the “citizen” need
own no land; in the modern society of the feudal age the “gentleman”
could not be such without owning land.




CHAPTER XII.

MILITARY SERVICE AND ORGANIZATION.


Attached alike to liberty and to arms, the Swiss are no less famous
for their undaunted intrepidity than their simple and pure democracy.
From early times the hardy mountaineers of the Alps were eminently and
splendidly martial. History is full of their steadiness and bravery on
the field of battle. When Rome was in its highest military glory, its
armies under the Consul Lucius Cassius were routed by the Helvetians
on the shores of Lake Leman, 111 B.C. The two armies are supposed to
have met about where the Rhone falls into the lake, and the conquerors
of all Italy, the masters of Greece and Macedonia, who had carried
their victorious armies over Asia and Africa, were overcome by a people
hitherto unknown. Julius Cæsar speaks of their “military virtue and
constant warfare with the Germans.” Livy and Tacitus refer to them as
a people originally of the Gallic nation, “renowned for their valor
and their exploits in war.” About the middle of the fourteenth century
attention began to be attracted towards these mountaineers, and great
was the wonder that cavalry, which made the only effective part of the
federal armies of those ages, should be routed by men on foot; that
warriors sheathed in complete steel should be overpowered by naked
peasants who wore no defensive armor, and were irregularly provided
with pikes, halberds, and clubs, for the purposes of attack; above all,
it seemed a species of miracle that knights and nobles of the highest
birth should be defeated by mountaineers and shepherds. The repeated
victories of the Swiss over troops having on their side numbers and
discipline, and the advantage of the most perfect military equipment
then known and confided in, plainly intimated that a new principle
of civil organization as well as of military movements had arisen
amid the stormy regions of Helvetia. The signal victory over Charles
the Bold of Burgundy, in which they routed the celebrated Burgundian
_ordonnance_, constituting the finest body of chivalry of Europe,
demonstrated their capacity as infantry. This, no doubt, contributed
to the formation of that invincible Spanish infantry which, under the
Great Captain and his successors, may be said to have decided the fate
of Europe for more than half a century. The “Swiss whiskered Infantry”
became distinguished in all the continental wars by pre-eminent valor
and discipline. Their principal weapon was a pike about eighteen feet
long; and, forming in solid battalions, which, bristling with spears
all around, received the technical appellation of the _hedgehog_, they
presented an invulnerable front on every quarter, and received unshaken
the most desperate charges of the steel-clad cavalry on their terrible
array of pikes. In the Granadine war (1484), among the volunteers that
flocked to the Spanish camp was a corps of Swiss infantry, who are thus
simply described by Pulgar: “There joined the royal standard a body of
men from Switzerland, a country in upper Germany; these men were bold
of heart and fought on foot. As they were resolved never to turn their
backs upon the enemy, they wore no defensive armor except in front,
by which means they were less encumbered in fight.” The astonishing
success of the French in the Italian wars (1494) was largely imputable
to the free use and admirable organization of their infantry, whose
strength lay in the Swiss soldiers they had. Machiavelli ascribes
the misfortunes of his nation chiefly to its exclusive reliance on
cavalry; this service, during the whole of the Middle Ages, being
considered among the European nations so important that the horse
was styled by way of eminence “the battle.” The arms and discipline
of the Swiss were necessarily different from those of other European
nations. The hill-sides and the mountain-tops and the deep valleys of
Switzerland have felt as frequently as any part of Europe the mailed
footstep of the warrior, and run as red with his blood. Zschokke, in
his history, remarks that, in its wars of the last five hundred years,
but particularly those growing out of the great French revolution,
“battle-field touched battle-field.” During the long struggle for their
liberties, they found that their poverty, with at that time a barren
and ill-cultivated country, put it out of their power to bring into
the field any body of horse capable of facing the enemy. Necessity
compelled them to place all their confidence in infantry. With
breastplates and helmets as defensive armor, together with long spears,
halberds, and heavy swords as weapons of offence, they formed into
large battalions, ranged in deep and close array, presenting on every
side a formidable front to the enemy. They repulsed the Austrians,
they broke the Burgundian Gendarmerie, and, when called to Italy, bore
down with irresistible force every enemy that attempted to oppose
them. Bacon, in his “History of King Henry VII.,” says: “To make good
infantry, it required men bred not in a servile fashion but in some
free manner. Therefore, if a state run most to noblemen and gentlemen,
and that the husbandmen and ploughmen be but as their workfolks or
laborers, you may have a good cavalry, but never good, stable bands
of foot, in so much as they are enforced to employ bands of Swiss for
their battalions of foot.” It was a trusty sword these brave and hardy
peasants offered. Some thought that nature certainly only meant the
Swiss for two classes, soldiers and shepherds. It is easy to convert
husbandmen into good soldiers. According to the institutions of the
Lacedæmonians, the employments of husbandmen and soldiers were united,
as alike the highest training-schools for the qualities that make the
best citizen and the best soldier. The plough was readily exchanged
for the sword by those engaged in peaceful occupations that seemed
to place them at an immeasurable distance from the profession of a
soldier. Happy had it been for Switzerland had she gained nothing
beyond simple liberty in her contest with her ancient masters, and
had continued to cherish pure and healthful feelings. When peace had
crowned their heroic struggles, their warlike spirit sought in foreign
states the excitement and military glory which were denied them at
home. The cravings of avarice and the thirst of plunder are inseparable
from the pride of victory. While the hardy mountaineers exulted in
the defeat and humiliation of Austrian chivalry, they purchased their
triumph, for a time at least, at the expense of the simplicity of their
nature. They accepted the dangers and privations of soldiers fighting
battles in which their own country bore no part. They became the ready
agents of the highest paymaster. These military capitulations dated
from the period of the Burgundian war. Treaties were often concluded
between foreign governments and one or more Cantons.[66] They made a
trade of war, letting themselves out as mercenaries. The Holy Father
himself entered the list of bargainers, and in 1503 Pope Julius III.
engaged the first of those Swiss life-guards whose name became famous
in Europe. From Louis XI. to Louis XV. the Swiss are said to have
furnished for the French service over half a million men. In the wars
between the French king and the Emperor Maximilian, in 1516, the
Swiss fought on both sides. In its last extremity, it was neither
in its titled nobility nor its native armies that the French throne
found fidelity, but in the free-born peasant soldiers of Luzern. Of
the undaunted ranks of the Swiss guard, defending the French royal
family at the Tuileries on the 10th of August, 1792, seven hundred and
eighty-six officers and soldiers fell in the place where they stood,
unconquered even in death; and for two days their bodies lay in the
gardens of the palace and the streets near by, exposed to the derision
and insults of the frantic populace.

  “Go, stranger! and at Lacedæmon tell
  That here, obedient to her laws, we fell.”

To their memory a colossal lion, twenty-eight feet long by eighteen
feet high, carved by Thorwaldsen out of the face of a solid sandstone
rock, in high relief, was dedicated in 1821 at Luzern. The lion is
holding the _fleur-de-lis_ in his paws, which he is endeavoring to
protect, though mortally wounded by a spear which still remains in
his side. Above the figure is the inscription: “_Helvetiorum fidei
ac virtuti_.” When the afternoon sun falls upon this effigy, it is
reflected beautifully in the dark pool close below; the gray rock rises
perpendicularly some little height above and ends in a crown of acacias
and drooping bushes and creepers.

The fame of the Swiss, in every war which desolated Europe from the
fifteenth century down, rose to an extraordinary pitch; but this
influence, which, as the hired soldiers of belligerent powers, they
exercised in the affairs of Europe, was neither conducive to the weal
of the state nor worthy of the Swiss people. Addison wrote in 1709 of
them: “The inhabitants of the country are as great curiosities as the
country itself; they generally hire themselves out in their youth, and
if they are musket-proof till about fifty, they bring home the money
they have got, and the limbs they have left, to pass the rest of their
time among their native mountains.” He also relates that “one of the
gentlemen of the place told me, by way of boast, that there were now
seven wooden legs in his family; and that for these four generations
there had not been one in his line that carried a whole body with him
to the grave.”

From their being so frequently in the personal service of foreign
potentates, the name of Switzer with some writers became synonymous
with guards or attendants on a king. The king in “Hamlet” says: “Where
are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.” In 1594, Nashe, in his
“Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem,” states that “Law, Logicke, and the
Switzers may be hired to fight for anybody.” Even the French were
so ungrateful as to chide the Swiss by saying, “We fight for honor,
but you fight for money;” to which the Switzer rejoined, “It is only
natural that each of us, like the rest of the world, should fight for
what he has not got.” These Swiss soldiers were in great demand and
liberally paid. They were not only hardy and patient of fatigue, but
bold in action and obedient in discipline. The very sight of them
alarmed the enemy, suggesting a passage in Tacitus of which every
soldier will probably feel the truth, “The eye is the first to be
vanquished in battle.”[67] Then these troops were as noted for their
fidelity to the service they engaged in as for their courage; and in
all their history there is scarce to be found any example of treachery.

From the dawn of the Reformation there was produced a material
change, and its effects were chiefly visible in the improvement of
moral feeling and the growing aversion to this mercenary service. The
Constitution of 1848 altogether swept away this system of military
capitulations. At the time of the adoption of the constitution there
was only one such convention in force, being that of the King of
Naples and several of the Cantons; but public sentiment was so greatly
aroused by their participation in the defeat of the revolution, that
the Cantons were compelled to recall them, and thus the last of these
capitulations came to an end. There were certain bodies of troops who,
bearing the Swiss name or composed for the most part of Swiss soldiers,
still continued to fight for foreign governments; and to prevent this,
as far as possible, a federal law in 1859 prohibited every Swiss
citizen from entering, without the consent of the Federal Council,
those bodies of foreign troops which were not regarded as national
troops of the respective states. This did not hinder individual
citizens from enrolling themselves in the national troops of a foreign
state. To further avoid any complication of foreign relations through
such military connection, the cantonal constitutions first forbade the
reception of pensions and titles from foreign states; and a similar
provision was embodied in the federal Constitution of 1874, whereby
“members of the federal government, civil and military officials of the
Confederation, and federal representatives or commissioners, shall not
accept from foreign governments any pension, salary, title, present,
or decoration. Decorations shall not be worn in the Swiss army, nor
shall titles conferred by foreign governments be borne. Every officer,
under-officer, and soldier shall be forbidden to accept any such
distinction.”

The first approach towards the establishment of a federal army
was after Swiss independence had been recognized at the peace of
Westphalia, when the Confederation in 1648 adopted an arrangement
called the “_Defensional_,” by which, in case of urgent danger, the
Federal Diet could call upon the several Cantons to supply troops for
the general defence, in such numbers as were stipulated. In 1848 it
was proposed that the Confederation should be charged with the entire
military administration. This was rejected. In 1874 the effort was
renewed, and this most important power was substantially vested in the
Confederation by the constitution adopted that year, which contains the
following provisions:

Every Swiss is subject to military service. Each soldier receives
without expense his first equipment, clothing, and arms. The arms
remain in possession of the soldier, under conditions prescribed by
federal legislation. The Confederation enacts uniform laws on fees for
exemption from military service:

The federal army consists:

1. Of the cantonal military corps.

2. Of all Swiss who, though not belonging to such military corps, are
yet subject to military service.

The Confederation exercises control over the federal army and the
material of war provided by law.

In cases of danger, the Confederation has the exclusive and direct
control over all troops, whether incorporated in the federal army or
not, and over all other military resources of the Cantons.

The Cantons may exercise control over the military forces of their
territory, so far as this right is not limited by the federal
constitution or laws.

Laws on the organization of the army are an affair of the
Confederation. The execution of the military laws within the Cantons is
intrusted to the cantonal authorities, within limits fixed by federal
legislation, and under the supervision of the Confederation.

The entire military instruction and arming of the troops are under
the control of the Confederation. The clothing and equipments and
subsistence of the troops are provided by the Cantons; but the Cantons
are credited with the expenses therefor, in a manner to be determined
by federal law.

So far as military reasons do not prevent, bodies of troops are
formed out of the soldiers from the same Canton. The composition of
these bodies of troops, the maintenance of their effective strength,
and the appointment and promotion of the officers are to be reserved
to the Cantons, subject to general rules to be established by the
Confederation.

On payment of reasonable indemnity, the Confederation has the right
to use or acquire drill-grounds and buildings intended for military
purposes within the Cantons, together with the appurtenances thereof.
The terms of the indemnity shall be fixed by federal law. The Federal
Assembly may forbid public works which endanger the military interests
of the Confederation.

No decoration or title conferred by a foreign government shall be
borne in the federal army. No officer, nor non-commissioned officer or
soldier, shall accept such distinction.

The Confederation has no right to keep up a standing army.[68]
No Canton or half-Canton, without the permission of the federal
government, shall keep up a standing force of more than three hundred
men; the mounted police (_gendarmerie_) is not included in this number.

By these provisions, while the military system, as a whole, has fallen
under the authority of the Confederation, many important details are
left to be exercised by the Cantons. Upon them devolves the responsible
duty of carrying the federal laws into execution. They appoint all
officers below the rank of colonel, keep the military registers,
provide the equipments, uniforms, and necessary stores for the troops
(to be reimbursed by the Confederation), recruit and maintain the
effective strength of the body of troops formed within their respective
limits. The infantry, field artillery, and cavalry are all recruited by
the Cantons and called cantonal troops; the engineers, guides, sanitary
and administrative troops, and the army train are recruited by the
Confederation and called federal troops. The enrolling of men belonging
to the same Canton, as far as practicable, in the same corps is known
as the _système territorial_. Every man fights under the banner of
his own Canton, follows the regiment of his own Commune, keeps step
with the company of his own hamlet, or dies beside his brother,
son, or neighbor. These were the tactics of nature, and probably of
heroism, with mutual enthusiasm and reciprocal attachments, with common
interests and similarity of manners; like the children of Israel who
went out to battle, each “under the colors of the house of his father.”

For the proper execution and furtherance of the constitutional
provisions, several federal laws have been enacted, establishing these
general rules:

Every Swiss citizen is subject to military service from the time he
enters his twentieth year to the close of his forty-fourth year of age.
There are seven classifications of officials who are exempted, during
the time they are in office or employed:

1. Members of the Federal Assembly during the session of the Assembly.

2. Members of the Federal Council, the Chancellor of the Confederation,
and the clerks of the Federal Tribunal.

3. Those employed in the administration of the post and telegraph (the
latter now includes the telephone); employés in government arsenals,
workshops, and powder magazines; directors and wardens of prisons;
attendants in public hospitals; members of cantonal and communal
police, and frontier guards, or _Landjäger_.

4. Ecclesiastics who do not act as army chaplains.

5. Those employed in the public schools, only so far as it would
interrupt their school duties.

6. Railroad officials and employés of the steamboat companies that have
received concessions from the government.

7. All those who have been deprived of their civil rights by sentence
of court are excluded from the service.

The omission of the members of the Federal Tribunal from the list of
exempts, while the executive and legislative officials, together with
the clerks of the Tribunal, are embraced, can be accounted for only
upon the principle of _inter arma silent leges_.

When a Swiss citizen reaches his twentieth year he must present himself
at the levy of troops of the Canton of his domicile and be enrolled.
This must be done before an application for exemption can be made. The
raw recruits are sent direct to one of the _Écoles des Recrues_, for
which the Confederation is divided into eight territorial departments,
for infantry, for cavalry and artillery, three each, and two for
engineers. The federal military forces, or _Bundesauszug_, are divided
into three distinct classes:

1. The _Élite_ or active army, in which all citizens are liable to
serve from the age of twenty to thirty-two.

2. The _Landwehr_ or first reserve, composed of men from the age of
thirty-two to forty-four.

3. The _Landsturm_, consisting of men from seventeen to fifty, not
incorporated in the _Élite_ or _Landwehr_. This last reserve cannot,
as a rule, be called upon for service beyond the frontier. Men are not
discharged from the _Élite_ until their successors have been enrolled,
and in case of war the Federal Council is authorized to suspend
discharges both from the _Élite_ and the _Landwehr_. The recruits at
the _Écoles des Recrues_ undergo a course of instruction for periods
ranging from forty-five to eighty days, after which they are drafted
into the different arms of the service, and (with the exception of the
cavalry, who turn out annually) are called out on alternate years for a
course of training (_cours de répétition_), continuing from sixteen to
twenty days. Periodically, once or twice a year, the troops of a number
of Cantons assemble for a general muster. The infantry soldier has five
periods of training during the ten years he remains in the _Élite_ or
active service:

First year, forty-five days as a recruit.

Third year, sixteen days as a trained soldier.

Fifth year, sixteen days as a trained soldier.

Seventh year, sixteen days as a trained soldier.

Ninth year, sixteen days as a trained soldier.

Total, one hundred and nine days.

The cavalry is called out annually instead of biennially, and as a
compensation for this additional drill service, the men are discharged
from the _Élite_ two years sooner than the infantry, or at the age of
thirty.

The standard of height required of the recruit is five feet one
and a half inches, and the chest measurement in no case less than
thirty-one and a half inches.[69] Men not of the required height,
if specially fitted, by profession or business, for service in the
administrative troops or as drummers, trumpeters, armorers, or other
military handicraftsmen, may be recruited to serve in these capacities
if their height is not less than five feet five-eighths of an inch. The
number of recruits examined annually--that is to say, the number of
young men who become subject every year to military service--is about
thirty thousand. A permanent corps of one hundred and eighty-seven
instructors of various grades, and representing all the arms of the
service, is maintained. The members of this corps are about the only
permanently paid officers of the Swiss army. But they must have
undergone a thorough course of education and passed an examination at
one of the training establishments erected for the purpose. The centre
of these is the military academy at Thun, near Bern, maintained by the
Confederation, and which supplies the army both with the highest class
of officers and with teachers to instruct the lower grades.

Besides this academy or _Central Militär-Schule_ there are special
training-schools for the various branches of the service, especially
the artillery and the _Scharfschützen_ or picked riflemen. During the
period of instruction eight hours is laid down as the minimum of daily
drilling. The arms, clothing, and personal accoutrements remain in the
possession of the soldier, and he is expected to keep each article
in good condition and in readiness for inspection at any moment; and
he is not permitted to wear his uniform except when on active duty.
The inspection of arms, accoutrements, etc., is made annually, and is
conducted with much strictness; any repairs needed are ordered to be
done at the owner’s expense; and negligence in complying with the law
subjects the party to a fine, and in some instances to imprisonment. At
the termination of the _Élite_ service, the uniform is retained by the
recruit, but the arms and accoutrements are surrendered to the Canton.
Horses are provided for the cavalry in this manner: the horses are
first purchased by the government through officers designated for that
purpose; these are sent to the government cavalry stable, thoroughly
broken, then sold to such cavalry recruits as may require them. The
sale is made at public auction to the recruits, and one-half of the
price at which the animal is knocked down is paid by the Confederation
and the other half by the recruit. One-tenth of the recruit’s share,
however, is refunded to him at the end of each year’s service, so that
after ten trainings the horse becomes his personal property. During the
years of service the horse remains at the disposal of the government,
but in fact is only required during the annual drill, and in the
interval remains in the possession of its part owner, at his own cost.
He may work the animal, but it cannot be let out for hire or lent,
and he is responsible for its care and good condition. If the horse
dies in the service, one-half of the value of the recruit’s share is
refunded to him; if, on the other hand, the horse dies when not in the
service, the recruit pays the government a corresponding amount, unless
he can show that the death was in no way occasioned by carelessness or
culpable negligence. The same liability is incurred in case of injury
to the animal, unless it occurred from ordinary fair usage. In either
case, if the recruit be found in fault he is compelled to provide
himself with another horse. These horses are inspected at least once
a year by military veterinary surgeons. Mounted officers must provide
their own horses. In time of war the _Piketstellung_ can be declared
by the Federal Council, by which the sale of horses throughout the
Confederation is forbidden.

The strength of the several lines of the army in 1888, as obtained
from an official of the military department, was--_Élite_, 117,179,
_Landwehr_, 84,046, which, with the _Landsturm_, reckoned at 200,000,
gave in case of extreme emergency an available force of 401,225.

The _Landsturm_ has recently been divided into two classes, the _armed
Landsturm_ and the _auxiliary forces_; the latter is composed of
pioneers, administrative troops, guides, and velocipedists: both of
these classes, under a federal law of 1887, when called out, are placed
on the same footing, with reference to the rights of combatants, as
the _Élite_ or the _Landwehr_. The first line, or _Élite_, must be
regarded as the only active force homogeneous in its parts and complete
in its equipment. Preference for infantry is still preserved among the
Swiss, the cavalry representing only one twenty-seventh of the force.
This disproportion may be somewhat ascribed to two facts: first, on
account of the expense involved in the advance payment to be made on
the purchase of a horse, and then that in Switzerland cavalry would
hardly ever be required except for reconnoitring or vedette duties. The
election on the part of recruits to join the cavalry is voluntary; but
having selected that branch they must remain in it.

The Vetterli rifle, with a magazine containing eleven cartridges,
has been used by the army; but after long and thorough experiments
under government expert commissions with the Rubin rifle, a later and
improved patent, in June, 1889, it was accepted, and is being rapidly
substituted. The budget for 1890 contains an appropriation of 5,734,600
francs for the purchase of these rifles and 3,000,000 francs for
ammunition.

The highest rank in the Swiss army is that of colonel. In the event of
war the Federal Assembly nominates a general, who takes command till
the troops are disbanded. The only officer at present in the service
who has held that temporary rank is General Herzog, the commander of
the troops in 1871, and who is now doing regular duty as a colonel.
Then come lieutenant-colonel, major, captain, and first lieutenant;
these constitute the commissioned officers. The non-commissioned
officers are sergeant-major, quartermaster-sergeant, sergeant, and
corporal. Colonels command divisions and brigades; lieutenant-colonels,
regiments; majors, battalions; and captains, companies. The Cantons
nominate officers up to the rank of _commandant de bataillon_, subject
to the approval of the federal military authorities. Officers of
higher rank than _commandant de bataillon_ hold their commissions from
the Federal Council. Then there is a general staff or _État major_,
appointed by the Federal Council, consisting of three colonels, sixteen
lieutenant-colonels or majors, and thirty-five captains. The chief of
this staff is appointed by the Council for a term of three years, and
is practically in charge of the forces during peace.

The pay of the army, like all branches of public service in
Switzerland, is on a very economical scale. With the exception of
the members of the general staff and corps of instructors (the
former substantially constitutes the latter), who are permanently in
the service, officers and privates only receive pay during active
service,--that is, during the short drill periods or in time of war.
The commander-in-chief (who only serves in time of war) receives fifty
francs per day.

                                             Francs.
  Colonel commanding division receives         30
  Colonel commanding brigade     ”             25
  Colonel                        ”             20
  Lieutenant-Colonel             ”             15
  Major                          ”             12
  Captain                        ”             10
  First Lieutenant               ”              8
  Second Lieutenant              ”              7

Personal allowance for uniform and equipments:

                                            Francs.
  For officers not mounted                    200
  For officers mounted                        250
  For equipment of horses                     250

The private soldiers are paid eighty centimes per day, and from this a
sum, to be fixed by the chief of the corps, is deducted to meet certain
contingent personal expenses of the private. Rations in the field
daily embrace 750 grammes of bread; 375 of fresh meat; 150 to 200 of
vegetables; 20 of salt; 15 of roasted coffee; 20 of sugar. Commutation
to officers is one franc per day. If a private furnishes his own
coffee, vegetables, and wood, a proportionate allowance is fixed by the
Federal Council. The rations are the same during the drilling terms,
but the pay is reduced to fifty centimes per day. The constitution
declares that “soldiers who lose their lives or suffer permanent injury
to their health in consequence of federal military service shall be
entitled to aid from the Confederation for themselves or their families
in case of need.”

A federal law grants pensions:

1. Up to 1200 francs in case of complete blindness, the loss of both
hands, or both feet, or other injury causing absolute incapacity to
earn a living.

2. Up to 700 francs in case of partial incapacity for work.

3. Up to 400 francs in case where business or calling must be changed
to one less profitable, in consequence of injury.

4. Up to 200 francs when this change is necessitated in a modified
degree.

Pensions to widow, children, or parent:

1. Widow without children up to 350 francs; with children up to 650
francs.

2. Children one or two, each 250 francs; more than two, total of 650
francs.

3. Father or mother (where no widow or children), 200 francs; if both
living, total of 350 francs.

4. Each brother or sister (when neither widow, children, nor parent
survive), 100 francs each.

5. Grandfather or grandmother (where neither widow, children, parents,
nor brother or sister survive), 150 francs; if both living, 250 francs
total.

These amounts may be increased in special and meritorious cases. Women
divorced or living apart from their husbands, and children eighteen
years of age, are not entitled to receive pensions.

Every Swiss citizen subject to military service, whether he resides
in the Confederation or not, who does not personally perform it, is
subject in lieu thereof to the payment of an annual tax in money.
Foreigners established in Switzerland are likewise subject to this tax,
unless they are exempt therefrom by virtue of international treaties or
belong to states in which the Swiss domiciled there are neither liable
to military service nor to the payment of any equivalent tax in money.
This is the only direct tax levied in the Confederation; and the gross
sum realized is shared proportionately between the Confederation and
the Canton.

Exempt from this tax are:

1. Paupers assisted by the public charity fund, and those who by
reason of mental or physical infirmity are incapable of earning their
subsistence, or who have not a sufficient fortune for the support of
themselves and family.

2. Those rendered unfit through previous service.

3. Swiss citizens in foreign countries, if they are subject to a
personal service or to an exemption tax for the same in place of
domicile.

4. The railway and steamboat employés during the time when they are
liable to the military service organized for the working of the
railways and steamboats in time of war.

5. Policemen and the federal frontier guards.

This military tax consists in a personal tax of six francs, and of
an additional tax on property and income; the amount exacted from any
one tax-payer not to exceed 3000 francs per annum. The additional tax
is one franc and a half for each one thousand francs of net fortune,
and one franc and a half for each one hundred francs of net income.
Net fortunes less than 1000 francs are exempt, and from the net income
are to be deducted 600 francs. Net fortune is the personal and real
property after deducting debts of record, chattels necessary for
household, tools of trade, and agricultural implements. Real estate and
improvements are assessed for this tax at three-fourths of their market
value. In computing the property of a person for this tax, half of the
fortune of the parents, or if not living, then of the grand-parents, is
included, proportionately to the number of children or grandchildren,
unless the father of the tax-payer shall himself perform military
service or pay the exemption tax.

Net income embraces:

1. The earnings of an art, profession, trade, business, occupation,
or employment. The expenses incurred to obtain these earnings are
deducted, also necessary household expenses, and five per cent. of the
capital invested in the business.

2. The product of annuities, pensions, and other similar revenues.

From the age of thirty-three to the completion of the military age,
only one-half of the tax is exacted. The Federal Assembly has the
right to increase the tax to double the amount for those years in
which the greater part of the _Élite_ troops are called into service.
The military tax for Swiss citizens residing abroad is calculated
every year by special rolls, and the persons advised by the officials
of the Canton of their birth, if their address be known, otherwise
by public advertisement. The tax for exemption is paid in the Canton
where the tax-payer is domiciled when the rolls are prepared. Parents
are responsible for the payment of the tax for their minor sons, and
for those sons who, though of age, remain a part of the household. The
period for prescription is five years for tax-payers present in the
country, and ten years for those absent from the country. The Cantons
are charged with making out the annual rolls and collecting the tax.
By the end of January following the year of the tax the Cantons must
remit to the proper federal official the half of the gross product
collected. A portion of this is assigned by the Federal Assembly to
the fund for military pensions. In each Canton there is a tribunal
to pass upon appeals on the correctness of the rolls of tax-payers.
All disputes arising as to the tax are referred to and decided by
the Federal Council. With a view of insuring a uniform application
of the law of military service, the Confederation reserves supreme
supervision; and the ultimate decision upon all questions arising out
of the operation of it, and likewise upon decrees relating to the
imposition and collection of the tax, rests with it. The estimated
receipts from this tax for the share of the Confederation are placed in
the budget for 1889 at 1,330,000 francs. An eminent Swiss publicist,
Dr. Dubs, in criticising this tax-law, asserts “that in many points it
is equally irrational, and, in the construction of its details, leads
moreover to further absurdities of all kinds, of which undoubtedly the
claiming to tax those in foreign countries and the taxation of the
heir’s possible expectations form the highest point.” He might have
added that this tax, so far as levied upon incomes of persons liable
to military service but exempted therefrom by reason of disability
or other cause, partakes rather of the character of a law to raise
revenue than as providing a penalty for the non-performance of military
service. The failure to render such service on the part of one enjoying
a specified income is not more heavily punished than the failure of
one with less or no income. The operation of this tax has caused much
complaint on the part of citizens of the United States “established”
in Switzerland. Nearly all of the European states have concluded
treaties with Switzerland, since the enactment of this “military
tax-law,” bringing themselves within the conditions it prescribes for
the exemption of their citizens “established” in Switzerland, from any
personal service or any tax in lieu thereof.

The citizens of the United States residing in Switzerland, of whom
there are quite a number engaged in prosperous and large industries,
still come under the treaty concluded between Switzerland and the
United States in 1850, long previous to the passage of the tax-law
(1878), Article II. of which reads: “The citizens of one of the two
countries, residing or established in the other, shall be free from
personal military service, but they shall be liable to the pecuniary or
material contributions which may be required by way of compensation,
from citizens of the country where they reside, who are exempt from
that service.” This article seems to contemplate the imposition of
a penalty for the non-performance of a duty from which the party is
specially exempted. It is susceptible of a plausible argument, that a
proper construction of this article does not warrant the collection
of the tax imposed by the Swiss law of 1878, from the United States
citizens residing there. For this tax is not in fact a “pecuniary
contribution” required from citizens of Switzerland who are exempt from
personal military service, but is a tax required only from citizens
who by reason of their age are subject to military service, but who in
consequence of physical or other disability cannot perform it. That
the words, “by way of compensation,” were not intended to qualify the
phrase, “pecuniary or material contribution,” but refer to, “shall be
free from personal military service.” Should a citizen of the United
States residing in Switzerland prefer to render personal military
service rather than pay the tax, his service would not be accepted; he
would be informed that by virtue of the treaty with his country he
is “free from personal military service, but liable to the pecuniary
or material contribution,” and he must pay his tax,--“your money and
not your service is what we wish.” If his service was accepted, it
would carry an implication of the right to enforce either personal
service or in lieu thereof the payment of a commutation tax for
exemption. The language of the treaty obviously contemplated only such
general contribution as might be required of all classes of citizens,
and excludes the idea of a special tax levied upon an exceptional
class. During the last war in the United States the tax exemption or
commutation, to which a certain class of citizens were subjected by the
draft law, did not interfere with domiciliary rights. There is to-day
no exaction on the part of the United States government from foreign
citizens domiciled or established within them, of any pecuniary or
material contributions of a military nature; nor is it believed that
there is any such exaction on the part of any of the States.[70] The
Swiss construction of the treaty, as to the liability of the United
States citizens residing therein to this tax, was substantially
conceded by our Department of State in 1876, and left the remedy to be
sought by an international treaty. The Swiss government has indicated
its willingness to enter upon the negotiation of such a conventional
agreement to effect the relief of United States citizens from this tax,
after the manner prescribed by the law of 1878, and which was promptly
acted upon by all the European powers. The government of the United
States has not found it expedient to do this. Many difficulties are
suggested.

In parts of Switzerland there has appeared some dissatisfaction with
the military service and tax. It is alleged to be an unnecessary
waste of money expended on the country’s armed forces, draining its
limited resources to no practical purpose, and that an unprofitable and
irksome task is imposed upon them by this assessment. The statesmen of
Switzerland stand united in the expression that it is the only way to
be sure of their neutrality being respected; as was abundantly proven
by the prompt presence of the federal troops compelling Bourbaki’s
corps of 80,000 men, when in 1871 they were driven into the Swiss
territory, the moment they crossed the line, to lay down their arms;
and thereby saved the German army from crossing the frontier of the
Confederation and engaging the French on Swiss soil. The President of
the Confederation, in his address to the _Tir fédéral_ of 1887, voiced
the prevailing sentiment when he said: “The government of Switzerland
would remain foremost in maintaining peace and pride in its arts as
the supreme glory of the republic; and would constantly endeavor to
preserve her neutrality, but to do this she must not rely altogether
on treaties, but also look to her own strength and energy; to keep her
soldiery in condition to show that the adequacy of the Confederation
to all the needs of national life is, in no single department, taken
on trust. He therefore would urge them to be assiduous in improving
military training, to add such training to the education of the youth,
to hold rifle contests and to perfect drills, all of which should be
animated by a free fraternal spirit.” Notwithstanding the constitution
forbids the Confederation to keep a standing army, or any Canton to
have more than three hundred men as a permanent military body, every
able-bodied Swiss is a soldier of the republic; not on paper merely or
by legal and constitutional fiction, but _actually_. The necessity of
self-defence forced Switzerland to be the very first power in which
universal liability to military service was introduced in Europe, many
years and even centuries before other countries had recognized the
principle, which is now almost universal. The Swiss army is based
upon a “voluntary-compulsory” system. It is essentially a force of
militia intended for defensive purposes only. Admirable as it is in
a military and economic sense, it is scarcely more than a summer
holiday, compared with the rigid and grinding martial duties under the
other European systems. Two things make it a light burden, if not a
diversion, for the Swiss. They have a strong natural military instinct
coming down through generations.[71] Then this instinct is in every
possible manner encouraged and developed by the government, the Canton,
and the Commune. The elements of drill begin with the very first week
of a boy’s schooling, as soon as he can stand erect or poise a stick.
All kinds of games are practised that tend to open and expand the
chest, to nerve the limbs, give carriage to the form, and serve to
strengthen, temper, and adjust it. All these exercises fit him and, in
fact, contemplate his becoming in time a soldier. He not only learns
in his youth the elements of drill and the use of arms, but habits of
obedience, order, and cleanliness; and even those yet higher duties of
a camp, the will to mingle class with class, to put down personal hopes
and seek no object but the public good.

The _Schützenfest_, liberally encouraged by the government, is held
biennially. This is in many respects the parallel of the ancient Greek
festival game, which served the purpose of keeping alive the national
spirit. It is the most important and popular public gathering in
Switzerland; the entries for the various prizes running as high as
100,000. It is uniformly opened by a formal address from the President
of the Confederation and attended by all the leading men of the
country. It is a national fête day. Then there are the _Sociétés de
tir_, cantonal and communal shooting societies, which number about
1600, with over 100,000 members. These societies compete one with the
other, and in event of their conforming to certain regulations receive
subsidies from the Confederation. These regulations require:

1. Every member of the _Élite_ or _Landwehr_ must, on application, be
admitted to the club, if he is able and willing to pay his share of the
expense for targets, markers, etc.

2. The club must number at least twenty members.

3. The firing exercises must be done with the regulation arms and
ammunition; each soldier must use his own gun; regulation targets must
be had, and at least ten shots fired at every meeting, at each of the
distances named.

4. To receive the subsidy, every member of the club must annually take
part in at least three firing exercises, and must fire a total of fifty
shots, of which at least ten must be at one of the regulation distances
and regulation targets.

Every Swiss man therefore is drilled, armed, and ready to turn out
and fight; in his house, within arm’s reach, must hang his gun, his
uniform, and sword. The _concierge_ who accepts your _pourboire_ may
be a captain in the line, and the driver of your _voiture_ a corporal.
Some one, writing of the universal fusion between the military and
civic elements, tells this incident: A gentleman called to see a lawyer
on business; asking the servant if the lawyer was in, he answered, “The
colonel is not here, sir, but you can see the major.” So the visitor
was shown in, and saw the major, who was the lawyer’s partner, and when
he made a statement of his business, he was told, “That is not in my
department, the captain will look after it.” The captain was the firm’s
clerk, and while talking to him, a second clerk came into the office,
whom the captain saluted, saying, “Good day, lieutenant.”

In the public schools even the girls receive some training which fits
them to be useful auxiliaries in the army. They learn to stanch the
flow of blood, to dress a gunshot wound, and to nurse the sick; they
know some chemistry and are quick at sewing, binding, dressing, and
such medical arts. And if need, they would march in line with knapsacks
on their backs, as their mothers did in times past. The Helvetic women
fought against the army of Octavianus Augustus in 16 B.C., and when
all was lost, hurled their young children at the Roman soldiers and
rushed forward to meet their own death. In the old days of trial by
judicial combat, _assumere duellum_, the chronicles of 1288 contained
this curious entry: _Duellum fuit in Bern inter virum et mulierem,
sed mulier prevaluit_. Not only men but women fought at the battle
of Stantz, and among the killed were counted one hundred and thirty
women. During the French invasion of 1798, upward of eight hundred
women took up arms in the _Landsturm_, and bore all the fire of the
enemy in the last actions. At Fraubrunnen two hundred and sixty women
received the enemy with scythes, pitchforks, and pickaxes; one hundred
and eighty were killed, and one of them, whose name was Glar, had two
daughters and three granddaughters who fought by her side,--these six
heroines all were found among the dead. In the Swiss Reformed Church,
in administering the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper, the men go up
first and the women afterwards, with the single exception of Geiss, in
Appenzell, where, on account of their service at the battle of Amstoss,
the women go up first.

The Swiss owe their reputation to their freedom, and their freedom
to their valor. Their military spirit is entirely free from greed
of territory, lust of power, “the pride, pomp, and circumstance of
glorious war,” and other forces far from admirable in their motive,
which give prominence and predominance to modern armaments; it is
inspired by motives of civic manhood and manly self-assertion. A small
and by no means rich nation that relaxes not from its attitude of
defence is less likely to be attacked, though surrounded by powerful
and ambitious neighbors, than another nation which possesses wealth,
commerce, population, and all the sinews of war in far greater
abundance, but is unprepared. The more sleek the prey, the greater
is the temptation, and “no wolf will leave a sheep to dine upon a
porcupine.”

The spirit which animated the brave old Swiss was not that of revenge,
or plunder, or bloodshed. They fought simply when and because it was
necessary to insure the liberty of their native land. It was a sense
of duty rather than love of glory that strengthened and filled them
with an invincible heroism and inspired them with the sentiment so
often heard on the battle-field, _Wir müssen unsere Pflicht thun_ (“we
must do our duty”). The set of military regulations drawn up after the
battle of Sempach, more than five hundred years ago, might furnish a
model for to-day; a few taken at random will show their tenor:

1. Not to attack or injure any church or chapel unless the enemy have
retired into it.

2. Not to insult any females.

3. It is forbidden to any man to straggle for the sake of plunder, or
to appropriate to himself any part of the booty, which must all be
reported and be divided equally in good faith.

4. Every Swiss engages to sacrifice his life or property, if required,
for the defence of his countrymen.

5. No Swiss shall abandon his post even when wounded.

6. No Swiss shall take away anything from any of his countrymen either
in peace or war.

War has been the great training school of hardihood, endurance,
courage, self-sacrifice, and devotion to public duty. There is no
profession more favorable to the growth of noble sentiment and manly
action than that of the soldier; and to its beneficial action in the
formation of States, every page of history bears flaming testimony. A
great German professor declares: “Our army is not simply the organized
power of the state; it is also a great school, nay, our greatest
school for the masses, of intellectual culture, morals, politeness and
patriotism.” Let the Swiss ever cherish and imitate the simple lives,
the undaunted courage, the obstinate and enduring spirit, and the lofty
patriotism of their ancestors who, in the great contests which rolled
round the fort of their mountains, died on the fields of Morat and
Morgarten.




CHAPTER XIII.

EDUCATION.


No inquiry can be more important than that which proposes to discover
the legitimate purpose and the best course of general education. All
men, how much soever they may be distinguished from each other by a
variety of circumstances, connections, and pursuits, have yet one
common set of duties to perform; and it is in forming this character,
and imparting the ability to discharge these duties, that the business
of what may be called, in the most general sense, a good education,
properly consists. Such an education may, therefore, fitly be described
to be that course of discipline which is accommodated to man, as he is
man; which is to lay the firm foundation of excellence in future life;
and by which it is designed to effect the highest preparatory culture
of his whole nature. It happens, however, that the foundation of those
virtues which are to render us useful and happy must be laid at a time
when we are least willing to receive instruction,--when we are in
search rather of amusement for our imagination than of employment for
our reason. Aware of these difficulties, the instructors of mankind
have been in all ages solicitous to discover popular and efficacious
methods for their admonitions. Theories once embraced as judicious
and complete are succeeded by others which, in turn, are declared
as erroneous and defective. Plans at present deemed ill-concerted
or impracticable are the same which it was once thought reasonable
to adopt. Where government, national or state, insists upon having
every child given over to it for the first and formative educational
period, it assumes an infinite responsibility for the judicious and
reasonable training of the young committed to its care. And they have,
in turn, the right to conclude that the instruction given is that, of
all others, which the wisdom and wit of the age have pronounced to
be the most beneficial and important for them to receive. The system
of education is proportionately more enlightened and liberal as the
liberty of the subject is the basis and aim of the constitution. The
interested caution of a despotic government cares not to open too wide
every avenue to science. The state of public instruction is one of the
greatest glories of Switzerland. There is no country where primary
instruction is more developed and more wide-spread. A Switzer will tell
you that every child in the Confederation, unless under the school age
or mentally incapacitated, can read and write. This is true to the
extent that the exceptions to the rule are not sufficient to constitute
an illiterate class. Keeping school is the permanent business of
the state, and the attention to it is not merely a fixed and formal
business, but an unceasing and engrossing duty. A school is one of the
first things present to the eyes of a Swiss child, and one of the last
things present to the mind of a Swiss man. On reaching a certain age,
the right to stay at home and play ceases; the school seizes the child,
holds him fast for years, and rears him into what he is to be. The two
great items of expense which figure in the budget of a Swiss Canton
are the roads and public instruction. The sum bestowed on the latter
is immense, relatively to the total means of the Canton, standing far
ahead of the disbursements for military service, which, in Europe, is
a startling fact. On the continent, with the exception of Switzerland,
the cost of the public forces, even in times of absolute peace, is
estimated to be nearly fourteen times that of the public schools.[72]
The passion for public education, and the large expenditure so
cheerfully made for its support, are but natural in the land that gave
birth to Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Fellenberg. John Henry Pestalozzi,
born at Zurich in 1746, was the most celebrated of Swiss educational
reformers and philanthropists. His system furnished the basis and gave
the first impetus to the public school organization; it furnished also
a model for the rest of Europe, and especially for Germany. The main
features of this system, with the improvements made upon it, are to-day
regarded in Switzerland as the chief corner-stone of their superb
educational condition. His whole school apparatus consisted of himself
and his pupils; so he studied the children themselves, their wants and
capacities. “I stood in the midst of them,” he explains, “pronouncing
various sounds and asking the children to imitate them. Whoever saw
it was struck with the effect. It is true, it was like a meteor which
vanishes in the air as soon as it appears. No one understood its
nature. I did not understand it myself. It was the result of a simple
idea, or rather of a fact of human nature, which was revealed to my
feelings, but of which I was far from having a clear consciousness.
Being obliged to instruct the children by myself, without any
assistance, I learnt the art of teaching a great number together;
and as I had no other means of bringing the instruction before them
than that of pronouncing everything to them loudly and distinctly,
I was naturally led to the idea of making them draw, write, or work,
all at the same time.” Combining the experience with the ideas he had
received many years before from Rousseau, he invented his system of
object-lessons. The Yverdon Institute had soon a world-wide reputation.
Many came to wonder, many to be educated, many to learn the art of
education. Pestalozzian teachers went from it to Madrid, to Naples, to
St. Petersburg. Kings and philosophers joined in doing it honor. While
Pestalozzi did not invent the principle that education is a developing
of the faculties rather than an imparting of knowledge, he did much to
bring this truth to bear on early education, and to make it not only
received, but acted on. We must, at least, concede to him the merit,
which he himself claims, of having “lighted upon truths little noticed
before, and principles which, though almost generally acknowledged,
are seldom carried out in practice.” The motive power of his career
was the “enthusiasm of humanity.” He never lost faith in the true
dignity of man, and in the possibility of raising the Swiss peasantry
to a condition worthy of it. “From my youth up,” he says, “I felt what
a high and indispensable human duty it was to labor for the poor and
miserable, that he may attain to a consciousness of his own dignity
through his feeling of the universal powers and endowments which he
possesses awakened within him, so that he may be raised not only above
the ploughing oxen, but also above the man in purple and silk who lives
unworthily of his high destiny.” It is claimed of him that he was the
first teacher to announce convincingly the doctrine that all people
should be educated; that, in fact, education is the one good gift to
give to all, rich or poor, and, unlike any other giving, it helps and
does not hinder self-help. Pestalozzi was no friend to the notion of
giving instruction always in the guise of amusement, contending that
a child should very early in life be taught the lesson that exertion
is indispensable for the attainment of knowledge. At the same time
he held that a child should not be taught to look upon exertion as an
evil; he should be encouraged, not frightened, into it. “An interest,”
he claims, “in study is the first thing which a teacher should endeavor
to excite and keep alive. There are scarcely any circumstances in which
a want of application in children does not proceed from a want of
interest; and there are, perhaps, none in which the want of interest
does not originate in the mode of teaching adopted by the teacher. I
would go so far as to lay it down as a rule that, whenever children are
inattentive and apparently take no interest in a lesson, the teacher
should always first look to himself for the reason. Could we conceive
the indescribable tedium which must oppress the young mind while the
weary hours are slowly passing away, one after another, in occupations
which it can neither relish nor understand, could we remember the
like scenes which our own childhood has passed through, we should no
longer be surprised at the remissness of the school-boy, creeping
like a snail unwillingly to school. We must adopt a better mode of
instruction, by which children are less left to themselves, less thrown
upon the unwelcome employment of passive listening, but more roused by
questions, animated by illustrations, interested and won by kindness.”

The efforts of Pestalozzi went down in clouds, and when he died, at the
age of eighty-one, in 1827, he had seen the apparent failure of all his
toils. He had not, however, failed in reality. And when twenty years
later the centenary of his birth was celebrated by school-masters,
not only in his native country but throughout Germany, it was found
that Pestalozzian ideas had been sown, and were bearing fruit, over
the greater part of central Europe. Even to-day school-masters might
learn much from Pestalozzi, in aiming more at a plan of education
founded on a knowledge of human nature, and its modes of instruction
which shall better develop their pupils’ faculties. The true functions
of Pestalozzi, it is alleged, were to educate ideas, not children.
Even those who are most averse to theoretical views, which they call
unpractical, will admit, as practical men, that their methods are
probably susceptible of improvement, and that even a theorist might
lead them to make many observations which would otherwise have escaped
them; might teach them to examine what their aim really was, and
then whether they are using the most suitable methods to accomplish
it. Such a theorist is Pestalozzi. He points to a high ideal, and
bids us measure our modes of education by it. When Switzerland would
honor Pestalozzi’s name, the monument she built was more than brass
or bronze. It was a school,--a school where the memoirs of the man
were carved, not on wood or stone, but in the minds of happy, growing
youths, the fortunate beneficiaries of a system whose foundation he
laid.[73] Down to 1848 all the public schools in Switzerland had been
in the hands of the Cantons; in the federal constitution, adopted at
that time, it was provided that the Confederation might establish a
university and a polytechnic school. A proposition for a university was
soon thereafter submitted and rejected. Subsequently a law was passed,
in 1854, establishing a federal polytechnical school. In view of the
antagonism existing between the German, French, and Italian Cantons,
and the social friction that followed between the adherents of the
different creeds, it was found important that the Confederation should
be in a position to strengthen and direct the forces which make for
unity, and attention was directed to the vital forces which proceed
from a wisely-arranged system of public instruction. This resulted
in more extensive power being conferred upon the Confederation, in
the revised Constitution of 1874, with respect to education. The
27th Article of the Constitution declares: “The Confederation has
the right to establish, besides the existing polytechnical school,
a federal university and other institutions for higher instruction,
or may assist in the support of said institutions. The Cantons shall
provide for primary education, which must be adequate, and shall be
placed exclusively under the direction of the civil authorities. It is
compulsory, and in the public schools free. The public schools shall
be open to the adherents of all religious sects without any offence
to their freedom of conscience or of belief. The Confederation shall
take the necessary measures against such Cantons as shall not conform
to these provisions.” Primary instruction was first made compulsory
under this Constitution of 1874. The promotion and organization of the
elementary education are left in the hands of the Cantons, subject to
the control of the Confederation; but it must be exclusively under the
civil authority. This does not exclude the clergy--if not Jesuits--from
the position of teachers and other school officers, but simply
requires, if occupying these positions, they must stand on the same
footing as laymen. No person who belongs to a religious order, claiming
allegiance paramount to the state, can be a teacher in the public
schools. The provision guaranteeing freedom of conscience and belief
is complied with by the Cantons in a way suitable to their wants.
Religious instruction is usually given on fixed days, at stated hours,
so that every facility for absenting themselves is afforded to children
whose parents wish them only to receive secular instruction. In many
instances the religious instruction is confined to truths common to
all Christians, and to readings from the Bible. In reference to the
relation of the schools to religion in Switzerland, Matthew Arnold
reported: “Whoever has seen the divisions caused in a so-called logical
nation like the French by this principle of the neutrality of the
popular school in matters of religion might expect differently here.
None whatever has arisen. The Swiss communities, applying the principle
for themselves and not leaving theorists and politicians to apply it
for them, have done in the matter what they consider proper, and have
in every popular school religious instruction in the religion of the
majority, a Catholic instruction in Catholic Cantons, like Luzern, a
Protestant in Protestant Cantons, like Zurich; and there is no unfair
dealing, no proselytizing, no complaint.” The first school-year varies
from five to seven years of age, and runs up to twelve, except in
a few Cantons, where it extends to the fourteenth, fifteenth, and
sixteenth years. Primary instruction is left to the determination
of the several Cantons, only it must be, under the constitution,
“adequate.” With the exception of the Canton of Solothurn, where all
children must receive their primary instruction in the public schools,
a person is not obliged to send his children to the public school. He
is perfectly free to have them instructed wherever he wishes, provided
they receive an education, at least as good as that which is given in
the public schools. Parents who neglect or refuse to do one or the
other are cited before the authorities and subject to a fine, and
in case of a repetition of the offence to imprisonment. In most of
the Cantons the gratuity covers books and other school-materials to
children of indigent parents. There is no class of vagrant or destitute
children which the system fails to reach; even to those too poor to
obtain proper food and clothing, both public and private assistance
are freely rendered. The obligation resting upon the Confederation
to see that the Cantons meet the constitutional requirements has so
far not been supplemented by any federal legislation, prescribing the
method of such enforcement, or imposing any penalties for disregard
of the law. Certain Cantons having failed to do their duties in this
respect, the Federal Assembly in 1882 instructed the Federal Council to
take steps to insure a general compliance with the provisions of the
constitution. The Council proposed the creation of a Federal Department
of Public Instruction, with a number of inspectors, whose duty it
would be to enforce the law. So soon as the Assembly submitted this
suggestion in the form of a federal law, nearly two hundred thousand
citizens demanded its subjection to the _Referendum_ (30,000 was
sufficient to do so), and upon the taking of the popular vote, it was
rejected by the extraordinary majority of 146,129. It was an indignant
protest against what was regarded as an attempted interference with
their local home-government of the schools. Therefore the details
of school administration, organization, and inspection still remain
in the hands of the educational department of each Canton. In some
Cantons inspectors are appointed by the educational department; in
others, it is voluntarily conducted by a board composed chiefly of
professional men,--pastors or persons of influence. These inspectors
decide as to the course of studies, the books to be used, and act as a
sort of tribunal to hear and decide all controversies that may arise
between the teachers and the local authorities. As a rule, women are
not eligible as school inspectors. Every Commune, in addition to the
inspectors, has a school commission, elected by the communal assembly.
They are charged with providing sufficient school accommodation, and
keeping the buildings in repair; also to visit the schools and see
that any suggestions made by the inspector have been properly carried
out. The Commune provides the sites for the school buildings, and
these are erected at the joint expense of the Commune and Canton.
Great attention is given to the construction of these school-houses,
as to their comfort and convenience; the windows must face the east
or southeast, and the benches so arranged that the light falls upon
the pupil’s left hand. Then there is sure to be a large and grassy
plot for the children’s play-ground, with a fountain of pure water on
it, shady trees, and all the accessories for athletic exercise. The
school-house is the most commodious, modern, and handsome edifice to
be seen in a Swiss town. One may look in vain for the court-house and
town-hall, but on the most central and costly site is the school-house,
the pride of every city square and village slope. The schools are not
mixed, and when the Commune is not able to sustain separate schools,
the boys attend in the morning, and the girls in the afternoon.
Saturday is not a holiday. Each class has so many hours of schooling
for the week, apportioned among the six days. Every form of corporal
punishment is forbidden. No bodily pain, no bodily shame, is suffered
in the schools. Chastisement, it is claimed, first brutalizes a child;
second, makes him cowardly; and, third, blunts his sense of shame,
which must soon form the bulwark round virtue. “A lad has rights,”
says the Swiss teacher. “We cannot stint his food, we cannot lock him
up, we cannot crown him with a dunce’s cap, or we cannot make a guy
of him. Our discipline is wholly moral; our means are prizes, good
words, all leading up to public acts of honor. Should we have any
incorrigible ones, they are expelled, but expulsion is a very serious
matter, and must be exercised under prescribed rules, with due notice
to parents and the school officials; and at first only temporary and
conditional, and never final and absolute, without the formal sanction
of the school commission. This emergency rarely occurs. A threat or
admonition suffices, for expulsion is considered only one degree from
ruin.” Obedience which is rendered merely because there is a sense of
authority about the commander destroys the sympathetic relation which
should exist between the teacher and pupil. The best and only true
discipline is that which is secured, not through habits created from
the will of the teacher, says Professor Shaler, of Harvard, but won
through the exercise of the will of the pupil; only when accomplished
by sympathetic stimulus, is the effect truly educational. Manliness,
sincerity, and conscientiousness are its legitimate fruits; it fosters
honesty and truthfulness more than any regimen discipline.

The pupil’s manners and appearance are also cared for. He is taught
how to appear and act no less than how to read and write; how to walk,
stand, and speak; that his hands and face should be kept clean, as
well as his papers and books. A blot upon his page and a smudge upon
his face are regarded as equally bad. “A book befouled,” the teacher
tells us, “with grime is wasted, and our simple economical habits will
not suffer such waste; turn over any of these books, which are in
daily use, no leaf is torn or dog-eared, nor the covers defaced with
scribbling.” The same observation would apply to the school furniture
and building. The desks, though extremely plain, look as if they are
daily washed and polished; not a spot nor splash of ink to be seen
on their surface, not any evidence of the bad boy’s knife; the large
corridors and spacious stairways show no scratch or scrawl; the wall
free from fingermarks and inscriptions, and no bits of paper on the
floor. The children, representing all classes of society, from the
patrician to the poorest peasant, are neatly and comfortably clad;
none dirty, ragged, or shoeless. To an expression of surprise at this,
we are informed “that if a child comes to school with face begrimed
or clothes torn, he is washed, cleaned, and mended up, and then sent
home; the mother gets ashamed on finding that some other woman, or
it may be a man, has had to wash her child; the child also becomes
mortified, and it is never necessary to repeat the treatment.” The
moment that a pupil is on the street he has passed from the circle of
his home, and that moment has commenced the school’s authority. The
regulations, printed on slips and dropped in every house, contain,
among a score of others, the following rule relating to conduct on
the street: “Delay of any kind between the scholar’s home and school
is not allowed. No whooping, yelling, throwing stones and snow-balls,
teasing children, ridiculing age or deformity can be endured. Grown
persons shall be met with kind civility, politely greeted as they
pass, and thus shall honor be reflected on the school.” There is very
little contumacious absence from school. The children have the habit
of going to school as a matter of course, and the parents equally
the habit of acquiescing in their going. The Federal Factory Act of
1877, with a purpose of preventing any interference with attendance
at school, forbids the employment, in a mill or public workshop,
of any child until he has attained the age of fifteen. And every
Swiss _recruit_ for military service is required to pass an _examen
pédagogique_, with a view of enabling the authorities to ascertain
the degree of instruction attained by the youth of the country. This
examination consists of arithmetic, geography, and Swiss history;
and those who do not come up to the minimum educational standard are
required to undergo instruction at the _recruit_ school, and the odium
attendant upon this is found to exercise a marked beneficial effect on
the education of the peasantry. The teachers of the primary schools
are nominated by the school inspectors and elected by the Communal
Assembly. Teachers of the higher schools are appointed by the Cantonal
Director of Education and confirmed by the Board of Educational
Department. They are elected for a term of six years, and after
service on a differential scale are retired on a pension of not less
than one-half of their salary at the time of their retirement. Each
Commune decides for itself whether male or female teachers shall be
employed. The teachers are trained for a period of four years in one
of the cantonal normal schools. In the Grisons and Neuchâtel, normal
schools are attached to the secondary schools, but in the Cantons of
Zurich, Bern, Luzern, Schwyz, Freiburg, Solothurn, St. Gallen, Aargau,
Thurgau, Ticino, Vaud, and Valais separate establishments exist. The
students are usually lodged and boarded at the actual cost; and free
and half-free places are open for those unable to pay in full. Each
Commune must pay to the primary school-teacher a minimum salary of
550 francs, but these salaries will run from 600 to 1000 francs, with
free lodging and fuel, the latter being an important item of expense.
Those in the larger towns receive from 1200 to 1700 francs, secondary
school-teachers are paid from 2200 to 2500 francs, and teachers in the
gymnasiums an average of 3300 francs. The Cantons assist the Communes
in augmenting the lower salaries and in the payment of the pensions.
After thirty years of service, or in case of disability or illness
contracted in the line of professional duty, teachers may retire on
the pension above indicated. In some Cantons, after five years of
service, 100 francs are added to the salary, and an additional 100
for each _quinquennium_. In Basel a female teacher, after ten years
of service, is entitled to a supplemental salary of 250 francs per
annum; after fifteen years, 357 francs per annum, and then on voluntary
retirement, after fifteen years of service, a pension for life equal to
two per cent. on the amount she was being paid at time of retirement.
Thus the Swiss teacher has pragmatic rights,--that is, he has a legal
claim to a fixed salary, and to a retiring pension in case of age or
illness. The Swiss teacher is to his pupil a father and companion.
He leads and assists on the play-ground the same as he does in the
school-room; a free and unrestrained companionship, beautiful as it is
beneficial, unmixed with foolish fondness or paternal pride. Together
they will run and leap and laugh and dance and sing as well as learn.
The hours of study past, the pupil and teacher wander to the forests
and the field; together pluck wild flowers and plants; together climb
the hills, cross lakes and streams, searching for curious rocks and
plants, learning again from them the lessons of the day. This is the
very essence of education: for a man who professes to instruct to get
among his pupils, study their character, gain their affections, and
form their inclinations and aversions, together with that affectionate
vigilance which is experienced in the best home-circle. These men
regard the school as a psychological observatory, where they are to
practise the very difficult art of discovering the capacities of the
pupils, receiving them with a tender consideration for the good and
evil they bring with them, and with an apt adjustment of the resources
of education to their individual needs. The primary or communal schools
come first in number. In every hamlet, where there may be twenty girls
and boys, the communal officials must provide a school-house and hire
a master. These are supposed to embrace the pupilage for the first
five or six school-years. The lessons average from twenty to thirty
weekly, and they have annual vacations from ten to twelve weeks. The
children who are old enough to assist in work at home are only required
to attend one-half of the day during the harvest season, or other busy
times. In some instances there is provided for this class what is known
as the supplementary school, which is held only on two mornings of
the week; the aim being to help the pupil retain what he has already
learned in the primary school until he can again resume his regular
attendance. A curious custom prevails in some of these communal schools
with respect to the supply of the necessary firewood in winter. Every
boy or girl must contribute a piece; and in winter the children may be
constantly seen tearing down-hill, each with a log of wood tied to a
_luge_ (little sledge) as his contribution to the school-fire.

The course of study in the primary school embraces:

  1. Religion.
  2. Native language.
  3. Arithmetic.
  4. Writing.
  5. Physical and political geography.
  6. History of Switzerland.
  7. Elements of civic instruction.
  8. Drawing.
  9. Elements of natural science.
  10. Singing.
  11. Gymnastics; and
  12. (For the girls) Manual work in knitting and sewing.

Connected with the primary schools in some Cantons is the
_secundar-schule_, or secondary school; this school is open on
Sundays and in the evenings, during the winter months; and the course
includes book-keeping, business composition, such as letters, bills,
contracts, and obligations of various kinds appertaining to trade
and industry. In many Cantons the secondary or advanced division of
the primary school is free, and attendance compulsory; in others,
attendance optional, with a nominal charge of five francs. The course
is three years for boys and four for girls. In the Cantons of Zurich
and Luzern, the children from the primary schools are given four
years of gratuitous instruction in these supplementary schools. By
the last accessible report, it appears there were in attendance at
the primary schools 455,490 pupils, under the care of 8763 teachers.
Sixteen Cantons provided 437 secondary schools, with 20,500 pupils. The
_intermediate_ schools present much variety, and have only one feature
in common, in that they represent a higher grade than the primary,
with an enlarged and more deepened course of study. They extend to
elements of literature in the mother tongue, composition of an advanced
kind, reading of classical authors, higher mathematics, and foreign
languages (which practically are confined to French for the German and
Italian Cantons, and to German for the French Cantons); geography and
history also become much extended.

These schools, however, do not have any pretensions beyond what
their title of _intermediate_ indicates. There are several grades
of these intermediate schools, such as the _district school_ and
_under-gymnasium_. In these, still more advanced literary, technical,
and artistic instructions are given. The ancient languages, Greek,
Latin, natural history, physics, and chemistry are taught. Many of
them are free, and in no case does the fee exceed 25 to 40 francs
for the scholastic year. The greater portion of the expense of these
schools is defrayed by the Communes, some of the cantonal governments
assisting. The Canton of Bern pays one-half the salaries of the
teachers, and pensions meritorious and indigent pupils from 50 to 100
francs per annum. The highest grade of an intermediate school is the
high-school or _gymnasium_. The course is from three to six years, and
is preparatory for the university. Pupils who obtain a “certificate” at
the close of the gymnasium curriculum are, as a rule, enabled to enter
the university or the polytechnic without examination. These schools
are all subject to cantonal control and supported by them, except in
a few of the largest towns, where they are under municipal authority,
and then the towns bear much of the expense. With the exception of the
federal palace, the most costly structure in Bern is the _gymnasium_,
and the same relative superiority prevails as to these school buildings
throughout Switzerland. The age for admission is from fifteen to
seventeen years, with a fee from 10 to 100 francs covering the annual
session. There are 58 of these _gymnasiums_, with 12,500 students. As a
fair sample, the weekly curriculum of a first-class girls’ _gymnasium_
in Bern may be given:

Monday, history; Tuesday, religion; Wednesday, arithmetic; Thursday,
religion; Friday, French; Saturday, religion, eight to nine o’clock.

Monday, German; Tuesday, French; Wednesday, geography; Thursday,
singing; Friday, German; Saturday, French, nine to ten o’clock.

Monday, arithmetic; Tuesday, natural history; Wednesday, German;
Thursday, history; Friday, natural history; Saturday, geography, ten to
eleven o’clock.

Monday, gymnastics; Tuesday, singing; Wednesday, French; Thursday,
German; Friday, arithmetic; Saturday, arithmetic, two to three o’clock
P.M.

Monday, drawing; Tuesday, readings; Wednesday, holiday; Thursday,
book-keeping; Friday, readings; Saturday, holiday, three to four
o’clock P.M.

There are four _universities_ in Switzerland, located respectively
at Basel, Bern, Zurich, and Geneva. The one at Basel was founded in
1460, and in the early Reformation times was one of the most famous
institutions in Europe; attracting Erasmus, of Rotterdam, from his
professorship at Cambridge, and the German Œcolampadius, one of the
most learned men of his country, and to whose patient teaching and
moderate temper was due no little of the taking root of the Reformed
doctrines in Switzerland.[74] Each university contains the four
faculties of law, theology, medicine, arts and philosophy, and will
compare favorably in teaching-power, apart from the mere accessories
of endowments and splendid buildings, with any universities to be
found in Europe. The tuition depends on the number and character of
the faculties attended, varying from 2½ to 10 francs per week, and 100
to 200 francs per annum. The degree conferred is equivalent to that
of “Doctor” in the German, and “Bachelor” in the French universities.
The matriculation of these universities by the last report was 2371,
including 107 female students, and employing 200 teachers. In addition
to these universities, of the same rank with them is the Polytechnic
at Zurich, founded in 1854. This is, in fact, the only educational
institution which is directly and exclusively under the control of
the Confederation. The federal authorities do not interfere with the
methods of instruction and matters of detail in the different schools
that may be assisted by the Confederation. The total annual expenditure
of the Polytechnic is about 500,000 francs, and is defrayed by the
government. Extensive improvements and additions are in course of
construction, under a federal appropriation of 1,000,000 francs for
that purpose.

The Polytechnic comprises seven distinct schools, with courses varying
from two and a half to three and a half years, viz.:

  1. Architectural.
  2. Civil engineering.
  3. Mechanical engineering.
  4. Chemical technology (including pharmacy).
  5. Agriculture and farming.
  6. Normal school.
  7. Philosophical and political science.

There are two hundred distinct courses of lectures given during the
year, by forty-five professors and thirteen assistants, in the German,
French, and Italian languages. The average number of students is from
seven to eight hundred, and they represent almost every nation.
The female students number from fifty to sixty. The charge for a
complete course in any one of the polytechnical schools varies from
400 to 500 francs. Between all Swiss schools, from the primary to the
university, there is an “organic connection;” the university, in the
natural continuation and correspondence, crowning the work begun in the
primary school. The Swiss method of teaching is never mechanical; it
is gradual, natural, and rational. It is patient, avoids over-hurry;
content to advance slowly, with a firm securing of the ground passed
over. The fundamental maxim is from the intuition to the notion,
from the concrete to the abstract, founding habits alike of accurate
apprehension and clear expression. The system is not wooden, but
appreciates that variety in mental food is as important as in bodily
nourishment for healthy growth; that children at school are often
tired and listless, because they are wearied and bored. From this the
Swiss school finds relief in drill, gymnastics, singing, and drawing.
Especially do music and drawing play a leading part in the programme.
It is natural for children to imitate; thus they acquire language,
and thus, with proper direction and encouragement, they find pleasure
in attempting to sing the melodies they hear, and to draw the simple
objects around them. By drawing, the eye is trained as well as the
hand; the attention to the exact shape of the whole and the proportion
of the parts which is requisite for the taking of an adequate sketch
is converted into a habit, and becomes productive both of instruction
and amusement. The Swiss system seeks to adapt the methods to the
mental process; every effort is made to interest the pupil and to make
learning palatable, and, like Lucretius, “to smear the rim of the
educational cup with honey.” It is a common practice in schools of the
United States to give children the rule for doing a sum, and then test
them by seeing if, by that rule, they can do so many given sums right.
The notion of a Swiss teacher is, that the school-hour for arithmetic
is to be employed in ascertaining that the children understand the rule
and the processes to which it is applied. The former practice places
the abstract before the concrete, the latter works in the opposite
way. The Swiss instruction aims to render the pupil capable of solving
independently and with certainty the calculations which are likely to
come up before him in ordinary life. In a word, the Swiss possess and
follow a carefully-matured science of pedagogy. If a school is fate to
a Swiss child, the vision comes to him in the likeness of a fairy; it
is made, by public and private acts, a centre of happy thoughts and
pleasant times; it shares the joy of home and the reward of church. The
children have tasks to do at home nearly equal to the tasks at school.
The hours of study, school-work, drill, and home-work are frequently
from ten to twelve a day. Indeed, you may say, these Swiss children
must tug at learning in a way that would create a rebellion with the
young American. In spite of these long hours and manifold duties, the
attention is never unduly strained, and, at intervals, never exceeding
two hours, the class disperses for a few moments to the corridors or
play-grounds for recreation and a romp. No people can boast of so many
schools in proportion to population, or of a system of education at
once so enlarged and simplified, so instructive and attractive, so
scientific and practical. Healthy, for it takes care of the body as
well as the mind; practical, for it teaches drawing, which is the key
of all industrial and mechanical professions; moral and patriotic,
because it is founded on love of country. In many countries it is a
political or governing class which establishes popular schools for the
benefit of the masses. In Switzerland it is the people, the Communes,
which establish and sustain the schools for their own benefit. The
same general equality of conditions prevails as in the United States,
and these schools are freely used by all classes. This is as it should
be in a free commonwealth, where character and ability are the only
rank, and men are thrown together in later life according to the groups
they form at school. Every child of superior merit, however humble and
poor, has an equal chance to mount the highest round of the educational
ladder. This building of human minds means business in Switzerland.
Everywhere you find a school,--a primary school, a supplementary
school, a secondary school, a day school, evening school, school for
the blind, school for the deaf, industrial school, commercial school,
linguistic school, intermediate school, gymnasium or high-school,
university, polytechnical school, schools of every sort and size, class
and grade, with the happy motto carved over many a door: “Dedicated to
the Children.” It is a business, standing far ahead of petty politics
and hunting after place, or the worship of Mammon; a business that,
when nobly done, brings bountiful return in love of order, law, right,
and truth.

The Swiss cantonal constitutions declare that the happiness of the
people is to be found in good morals and good instruction; and that,
in a free country, every citizen should have placed within his reach
an education fitting him for his rights and duties. Every Canton
has in its constitution some expression embodying the idea that the
business of a public teacher is to make his boys good citizens and
good Christians. In some Cantons the distinct announcement is made
that the true end of public instruction is to combine democracy with
religion. In that of Zurich it is announced: “The people’s school
shall train the children of all classes, on a plan agreed upon, to be
intelligent men, useful citizens, and moral, religious beings.” In
Luzern it is laid down that “the schools shall afford to every boy and
girl capable of receiving an education the means of developing their
mental and physical faculties, of training them for life in the family,
in the Commune, in the church, and in the state, and of putting them
in the way of getting their future bread.” In Vaud it is declared
that “teaching in the public schools shall be in accordance with
the principles of Christianity and democracy.” In fact, the organic
law of each and every Canton demands a system of public education,
sound, solid, moral, and democratic. They all bespeak the early and
imperishable impress of that great Swiss educational reformer who, more
than a century ago, uttered the memorable invocation: “Patron saint of
this country, announce it in thunder tones through hill and valley that
true popular freedom can only be made possible through the education
of man!” Since the two zealous Irish monks, Columban and Gall, went to
the continent, A.D. 585, and the latter founded the famous monastery of
St. Gallen, the descendants of the Helvetii have powerfully contributed
to European civilization and progress; learning and science finding a
home not only at St. Gallen, but at Basel, Zurich, Geneva, and Bern.
In the age of the Carlovingians, more than a thousand years ago, the
Abbey of St. Gallen was the most erudite spot in Europe. It had the
original manuscript of Quintilian, from which the first edition was
published. The art of printing, when in its infancy everywhere else,
had already been carried to a high degree of perfection at Basel; and
the crusaders, who conquered Constantinople, met there A.D. 1202.
Geneva was early distinguished in the annals of literature and science
as well as for progress in the arts. Learned men, some of the exiles of
Queen Mary’s reign, among whom was Whittingham, who married Calvin’s
sister, devoted “the space of two years and more, day and night,” to a
careful revision of the text of the English Bible, and the preparation
of a marginal commentary upon it. The result of these labors was the
publication, in 1560, of the celebrated Geneva Bible. The cost of this
was defrayed by the English congregation at Geneva. Queen Elizabeth,
to whom it was dedicated, granted a patent to John Bodley, the father
of the founder of the Bodleian Library, for the exclusive right of
printing it in English for the space of seven years. Its advantages
were so many and great that it at once secured and--even after the
appearance of King James’s Bible--continued to retain a firm hold upon
the bulk of the English nation. While Switzerland can hardly be said to
possess a truly national literature, it has always maintained a very
good literature in German and in French; but these literatures are not
the expression of a common national life. The Swiss have displayed
remarkable powers in science, in political philosophy, in history,
and in letters. Among the distinguished workers in these intellectual
fields may be mentioned Lavater, whose eloquence, daring, and
imagination as a physiognomist procured European celebrity; Pestalozzi,
the originator of a system of education to which he devoted a life of
splendid sacrifice; De Saussure, the indefatigable philosopher, the
inventor of a thermometer for ascertaining the temperature of water at
all depths, and the electrometer for showing the electrical condition
of the atmosphere; Bonnet, the psychologist; Gesner, the poet, whose
“Death of Abel” has been translated into many languages; Müller, a
historian remarkable for his patience in research, picturesque writing,
and disgust for traditionary tales, and who is reported to have read
more books than any man in Europe, in proof of which they point to his
fifty folio volumes of excerpts in the town library of Schaffhausen;
Zwingli, the Canon of Zurich and the co-laborer of Calvin, a man of
extensive learning, uncommon sagacity, and heroic courage; Mallet,
the illustrious student of antiquities of Northern Europe; Constant,
philosopher of the source, forms, and history of religion; Sismondi,
a writer of history, literature, and political economy; Necker,
brilliant in politics and finance, and his celebrated daughter, Madame
de Staël; Rousseau, who fired all Europe with his zeal for the rights
of the poor and the free development of individual character, and who
wielded the most fertile and fascinating pen that ever was pointed in
the cause of infidelity; D’Aubigné, the well-known historian of the
Reformation; Agassiz, the greatest naturalist of his age, and Guyot,
his compatriot and fellow-worker, to whom we owe the inception of
that system of meteorological observations called the Signal Service;
Haller, Horner, Dumont, and many others who won an honorable place in
learning and literature. The remarkable resources of its modern schools
and universities, and the zeal of the rising generation for learning,
promise well for the intellectual future of Switzerland. To be quick
in thought and quick in action; to have practical, scientific, and
technical knowledge; to be capable of appreciating new facts, and of
taking large views; to be patient and painstaking; to have the power of
working mentally for distant objects; to have an instinct of submission
to law, both to the laws of society, which aim at justice to all and
at order, and to the laws of nature, submission to which enables a man
to use effectually his own powers and to turn to account the powers of
nature; to raise life into a higher stage; to give to every one free
opportunities for participation in the knowledge and moral training,
combined with freedom and political equality, which will elevate the
idea of humanity,--these are the moral and intellectual qualities
with which the Swiss school system would fain endow the whole people.
Just as their old agrarian system made land, so their new educational
system is making intellectual training common to all. The powers it
confers are now, in a sense, common pastures, upon which all may keep
flocks and herds; common forests, from which all may get fuel and
building-materials; and common garden ground, by the cultivation of
which all may supply their wants. The quaint words of John Knox contain
a sentiment still potent in Switzerland, “That no father, of what
estate or condition that ever he may be, can use his children at his
own fantasie, especially in their youthhood; but all must be compelled
to bring up their youth in learning and virtue.”




CHAPTER XIV.

TECHNICAL AND INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.

  “The noble craftsman we promote,
    Disown the knave and fool;
  Each honest man shall have his vote,
    Each child shall have his school.”


A French writer has compared a well-arranged plan of public instruction
“to a railway system, with its main line, stations, junctions, and
branch lines. Just as passengers on a railway get out at the different
stations, so the children who, from pecuniary necessity or social
position, are compelled to earn their livelihood leave school at
any point of this course; all, according to the amount of knowledge
they have acquired, are able to take their place in the social
stratification.”

As it is the duty and interest of railway managers to give facilities
for all classes of passengers, so it is the duty and interest of the
state to provide for all who travel the road of learning, leaving to
the operation of natural laws, in both cases, the fixing of proportions
of way and through fares.

Education as the acquiring of information is one thing: it is quite
another thing to develop the human forces by a thoughtfully-planned
course of training, mentally, physically, and morally fitting one
for “complete living.” Educational methods in every age have been
the outgrowth of the social conditions of the time, and are, as a
rule, found to be in accordance with the beliefs and principles by
which nations are controlled. A new definition of culture is being
constructed, one which shall embrace the industries and the mechanical
arts. Industrial processes and occupations are claiming recognition
in school and college courses, both for the sake of the encouragement
and assistance they may render to the industrial classes, and because
the familiarity with them is felt to be required by the wants and
demands of the age. It is not a rebellion against the old methods as
bad in themselves. It does not necessarily interfere with or involve
any loss to the traditional studies of the school-room. It is not an
attempt to substitute the labors of the workshop for the legitimate
intellectual training of the school, inasmuch as the shop-practice, if
properly arranged, would be in the nature of change and rest, and even
of recreation to the pupil, bringing him back fresher and brighter to
his studies. The alternation is stimulating. Change of occupation is
proverbially almost as refreshing as rest. The pupils pass from the
shop to the class-room, and conversely, with a new zeal and zest for
their tasks in either department. It means the addition of practice
to theory, experiment to knowledge, the correct eye and skilful hand
to the developed brain; that the youth sent forth from school shall
be fitted not only for professions and clerkships, but for the heat
and task of active life, and for the skilled labor which is so sorely
needed. There exist much general misapprehension and no little grave
misrepresentation as to industrial schools and manual training, and an
attempt in some quarters to confound them with the stupefying effect
of long-continued toil. It is not contemplated to swing too far the
pendulum of school reform, or to present a panacea. It is proposed to
supplement the older scholastic culture with that which will make it
take a firmer hold upon men’s minds, and will bring the school into
closer harmony with the time-spirit. Let there be no interference, much
less any extinction of the classical system. We have come to regard
that as a sacred thing and unassailable. Let it remain impregnable
to all the attacks of iconoclasts and reformers. The Latin and Greek
languages and the science of mathematics come recommended to us by
all experience, signed and countersigned, as it were, by the testimony
of ages as the basis of every system of liberal culture. They furnish
a grateful vicissitude of genial and severe studies; while the one
awakens the sensibilities, refines the taste, enlarges the conception,
enriches the memory, and invigorates the power of moral judgment; the
other, by a course of mental gymnastics as rigid as it is perfect,
develops to the utmost the great faculties of attention, analysis, and
generalization. No scholar can doubt that they must always form an
indispensable element in any scheme of liberal instruction, by which
all the powers and emotions of our moral and intellectual nature may
be so touched, quickened, directed, exercised, and informed, as to
attain their largest measure of capacity. But, side by side with the
higher institutions of learning, there should be established schools
where the sciences in their relations to the arts and industries shall
be specific branches of instruction and training; the addition of a
sufficient amount of work in the handling of tools and the manipulation
of materials to a good sound education in languages, mathematics,
history, and science. Young people should be prepared to take a
broad and intelligent part in the life of an age which is eminently
scientific and practical; an age which has to do with a world of
fierce competition, in which trade is not despised, while science of
every kind is a means of making a livelihood; an age which demands an
education that seeks to arm a man as well as to adorn him, _armer_ and
_orner_. There is no warrant for applying the term educational to any
sort of knowledge which does not increase the power of its possessor,
and so make him the more able to satisfy his needs and desires without
disorder and waste. The measure of this ability is the measure of a
country’s economic progress. Industrial training has an economical and
moral as well as an educational value. As Professor Huxley puts it, we
cannot continue in this age “of full modern artillery to turn out our
boys to do battle in it, equipped only with the sword and shield of an
ancient gladiator.”

With many education is looked upon merely as a mental training
whose sole object is to place the mind in a state fit to receive
future impressions. This may be all very well for those who are
never to feel the keen struggle for existence; but for a vast and
constantly-increasing majority who are doomed to a bread-winning life,
the main purpose of education should be to make the youthful mind
“a supple, effective, strong, and available instrument for whatever
purpose it may be applied to.” Less than three per cent. of the boys
of this country can hope to make a living by the practice of the
professions. Less than twenty per cent. of the boys enter high schools,
and less than half of those who enter complete the course. The first
duty of man is to work, and the first object of education should be
to fit him for that work; to make him not the slave but the master
of what it has imparted, the manipulator and not the mere receptacle
of its power. Every year adds to the necessity of supplementing the
muscular power of the laborer and artisan with that mental energy which
only comes of education. Men in the busy corners of the globe are
multiplying day by day, and multiplying more rapidly than the means
of supporting life. Unskilled labor, or, as technically defined, the
“labor of quantity,” is being ousted by the iron sinews and fiery pulse
of the steam-engine and the machine. Man, as the mere owner of muscle,
is being edged out by these most powerful competitors. Merely as an
agent of physical force, as the possessor of the power of labor, the
steam-engine is a competitor which drives him easily out of the market,
and more and more unskilled labor is passing away by the development of
the forces which mechanical science has discovered. As the world goes
on, we must expect mechanical force to be more varied, more powerful,
and cheaper, and the competition of the human limbs to become more
helpless. But there is one region where the machine can never follow
the human being, and that is in the exercise of thought. In skill, in
the cultivation of the mind, in the power of applying the powers of
thought to the laws of nature, in all that we call skilled labor of
the highest kind, in that man must always have a monopoly and need
fear no encroachment. Science teaching, as applied to that instruction
which familiarizes the student with the universe in which he lives,
and makes him in the presence of the great laws and forces of nature
not a stranger, but a child at home, must be recognized as one of the
great moulding influences of the time; it is at the foundation of
material progress; it is the basis on which much of the manufacturing
industry and commerce rests; many of the deep social ameliorations of
the day are due to its influence; and popular education must be brought
into closer relations with it. The industrial world has been made by
scientific discovery, and its prosperity must largely depend on the
spirit of scientific knowledge among the masses of its workers. It
is only by the practical application of such knowledge to industrial
processes that a country can hope to hold its own in the struggle
of national competition. The genius of invention has succeeded in
producing by machinery cheap and serviceable imitations of almost every
necessary of life, hitherto the exclusive product of skilled labor. The
artisan is daily becoming more and more the servant of automatic tools.
Every industry is tending to centralization in a few hands, and from
human to mechanical hands. If the workshop is to compete successfully
with the factory, it must do so by superior taste and finish in that
higher sphere of methodical, technical, rational labor whither the
finest inventions cannot follow in the domain of thought. It is here,
and only here, the laborer can hope to hold his own against the great
power he has himself brought forth. It is here the means of increased
subsistence must be found. One of the most anxious subjects of public
care is to discover methods by which the masses of the people shall be
able to maintain themselves in a prosperous, decent, and comfortable
condition. In bare, unskilled labor the satisfaction for this want is
not to be found. The Swiss have foreseen that the industrial victory
must be won on the intellectual field, the association of manual work
with technical training and scientific research; and the necessity
for that delicacy of touch and accuracy of eye, that have made their
mechanics in many departments the best in the world, to be further
educated and prepared for supremacy in a field of wider range and more
varied scope. In this way art may regain an influence over manufacture,
which, though not lost, is certainly jeopardized by the introduction
of machinery. The whole tendency of modern trade has been in the
direction of wholesale transactions, which, while favoring the hundred
and the gross, have neglected the piece or the example. We miss in the
manufactures which we turn out the individual touch of the workman, and
we have gained a dead level of uninteresting achievement at the expense
of intelligence, originality, and variety. The demand for old designs
in furniture, or silver or iron work, pushed to undue excess, perhaps,
by the caprice of fashion, is after all a healthy protest against the
monotonous and mindless excellence of the machine-made article. There
is a difference between learning a trade and learning the principles
of a trade. The object is not always to teach the “technic” of an
industry, because that can be done only in the workshop, but it may
be to teach the science and art upon which all technics are really
based. Manual training is of course training to manual labor, which has
been called the “study of the external world.” While in all technical
education the sciences and arts must be illustrated by practical
examples, the main object is to so instruct masters and workmen
that they can pursue their craft with dignity and intelligence,
without professing to teach the craft itself. The need for technical
instruction arises from the fact that ordinary educational systems are
not fitted to promote the rapid development of trade, manufactures, and
commerce. The education of the industrial classes should bear on their
occupations in life. The life of a laborer is spent in dealing with
things which he has to convert into utilities. In this conversion he
must take the properties inherent to each kind of matter and convert
them into utilities by an intelligent application of forces, which
he may guide but cannot alter. No man can create new properties in
matter or subject it to the action of new forces. When working-men get
a higher life, a life of intelligence and knowledge, they then can
develop improvements in their industries by an economical application
of force, and a wise use of properties in material. Not mere handicraft
skill, with ten fingers disassociated from the head and the heart,
can sustain mechanical industry. Machinery, when rightly understood
and applied, will prove the greatest means of intellectual elevation,
for its very purpose is to substitute the thought of the brain for
the toil of the hand and the sweat of the brow. How excellent the
old Greek poet is when natural forces are made substitutes for human
labor: “Woman!” he exclaims, “you have hitherto had to grind corn, let
your arms rest for the future! It is no longer for you that the birds
announce by their songs the dawn of the morning. Ceres has ordered the
water nymphs to move the mill-stones and perform your labor.” Technical
education is to train the pupils to handiness; to supplement mental
activity with physical dexterity. The object of teaching girls to sew
is not necessarily to train professional dress-makers, but to make
them careful and tidy in their homes. Workshop instruction is not to
make boys carpenters and cabinet-makers, but to enable them to learn
any trade more easily and make them generally handy. It is no small
part of the value of such training that the workman may be fitted to
render his home more commodious, to arrange a shelf or cupboard, to
repair a broken piece of furniture, or possibly to decorate his humble
home. But whether or not, in after years, the student sees proper to
become or by necessity is driven to a professional use of his technical
knowledge, this is not involved in the idea and system of its pursuit.
Its purpose is that, when he leaves school, he shall carry with him
an education serviceable for any occupation of life; to develop a
dexterity of hand which will prove valuable under any circumstances,
and at the same time furnish him with a means of healthy enjoyment. It
is a simple recognition of the fact that a large number of the children
must be destined to make their living by industrial labor. There is
certainly something in the operation of learning a trade that is akin
to capitalizing. The youth works in the training-school, and he defers
to the future the final results of the process. He lays up wealth, as
it were, by doing that which avails only to give him a larger income
hereafter. It is much as if he put money into the banks. It has always
appeared as though a purely scholastic education makes children averse
to manual labor; that it results too much in every boy and girl leaving
school desirous of engaging in work which is neither manual nor, what
is mistermed, menial. It brings too often to expectant parents the
disappointment experienced by Sir Francis Pedant, in Fielding’s comedy;
that gentleman, it will be remembered, was very angry when he found
that, instead of instilling into his boy at Oxford, as per contract,
“a tolerable knowledge of stock jobbery,” his tutor had fraudulently
crammed him with the works of all the logicians and metaphysicians from
“the great Aristotle down to the learned modern Burgersdicius.” “Have I
been at all this expense,” exclaimed Sir Avarice, piteously, “to breed
a philosopher?”

As a fundamental rule, it may be accepted that the knowledge which is
best for use is also best for discipline, since any other supposition,
as Herbert Spencer has shown, would “be utterly contrary to the
beautiful economy of nature, if one kind of culture were needed for
the gaining of information, and another kind were needed as a mental
gymnastic.” The best end of any education is to equip boys and girls
to earn their own living when they grow up, and to perform efficiently
the duties to which they may be called when they reach the estate of
manhood and womanhood; giving them that most valuable of all gifts
on earth--personal independence--the capacity to stand on their own
feet and look the world in the face, to take care of themselves, and
those who belong to them. The question of technical and industrial
education has received much intelligent consideration and very
extensive application in Switzerland. Since 1884 the Confederation, to
encourage the existing technical schools as well as the establishment
of new ones, has been granting annual subsidies, which are becoming
more and more liberal. The Polytechnic at Zurich, to which reference
has been made in the previous chapter, is now well known as a model
school of practical life, with mechanics, physics, and arts under a
thoroughly scientific curriculum. Trade and industrial schools, as
distinguished from polytechnical,--genuine establishments for teaching
homely trades,--have been made a prominent as well as a compulsory
feature in many of the Swiss educational systems. In some form these
are to be found in every Canton, furnishing instruction in one or more
branches of handiwork,--the boys preparing to become skilled workmen
and competent foremen; and many a girl, though an indifferent scholar,
by being taught cutting, needle-work, cooking, nursing, and methodical
habits--accomplishments that bear so closely upon the happiness and the
very existence of home--will enable her to be a useful wife and good
mother. Trade-schools in Switzerland are of ancient origin, having an
intimate connection with the great impulse which the watch industry of
French Switzerland received in the latter half of the last century. In
the year 1770 a journeyman watchmaker, named Louis Faigare, applied to
Professor Saussure for some information connected with his trade, which
the then means of ordinary public instruction did not afford to his
class. The professor accommodated him, and from this resulted a series
of lectures, or rather _conversaziones_, held in the great scientist’s
drawing-room. The audience increasing to such proportions, it was
found advisable to secure suitable quarters, and a club was formally
organized under the title of _Société des Arts de Genève_. This club,
so modest in its inception, has survived all the mighty political
tempests of a troubled age,--the violent annexation of the Genevese
republic to France and its restoration to the Helvetic union,--and
to-day enjoys a high rank among learned societies, and numbers in its
list of members some of the most eminent names of modern science. This
is the parent of the celebrated Horological School in Geneva, with
its branches at Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel, Biel, Fleurier, and St.
Imier. Pupils are received in these schools when they have passed their
fourteenth year, and the course is from three to four and one-half
years. For the artistic education, there is a special school devoted
entirely to the art of decorating watches, which has become a very
important branch of the industry.

There is also in Geneva a school of industrial art, the organization
and work of which are substantially the same as the one at Munich,
and the two are considered the best in Europe. This school is under
the direction and administration of the Council of State of the
Canton, which delegates one of its members to act as president of the
commission which administers its affairs. Two classes of students are
admitted, viz., regular scholars, who attend regularly and continuously
either a general course of art study or some particular branch, such
as carving, bronze founding, goldsmith’s work, etc.; and special
students, apprentices, workmen, and others who arrange to receive
instruction at stated hours. The pupils produce work which has a
commercial value, and objects made in the school are kept for sale, a
part of the money thus received being paid to the student executing the
work. The courses of study embrace modelling and carving in plaster,
stone, and wood; _repoussé_ work in metals; painting in water-color, in
enamel, and on china; casting and chasing of bronze and the precious
metals; work in wrought iron and engraving, besides the regular work of
drawing-schools in general, such as drawing from the cast, from plants
and flowers, and from the living model. The school occupies a very
fine and spacious building, erected a few years ago at a cost of about
$160,000, and is furnished with very admirable and adequate appliances,
not only for study but for the execution of art-work on a considerable
scale. The pupils are of both sexes, and there is no distinction of
or separation between them in the organization of the classes. The
discipline of the school is very strict, the time of each pupil coming
in and going out being carefully noted, and the utmost regularity of
attendance, during the hours covered by his course, being required of
each pupil. All the regular pupils are also required to attend the
evening schools of the city. Encouragement and recognition of ability
and application are made in the form of prizes, which are awarded by
means of competition or _concours_ held at different times, and on such
subjects as are announced from time to time. The methods of study and
discipline are all sensible and practical.

More humble in their first stages, but scarcely inferior as to
practical results, are the Swiss straw-platting schools. These have
succeeded, in a few years, in developing a veritable new industry,
commanding markets in the utmost corners of the earth. Some of the
poorest portions of the sub-Alpine districts have become well-to-do
and flourishing, and at least one little hamlet, not to be found in
the guide-books a few years ago, is now from this trade a thrifty
town of some ten thousand inhabitants. The higher instruction in this
particular industry extends to the cultivation and acclimatization
of various kinds of foreign grasses, furnishing from the coarsest to
the finest qualities of straw. In the mountain districts there are
schools for teaching the manufacture of children’s toys, for which the
Swiss pine is admirably adapted. Then, in those sections where osiers
(a species of willow) can be cultivated, establishments for learning
basket-making have been started. In Zurich there is a “Dressmakers’
Institute,” from which annually “graduate” thirty to forty _Couturières
Parisiennes_. At Winterthur there is a shoemakers’ school, with a
peripatetic staff of professors who give lessons wherever a class may
be formed. This school also issues publications relating to its aims,
one of the latest being quite an exhaustive and scientific treatise on
the structure of the human foot, and giving the technical side of the
new government regulations concerning the manufacture of army boots and
shoes.

Other handicrafts have followed the example set by the shoemakers. The
joiners, cabinet-makers, silk-weavers, jewellers, and even to umbrellas
and parasols, each have their cheap and, in many cases, free-training
schools. The knit goods of Switzerland, so largely imported to the
United States, do not owe their introduction to cheap Swiss labor, but
simply to their superior quality, the result of the excellent training
all girls obtain at school; knitting being regarded as an indispensable
acquirement. Drawing, industrial as distinguished from artistic, is
taught in all Swiss schools; not as an accomplishment, but as of
paramount utility. It is considered that “drawing” lies at the bottom
of all industrial training, enabling one to delineate with precision
that which he wishes to express better than he can do it with the
language of the pen. In his “Proposed Hints for an Academy,” Benjamin
Franklin classed “drawing” with the three “R’s” as subjects necessary
for all. It ranks with them because it is the language of form in every
branch of industry from the most simple to the complex. It makes the
workman more exact, more efficient, and more careful; it is always
convenient and often very useful. A trade which, either by law or
immemorial usage, is assumed to require a more exacting apprenticeship
is wood-carving; a Swiss product that enjoys world-wide reputation,
and has long been a source of considerable revenue to the country.
The schools for wood-carving have a fully organized faculty, and the
word faculty is used advisedly, for the classes have an almost amusing
resemblance to an academic course. There are lectures with manipulatory
demonstrations in the use of the plane, saw, lathe, and all needed
tools, and also on the distinctive characteristics of various woods.
A school for ornamental work and design in wood-carving at Brienz is
supported by the Canton; and at Interlaken the wood-workers enjoy,
free of charge, the services of a “Master Modeller,” furnished by the
Canton. There are separate schools for the study of wood-engraving,
sculpture, and art cabinet-making. The agricultural and forestry
departments of the Polytechnic, in its “technology,” as signifying
science applied to industrial arts, has advanced these interests to
positions that otherwise could never have been attained. Switzerland
in physical respects is not a bountiful motherland, neither the
climate nor soil is good for agriculture, yet it is surprising what
good results are obtained through the general diffusion among the
agricultural class of much technical information, susceptible of easy
apprehension and ready application. Swiss agriculture, to make any
return, cannot be a mechanical routine, but must be intelligent if not
scientific.

What is known as practical farming would not return the seed and labor
involved. As an intelligently and scientifically-directed industry,
it has assumed a prosperous and profitable condition. The agricultural
course in the Polytechnic is thorough and comprehensive. It covers
the mechanical and chemical composition of the soil; the scientific
basis as to the rotation of crops; the periods of growth at which
plants take their nitrogen; how draining improves land; and many other
similar matters varied in their application, but ruled by fixed laws,
and which must be learned outside the daily experience and observation
of farm-life. In the single crop of grass, which is of such great
value in its relation to the extensive Swiss dairy interest, in its
cultivation, grazing, and harvesting, the suggestions and counsel
emanating from the agricultural department of the Polytechnic have
been of incalculable value. The amount of this crop, from a cold and
barren soil, and the uses to which it is turned would seem incredible
to the American farmer. The Swiss farmer, to accomplish so much,
must know something of the chemical analysis of the grass, both in
the natural and dried state; the feeding value of like weight in the
different varieties, in an equally moist or dry condition; the final
stage of growth which they ought to be allowed to attain; suitability
for permanent or other pastures; the adaptability of grasses for
certain soil; their duration, ability to resist drouth, and strength
to over-power weeds. Then come questions of hay-making, ensilage,
the management of old and new grass-lands; on these and many others
the peasant is enlightened and constantly advised, not only by the
Polytechnic but from cantonal agricultural schools at Rütte (Bern),
Strickhof (Zurich), Sursee (Luzern), and at Brugg (Aargau). There is
an institution for experimental vine growing at Lausanne; a school of
gardening at Geneva; and dairy schools at Sornthal (St. Gallen), and
Trayveaux (Freiburg). From time to time lectures and short courses of
instruction are given in different parts of the country on horticulture
and vineculture, fodder-growing, cattle-breeding, by which some
knowledge of the theory and technical details of agricultural science
is given, with the view of awakening a spirit of enterprise in the more
remote districts of the country. Forest culture and forest preservation
may be considered a necessity in Switzerland, for its influence in
checking the sudden and disastrous floods so common in the mountain
streams, and in the protection and maintenance of the steep hill-sides
which constitute so large a portion of the agricultural area of the
country. While riparian trees are gross water-users, and usually
deciduous, such as the sycamores, alders, willows, cottonwoods, etc.,
upon the mountains the trees are of a different class, and their effect
is without known exception beneficial to irrigators and water-users in
the valleys below. The denudation of mountain districts is followed
by increased torrent or flood action and diminished regular flow in
springs and streams, often by the entire desiccation of these. There
is a department in the Polytechnic devoted to forestry, from which is
supplied a large body of thoroughly educated foresters, who find ready
employment under the federal and cantonal forest departments.[75] The
course of study is of the most advanced character, and requires three
years for its completion. There are, besides, many local and primary
forest schools, having spring and autumn terms of three to four weeks
each, and they are assisted by federal subsidy. By a federal law of
1885, there was added to the forest department of the Polytechnic, a
school for forest experiment connected with meteorological stations,
thereby supplementing this already excellent school with the means of
accurate, scientific, and regular meteorological observations, in their
close and important alliance with matters of forest culture.

It is under the supervision of these educated foresters and trained
wood-rangers that, on the mountain-side, apparently but a forbidding
rock, by constant, careful, and scientific attention, are found
oak-, beech-, birch-, and pine-trees in large quantities and of good
dimensions. Each tree is carefully looked after and preserved, and
trained so that they shall not interfere with each other; each has its
fair share of space and light. In this work nature and man’s labor and
thought give to the forest an abundance of moisture, and between the
frequent storms and showers, abundant floods of sunlight and warmth.
It is this intelligent care and attention that enables a tree to take
root and grow to its normal size on what is apparently little more
than towering and weird piles of sheer rocks. The vast treeless West
and the reckless wasteful deforesting of American woodlands will soon
render forest culture and protection a necessity in the United States.
Never was a country so lavishly supplied with forest flora of all the
qualities in all gradations. No country ever used its wood materials
so lavishly; squandering a wealth of timbers before its true value was
known. It is time to husband the remnant with more intelligence and
to stop its wasteful destruction. Why should sylviculture not present
an inviting field for business enterprise, or be quite as fascinating
to watch the development of a collection of trees as that of a herd
or flock? Our landholders, who are accustomed to garner crops in a
hundred days from planting, have a natural shrinking from a seed which
may not mature a crop in a hundred years. But it can be shown that
growing wood on waste-lands enhances the value of the remainder of
the farm by more than the planting and care have cost; and that the
first instalment of a forest-crop is not so remote as is generally
believed. The best varieties of wood can be grown as easily as the
poorest, and the demand for certain forest products is rapidly becoming
more urgent. The tree-growth enriches rather than impoverishes the
ground. Forestry not only beautifies the farm, but between woodland
and plough-land is established that balance which must be preserved
to insure the most equitable distribution of moisture and climatic
conditions most favorable to the productiveness of the soil and the
better health of the people. Almost every Commune in Switzerland has
its _realschule_, where children from the primary school have the
opportunity of a higher education, specially adapted to fit them for
commercial and industrial life. These schools take the place of the old
and now practically extinct system of apprenticeship. The handiwork
and technical schools embrace instruction in drawing, modelling,
practical reckoning, elements of geometry (especially surface and
body measurements), book-keeping in French and German, physics,
chemistry, and technological branches, ceramics, and _aquarelle_.
The schools for girls include singing, drawing, fancy or handiwork,
letter-writing, book-keeping, casting accounts, sewing by hand and
machine, dress-making (pressing, cutting, and trimming), besides a
knowledge of different kinds of wares, how to tend plants and flowers,
and even the art of treating the sick and wounded. From these schools
all have access to the Polytechnic, where each professor is an
acknowledged authority in the branch of service with which he deals. In
all the higher schools and universities every encouragement is given to
students to qualify themselves for technical pursuits. The secret of
Switzerland’s material success lies in the liberality of its conception
of public education. Its primary schools are graded with good secondary
schools for scientific education, and these lead to remarkable
technical institutions with great completeness of organization. If
any country appears by nature unfit for manufactures it is surely
Switzerland. Cut off from the rest of Europe by frowning mountains,
having no sea-coast and removed therefore from all the fruits of
maritime enterprise, having no coal or other sources of mineral wealth,
Switzerland might have degenerated into a brave semi-civilized nation
like Montenegro. Instead of this it proudly competes with all Europe
and America in industries for which it has to purchase from them the
raw materials and even the coal, the source of power necessary to
convert them into utilities. Other countries have become sensible of
the superiority which skilled education can confer, and they have not
been slow to take advantage of it. The United States are justly proud
of their common-school systems as they exist in the several States.
They have done a great deal for public education, and are progressing
by their own force and by the general sympathy of the community. Mr.
Edward Atkinson, in summing up the elements that have contributed to
the vast gain in the conditions of material welfare in the United
States, names seven, and assigns the third position in importance to
the “systems of common schools which are now extending throughout the
land.” The tendency to be guarded against is that in education as
applied to the whole mass of the people, what is desirable and charming
and decorative be not put before what is absolutely useful; not to take
the garnish first and leave the solid meat to take care of itself.
When it comes to deal with the large masses of the community who must
work, and to whom it is, so to speak, a matter of life and death, the
question to be considered is whether they shall work well prepared
with the utmost assistance which the accumulated knowledge and skill
of the community can give them, or whether each man shall be left to
fight his own way and learn his own industry for himself. The country
wants more handicraftsmen, the school produces too many scriveners.
The country is crying out for skilled laborers, and the school sends it
clerks or would-be gentlemen of leisure. The farmers and working men
want wives who can make a home neat and happy, and who understand the
wise economy of limited resources, and the school sends them women fit
only to be governesses. The system of education in the United States
sends too many boys into trading, teaching, the professions, or “living
by their wits.” They imbibe a spirit that shuns what are termed the
“humble callings,” and crowd, at starvation wages, the occupations of
the counter and desk. They grow up to feel and believe that the bread
which has been gained by the sweat of the brow is less honorably earned
than that which is the product of mechanical quill-driving. Therefore
the United States have a plethora of men who, as described by President
Garfield, are “learned so-called, who know the whole gamut of classical
learning, who have sounded the depths of mathematical and speculative
philosophy, and yet who could not harness a horse or make out a bill
of sale, if their lives depended upon it.” There is need of a public
education that, while it gives to the mind fleet and safe modes of
reasoning, shall at the same time, in a corresponding degree, develop a
clear sight, a firm arm, and a training suitable for the various trades
and occupations which are essential elements of a prosperous national
life. The utility of such acquirements is not their chief virtue;
it is their permanence in the mental armory, for eyes and hands not
only respond to cultivation as readily as brains, but the trained eye
and skilled hand do not slough off their acquirements like the weary
brain. All through the United States scientifically and technically
trained foreigners, fresh from their “_realschulen_,” are pushing out
classically-educated young men from their desks and stools and taking
the places of profit which belong to them by national inheritance.
American spirit, capacity, and energy are unrivalled, and require only
an equal training and opportunity to insure an earnest of unbounded
success in establishing and maintaining the future eminence of the
country in the world’s great field of human art and human industry.

The question of manual and industrial instruction is not confined in
its interest only to those connected with the organization of schools
and systems of education, as bearing entirely on the development
and activity of the whole circle of intellectual faculties, but it
relates to a deep and far-reaching political problem that thoughtful
statesmen contemplate with serious concern. Might not the spirit of
cheerful domestic industry, which the extension of educated handiwork
is calculated to promote, do much to correct the evils of intemperance,
violence, and social discontent which are assuming such alarming
symptoms? The moral influence it exerts might produce a revolution for
the better and a well-ordered commonwealth of labor. The habits of
order, exactness, and perseverance fostered by manual training have an
incalculable moral value. The ranks of the unemployed and misery and
crime are largely recruited from the ranks of youth who are without any
adequate training to earn an honest livelihood. With a more general
dissemination of the rudiments of useful trades and employments there
would be secured a larger share to productive labor,--for it would put
brains into it and make it alike more honorable and profitable. It
would tend to remove whatever disadvantage has heretofore attached to
industrial occupations on grounds of dignity and the niceties of the
social scale. When young America is trained for mechanical pursuits
under the same roof and amid the same surroundings as he is trained for
preaching and pleading, when he is made to feel at school that the same
distinction is to be earned by skilful doing as by skilful dosing, the
necessity for all the more or less sincere, but very wordy, extolling
of the dignity of labor, which employs so much of our energy at
present, will be removed. And when the mechanic has acquired industrial
skill, not at the expense of his mental training, but along with it
and as a necessary part of it, the crafts themselves will assume the
old dignity and importance which once they had, but which they have
lost in these days of false and foolish artificial standards by which
men measure each other. The units or grains of society are continually
moving to and fro between the scum and the dregs, from capital to labor
and labor to capital, from wealth to poverty and poverty to wealth. But
rich and poor, professional and artisan alike, have a common interest
in strengthening the bulwarks against the dangers that menace honest
society,--against nihilism, socialism, communism, and all kinds of
vagabondage. Educated industry is the talisman. The strength of the
republican pyramid is in its base, and it is in the lower social layer
that the true character of a country’s need in common-school education
must be looked for. A Nihilist lecturer recently stated that there are
four hundred schools in Europe whose sole work is to teach the use
of explosives. If the Old World is thus diligently sowing the seeds
of discontent and rebellion, scattering some of them on our own too
prolific soil, teaching that to brute-force alone can humanity look for
the redress of its wrongs, how much more necessary it becomes to show
the world that not in killing each other, but in helping each other
to live, is the only possible solution of social difficulties. Unless
the school can teach respect for labor, it will never be learned, and
unless it is learned, and learned practically, the upheavals which of
late years have disturbed society will grow in frequency and violence.
Pericles, the great Athenian, describing the glory of the community of
which he was so illustrious a member, said, “We, of Athens, are lovers
of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes; we cultivate the mind
without loss of manliness.” But Athenian society rested on slavery,
and the drudgery was performed by those who had no share in the good
things which the citizens could enjoy. Our object should be to bring
Periclean ideas of beauty, simplicity, and cultivation of mind within
reach of those who do the hard work of the world. It can be done,
and should be done, in a way to advance the skill and develop to the
highest form of practical energy the skill of our handicraftsman and
the manliness of his life; giving him an education that will enlarge
his mind, improve his morals, instruct his industry, and thereby
advance the power, the prosperity, and the peace of the State. The
future will, practically speaking, belong to the technically educated,
for no amount of natural “smartness” can compete with education in
particularities. Raw material, forming a capital advantage, has been
gradually equalized in price and made available to all by improvements
in locomotion; and henceforth industry must be sustained, not by a
competition of local and popularly designated “natural advantages,” but
by the inexorable competition of intellect in all of its manifold and
overpowering evolution. If a country would not be left behind in the
race, if it desires to find any satisfactory solution for the deepest
and most inscrutable problem of the time, if it wishes a complex and
high civilization, to be maintained secure from all the dangers which
the presence of unprosperous and unfed millions must bring upon a
country, it should do its utmost to give a healthy and wide development
to the industrial education of the masses; such systematic instruction
as shall enable them to carry to the factory, to the laboratory,
to the quarry, to the mine, to the farm, that scientific knowledge
which is required to deduce practice from theory, to give dignity as
well as efficiency to labor, and to connect abstract principles with
the industrial pursuits of life; in a word, to provide an education
which will develop for each man and woman the faculties that nature
has given in such a manner that they may be as active and profitable
and prosperous members of the community as possible; an education
beautiful by its adaptment, subservient by its use, and salutary by
its application; an education that teaches in what way to utilize
those sources of happiness which nature supplies, and how to use all
the faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others; an
education that heeds the advice of Professor James Blake: “Let us
head-train the hand-worker and hand-train the head-worker. For manual
and head-training together form the only education. Apart from the
practical advantages, it has an ethical value in enabling men and women
to use all their faculties, for no man can distort himself by exclusive
attention to one order of faculties, and especially by neglecting to
keep good balance between the two fundamental co-ordinates of his
being, body and mind, without finding the distortion repeating itself
in moral obtuseness and disorder.”




CHAPTER XV.

INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE.


It is a popular mistake that Switzerland, industrially, occupies
a stagnant condition in the scale of nations, and exists for
picturesqueness alone. It is equally a mistake to think that its main
staples are wood-carving and hotel-keeping. The circumstances which
so long prohibited any advance in commerce and agriculture are to be
found in the peculiarities of the physical character of the country
and the absence of capital. Switzerland had no sources of mineral nor,
under the conditions of former times, of agricultural wealth. It could
not maintain a large population on its own resources; nor could it
have cities, the inhabitants of which, either like those of Flanders,
by the easy terms upon which they might get the raw materials, could
have manufactured for others; or like those of Venice, Genoa, and of
the cities of Holland, might have become common carriers. They could
have had no commerce, except with their surplus cheese. The amount
of this that could be spared was so small, and the transportation so
difficult, that but little could be made of it, and the whole of this
little was wanted for the necessaries of life,--such as the useful
metals, etc.,--which the Swiss were obliged to procure from abroad.
There was no margin for saving, and so there could be no accumulations
of capital. For long ages the most assiduous industry could supply
the Swiss with only the necessaries of life, and barely with them,
even when aided by the surplus cheese. Agriculturists in a rude way,
they lived on the land which supported them and their families,
and feeling no further pressing need, their untrained intelligence
could form no conception of the advantages of the social union and
commercial interdependence of a more civilized state of society. This
condition no longer exists. By the aid of new means of transportation
and communication, and by the substitution of machinery for manual
labor, the motive power for which nature furnishes in abundance, the
people are becoming prosperous and capital is accumulating. For many
ages the poorest country in Europe, it is rapidly progressing towards
becoming, in proportion to the amount of its population, one of the
richest. The position taken to-day by Switzerland in the trade and
commerce of the world is remarkable, when the various natural obstacles
are considered,--such as absence of raw material for its industries,
great distance from the sea-coast, with costly and difficult means of
transportation, and restrictive customs established by neighboring
countries. It does not possess a single coal-mine, canal, or navigable
stream. It is practically dependent for all its metals on foreign
supply. Asphalt is the only raw mineral product the export of which
exceeds the import, and this is found only in the Canton of Neuchâtel,
where the output is very large and of a superior quality. Inland,
without ships or seaport, and therefore deprived of the advantages
of direct exportation and importation, its commerce must be effected
through the four conterminous countries of France, Germany, Austria,
and Italy. Therefore, while every mart in the world is familiar with
its manufactures, it is almost ignored in the commercial statistics
of nations. The high protective policy so universally adopted by the
neighboring countries, where for a long time the best markets for
Swiss goods were found, has forced the Swiss manufacturers to extend
their trade to transmarine markets, involving not only a vast amount
of competition, but far more risk and uncertainty attending sales
than in doing business in markets nearer home. Then four-fifths of
the Swiss exports to countries other than the contiguous ones consist
of silk goods, embroideries, and watches, which may be classed, in
a general sense, as luxuries; and, in seeking a foreign market,
encounter the highest duty. On the other hand, its importations are
cotton, machinery, cereals, food-supply, and raw materials for its
manufacturers,--that will not admit of a corresponding heavy import
duty. The remedy heretofore partially found in special commercial
treaties has become almost futile by the rapid blocking of the
provisions of the “most favored nation” clauses. These have practically
lost their purpose and force by each party to the treaty persisting
in the enlargement and accentuation of its own customs provisions. In
an address recently delivered by the President of the Confederation,
at a national agricultural exposition, referring to the depression
of that industry, he said: “The political existence of Switzerland
is at present not threatened or endangered from any quarter, but it
is different with its economical existence, which causes us from day
to day increased solicitude on account of the increase of unjust
burdens imposed at all our neighboring frontiers. The first to feel
this condition were our manufacturers, who demanded a tariff of
retaliation, and now the farmers complain that they are suffering from
a denial of the same protection. Indeed, we are to-day the witnesses
of an eager race in the parliaments of many countries to raise the
duties on importations from their neighboring states until the wall
is so high that nothing can pass. Is this to be the grand coronation
of the labor and civilization of the nineteenth century,--the century
of steam, electricity, the piercing of the St. Gothard, the Suez and
Panama canals? No! Such a condition cannot endure. Let me express the
hope that the time will come when, from the excess of the evil, good
will result; that the people will realize that such a condition leads
to general poverty, while liberty of exchange is the surest foundation
of general prosperity.”

With these great natural and artificial obstacles to contend with,
Switzerland is nevertheless a commercial and manufacturing state. Its
industries are prosperous and show a constantly-increasing vitality
and importance, and its citizens are growing rich and famous in the
commerce of Europe. Its silks, ribbons, embroideries, braided straws,
watches, and cheese go to every quarter of the globe. There is no
state in Europe in which there is so great a general trade per head of
population. The commerce of Italy, with a population nearly ten times
greater, is only about double that of Switzerland; and the difference
between Austrian and Swiss commerce is even still more remarkable. The
silk industry is the oldest in Switzerland, being already established
at Zurich and Basel in the latter half of the thirteenth century.
Ticino is the only Canton where there are filatures for reeling the
cocoon into silk. Italy, China, and Japan are the great sources
of supply of raw materials to the silk manufacturers,--the former
supplying nearly four-fifths of all the organzines; of the raw silk,
the supply comes largely from Yokohama. Cotton began to be manufactured
in Switzerland in the fifteenth century, and power-loom weaving was
introduced in 1830. Twisting, spinning and white-goods weaving, and
cotton printing are of very considerable importance. Embroidered goods
have attained a great development, and furnish a heavy export trade
from eastern Switzerland, especially in the Cantons of St. Gallen and
Appenzell. Little of this beautiful work is now done by hand, machinery
having reached marvellous perfection. Aniline colors, the wonderful
dyes which the skill of modern chemists has evolved from bituminous
tar, and the manufacture of flavoring extracts, from the products of
coal-tar and petroleum, constitute a thriving export business at Basel.
Watchmaking is essentially a Swiss industry, and has been the most
important industry in Geneva since 1587, and by a combination with
jewellers, making a union between mechanical industry and art, has
given Geneva a world-wide reputation.[76] Watchmaking is done entirely
by piece-work, and sixty master workmen are required to make a single
watch. The work is divided among so many different persons, each one
of whom makes a specialty of one particular piece, and spends his
life making duplicates of this. The work is performed in the people’s
houses, the fronts of which present an uninterrupted row of windows
arranged without intermediate spaces, as the object is to admit all the
light possible. Every member of the family assists in some way. When
the house is put to rights, the wife drags a table to the window, gets
out her magnifying-glass, and goes to work on a watch-spring.[77] If
there be a son or daughter, each produces his quota. These different
parts, when gathered up by the watch merchant, are found to fit each
its special place with mathematical niceness.

The Swiss federal custom-house returns classify all imports and exports
under three chief heads, viz., “live-stock,” “_ad valorem_ goods,” and
“goods taxed per quintal.” No returns are published of the value of
either the imports or exports, but only the quantities are given. The
principal imports are grain and flour, cattle for slaughter, sugar,
coffee, fruit, poultry, eggs, and wine; all being articles of food.
Of textile stuffs, silk, cotton, and woollen. Other articles include
chemicals for industrial purposes, leather and leather goods, hosiery
and ready-made clothes, iron and iron ware, live animals, coal and
coke, other metals and hardware, including machinery, wood, furniture,
petroleum, gold and silver bullion for coinage. Cattle, horses, wheat,
and flour are imported from Austria-Hungary; raw cotton from the
United States and Egypt; manufactured cotton goods from England; wool
chiefly from Germany; coal from the Rhine districts of Germany. The
principal exports are: textile products, watches and jewelry, cheese
and condensed milk, wine and beer, machinery, cattle, hides and skins,
dye-stuffs, furniture and wood carvings. The Swiss tradesmen are shrewd
in their bargains, honest in their reckonings, contented with small
gains and small savings. They are the Scotch of continental Europe.

In Switzerland we find the primitive husbandry of the mountain
flourishing side by side with modern industrial commercial enterprise.
Of much Swiss agriculture it is still true, “_pater ipse colendi
haud facilem esse viam voluit_.” The minute division of the land
and the cheapness of labor do not justify the general use of modern
labor-saving agricultural implements. For cutting, threshing, and
winnowing purposes the scythe, flail, and winnowing-basket are used.
The scythe is apparently an exact counterpart of that which is seen in
the hands of “Time” in the school primer. The plough would adorn an
archæological collection; requiring four horses and three men to work
it, and cutting only one furrow. Instead of the harrow or cultivator,
a number of women and children, armed with clubs, go over the ground
after it is ploughed, and pulverize the surface. Swiss soil is but
little desecrated by the “devil-driven machinery of modern times;” and
the Swiss farmer has been equally faithful in regarding the first and
disregarding the second advice given in the distich of Pope,--

  “Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
  Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”[78]

The peasant farmer must needs apply a high order of management and
economy. This economy must be discerning, and he cannot take readily to
new ideas that do not assure him a better result for his hard-earned
money. This close farming yields very fair results to the small owners,
who, with their sons and daughters, have an interest in the soil and
a taste for the business. However, each change in the way of modern
improvement in its turn is fighting for establishment. The old methods
have prescription, tradition, custom to support them; the new, utility
and necessity. In the early stage, what was needed for each Swiss
peasant farmer was a little bit of land, a cow or two, a spade, a
manure basket, and a wife to carry it. This was the caterpillar stage.
They are very gradually passing into the butterfly stage. They are
beginning to evolve the capacity for collecting and turning to account
capital, the distilled essence of all property without which the land
cannot be made much of now. Life to-day does not require the tough
hide, the strong sinews, the gross stomach, the adstriction to a single
spot of the old life; on the contrary, a vastly enlarged mobility, both
of body and mind, a readiness for turning anything to account, and for
entering on any opening have become necessary. If what is wanted and
needed cannot be found at home, be willing and disposed to go seek it
elsewhere.

Owing to great difference in elevation of the surface, there is much
diversity in the production of Switzerland. In the valleys the summer
heat is tropical, while the surrounding heights are robed in perpetual
snow. “From the lowest level on the southern slope of the Alps, say
about six hundred and fifty feet, where the lemon, the almond, and
the fig ripen in the open air, and thence ascend to an elevation of
nine thousand five hundred feet, where every vestige even of the most
primitive artificial cultivation ceases, we might trace nearly every
species of vegetable growth known in Europe.”[79]

Cereals are grown up to three thousand six hundred feet; rye
succeeds up to five thousand nine hundred feet in the Grisons, and
to six thousand five hundred feet on the sunny slopes of Monte Rosa
and Pontresina. Irrespective of exceptional cases we may say that
cultivation ceases at three thousand nine hundred and fifty feet,
and above this height all forms of vegetation are small and poor,
consisting of low scrubs, stunted firs, and mournful larches. As a
general rule, vegetation reaches a higher point in eastern and southern
Switzerland than in the northwest. It is therefore not the absolute
height which determines the boundary of the growth of plants so much as
the disposition and form of the mountains and valleys. Another point
affecting materially the whole phytological covering of a country
is the nature of the geological formation on which the plants grow.
One-half of the country lies above the region of agriculture. The total
area of land under cultivation in Switzerland is, in figures, 5,378,122
acres; of which, 1,715,781 acres, or 31.9 per cent., are meadow land,
and 1,962,656 acres, or 36.5 per cent., are pasturage. The arable land
covers an area of 1,533,093 acres, or 28.5 per cent., of the whole;
vineyards 87,714 acres, or 1.6 per cent.; while the ground devoted
entirely to gardening purposes may be estimated at about 78,870 acres,
or 1.5 per cent. The area of cultivated land is steadily diminishing,
as the meadows prove more remunerative. Good arable land, being so
limited, commands a very high price, from $300 per acre to $1500
and $2000 per acre for choice vineyard lands. About one-half of the
arable land is sown in grain; the remainder being used for potatoes,
turnips, green maize, clover, vetch, etc. Both the federal and cantonal
governments have shown an active interest in fostering and promoting
the agricultural prosperity of the country; and an agricultural bureau
is attached to one of the federal departments at Bern. The cultivation
of the grape is closely identified with Swiss agricultural interests,
and with few exceptions the hill-sides on the Lake of Geneva have been
since the earliest periods of history planted with the generous vine.
There exist records to prove that some of these vineyards have been
bearing uninterruptedly for five hundred years. The reader will readily
suppose that the materials have been often renewed. One above another
these vineyards extend along the lake to the height of two thousand
feet. They are formed with persevering industry upon these precipitous
slopes by means of parallel walls, whose narrow intervals are filled
with earth that has been carried up by the peasants in baskets upon
their backs from below; and in the same way they must every season be
abundantly covered with manure. These successive terraces are reached
by steps frequently cut with infinite labor in the hard rock, and
with every economy of the land. Every inch of the ground is valuable,
because only on the side of certain hills will these vines come to
perfection. These lands, after being purchased at so high a rate, need
constant attention; for the soil is washed away from these steeps
beneath the stone walls, and must be replaced every spring; every clod
of earth is a great treasure, and they carefully collect the earth
which has been thrown out of a ditch to fill up their vineyard patches.
A square foot of land is reckoned to produce two bottles of wine
annually. Every portion of a vine is used; the stems and leaves serving
as food for the cattle; the husks, after being pressed and wedged into
round moulds, then dried, are used for fuel, burning something as
peat does. In many houses of this section the cellars are enormously
large, with a capacity as high as a million bottles each; and they are
often used as the common sitting- and reception-room.[80] Vineyards
also flourish on the slopes surrounding the lakes of Neuchâtel, Biel,
and Zurich; in the valleys of the larger rivers and certain plains of
northern Switzerland they are found to a small extent. Still, the wine
produced is not sufficient for the demand, and over 15,000,000 gallons
are annually imported; in this consumption the great number of tourists
who come every season must be taken into account.

Growing grass and fodder, cattle-breeding, and cheese-making are the
most important branches of Swiss agriculture. For ages the forest
Cantons had little tillable land reclaimed, and from difficulty of
communication with the outside world the people were thrown almost
entirely upon their own scanty local resources. With hardly any
means of getting supplies from without, with very little land for
cultivating cereals, and in the days before maize and potatoes, their
chief reliance was upon their cows. It is very much so even at this
day, but in those days the reliance was all but unqualified. Their
cows supplied them not only with a great part of their food, but
also, through the surplus cheese, with tools, and everything else
they were incapable of producing themselves, from the singularly
limited resources of their secluded valleys. The Switzer was then the
parasite of the cow. There were no ways in which money could be made;
there were no manufactures and no travellers; and so there were no
inn-keepers to supply travellers, nor shop-keepers to supply the wants
of operatives, manufacturers, and travellers; and there were none who
had been educated up to the point that would enable them to go abroad
to make money with which they might return to their old home. If the
general population had not had the means of keeping cows, they would
not have had the means for livelihood. The problem therefore for them
to solve was,--how was every family to be enabled to keep cows? The
solution was found in the _Allmends_,--lands held and used in common.
The natural summer pastures were common, and every burgher had the
right to keep as many cows upon them in the summer as he had himself
kept during the previous winter with the hay he had made from his
labor-created and labor-maintained patch of cultivated ground, or, as
it was called, prairies; or, if as yet he had no prairies, with the
dried leaves and coarse stuff he had been able to collect from the
common forest. This system was both necessary and fair. It originated
in the nature of the country, and its then economical condition, and
in turn it created the Swiss life and character. Every one knows La
Fontaine’s story of Perrette going to the market to buy eggs; the
eggs are hatched into chickens, the chickens produce a pig and then a
calf, and the calf becomes a cow. This dream of Perrette’s is daily
realized by the Swiss peasant farmer. He picks up grass and manure
along the road; he raises rabbits, and with the money they bring he
buys first a goat, then a pig, next a calf, by which he gets a cow
producing calves in her turn. Milk is the great thing desired by the
pastoral people, and not to possess a milk-giving animal is esteemed
such a misfortune that, as a little solace to the poor, cream is in
certain places regularly distributed to them on the third Sunday in
August. Switzerland varies, through a decennial period, from thirty
to thirty-five head of horned cattle to every hundred inhabitants,
yet it actually imports butter and cattle. It consumes more animal
food than the contiguous countries, viz., twenty-two kilos. of meat,
twelve kilos. of cheese, five of butter, and one hundred and eighty-two
of milk per head per annum. To the Swiss may be applied the words
of Cæsar as to the ancient Britons: “_Lacte et carne vivunt_.” The
country is well adapted for the keeping and breeding of cattle, being
favored with good grass, water, and air. Large sums are expended by the
various cantonal governments upon schemes for the improvement of the
breed of cattle and for the facilitation of their transport from the
place of production to the market. The cattle for milking, draught,
and fattening are not kept and treated separately with a single object
only being kept in view; the Swiss cow is expected to unite all these
qualities at one time within herself. It is believed that a cow is
positively benefited by being put to the plough, especially if the
work be done in the morning; and few bullocks, but many cows, are
frequently seen serving various draught purposes, not with the yoke,
but with harness similar to that used for the horse. A cow which, at
the time of calving, fails to give eighteen litres (litre = .88 quart)
of milk is not considered of any value. A fair average for the Swiss
cow is ten quarts of milk per day the milking year through, and five
thousand three hundred and fifteen pounds of milk per cow is an annual
average yield for the milking season of nine months. In England the
famous short-horned cows furnish only an average of four thousand
six hundred and eighty-eight pounds, and the highest average of milk
received at the best dairies of the State of New York reaches a little
over four thousand pounds, making a difference in favor of Swiss cows
of over thirteen hundred pounds. The federal government makes an annual
appropriation for the improvement of cattle, and in the distribution
of the subsidy confines itself to those Cantons where cattle-breeding
receives local assistance and encouragement. All subsidies are made
subject to various conditions to secure the fullest benefit therefrom.
These require an annual examination of all breeding-bulls to be held
at a district show; prize bulls must be used in the Canton for at
least one year after the awarding of the prize; breeding-bulls must be
registered, and none unregistered may be so used; prize cows must also
remain a certain time in the Commune, and must not leave the Canton
before calving. The Swiss have superior breeds of cattle for yield of
milk, aptitude for fattening, and capability of working, as well as
handsome in appearance. From reports made by United States consuls,
the two best-known and highly-prized breeds of cattle appear to be the
parti-colored and the brown; the difference prevailing in each being,
mainly, in point of size and greater or less degree of fineness. The
parti-colored breed is seen at its best in the valleys of the Simme,
Saane, and Kander, in the Gruyère and Bulle districts, and generally
over the western and northern parts of Switzerland. They are large, and
among the heaviest cattle in Europe; their ground color is white, and
it is marked with dun, reddish-yellow, or black; the milk from these
cows is admirably adapted for making cheese and butter. Some of the
most famous cheeses known to the market are from the milk of these
“fleck” or spotted cows. They fatten kindly, and, owing to strength and
size, are well suited for draught purposes. The brown race consists of
a heavy Schwyz breed, the medium-size breed from Unterwalden and part
of the eastern Cantons, and the smaller mountain breed. It has been
called the “turf-breed,” and is considered to be more ancient than the
parti-colored. It is mostly found in Schwyz, Zug, Luzern, and Zurich.
The brown Schwyz is a beautifully-formed cow of mouse color, running
into brown; large, straight back, usually with white streak; short,
light horns, two-thirds white with tips black; nose tipped dark gray,
with light borders; udder large, white, and smooth; usual weight about
twelve hundred to thirteen hundred pounds, those kept in the higher
Alps weigh about nine hundred pounds. There is a breed in the Valais
known as the Hérens, which is considered by many to be a separate
and primitive race. These animals, having short, stout bodies, are
admirably suited to the steepest and most inaccessible pasturage; they
are readily fattened, the quality of their meat is greatly prized by
butchers, and they are renowned for their enormous powers of draught.
In 1880 a great impulse was given to the careful breeding of cattle
by the establishment of four herd-books. It is alleged that the great
number of good cows of pure blood help to make the Swiss herd-book a
failure. It began life with as many “pure bloods” as most herd-books
contain after twenty years’ existence. At the international show of
Paris, in 1878, every Swiss cow exhibited bore away a prize. They have
competed also with exhibits from Holland, England, and Denmark, and
other famous cattle and milk-producing districts of Europe. Good Swiss
cows sell from 500 to 1200 francs each. These fine milk-, butter-,
and cheese-producing animals are fed only on grass and hay the year
through; occasionally a little dry bran may be added. From May to
September the cows in the neighborhood of the mountains are herded on
the upper Alps, and this rich, nutritious, short Alpine grass sustains
for nearly four months multitudes of as beautiful cattle as are to
be found in the world. All the mountain pasturages go by the name of
Alp,[81] and comprise “voralpen,” used in the spring; “mittelalpen,”
middle or intermediate pasture, remaining free of snow from the
first of June to the end of September, and “hochalpen,” sometimes
nine thousand feet high, for sheep and goats. Except when on these
Alpine pastures, the cows have only house-feeding, and, there being
no grazing-fields aside from the Alps, the cows of the plains are
stall-fed through the entire year. In the summer the fresh-cut grass is
fed to them. It is economy to cut the grass and carry it in as against
permitting the meadows to be trampled, grass wasted, and the animals
worried with flies. The cattle-stables are long, low, rectangular
attachments to the barns. They are always built of stone, with walls
about two feet thick. The stalls are usually ceiled over head, and
often plastered throughout; the floors stone or cement, and bedded
with poor hay, straw, or saw-dust, and a tight-fitting; oak door is at
the end of the rectangle. These barns are very warm, but thoroughly
ventilated, and the stalls are clean and nice beyond comparison. The
cows are marched out to exercise, air, and water daily; they are
curried and cared for the same as fine horses; their coats are brushed
until they shine, and the animals are evidently vain of their beauty.
In this, as in other cases, man’s regard for the lower animals appears
to be rewarded by an increase in their intelligence. The universal
reasons given for thus penning up these cows are: “It saves feed,”
“the cows give more milk for the warmth,” “there are no flies to worry
them,” and “more manure is obtained.” The peasant, pointing to the
manure heap, will say, “Out there is where the per cents. are made.”
As grass and hay are almost exclusively fed, it is requisite that
these be of the best quality and of sufficient quantity. There is a
great variety and succession of green crops for feeding in the house,
almost the year round, carefully cultivated. A moist climate, frequent
appliance of liquid manure,[82] and the practice of growing fruit-trees
in the meadows prevent drought in Switzerland. Then much moisture
comes from the incessant filtration of the melting glaciers which
are constantly dissolving under the heat of the sun. The conditions
of moisture and sunshine give to the country its abundance of grass,
causing it to grow anywhere. You see it rapidly establishing itself
on the tops of roadside walls. On a heap of stones lichens and moss
soon appear, and, by their decay, in time fill the interstices, then a
mantle of turf creeps over it. In excavations on hill-sides, where the
mountain torrent brings down successive avalanches of rocky detritus,
each successive layer in turn and in time becomes consolidated with
mould and then covered with turf. Indeed, a greater part of the valleys
consists of nothing but a film of soil superimposed on fragments of
rock. There are two or three grass crops in Switzerland yearly,--the
first in the beginning of May, the second at the end of July, and often
another early in October. The mountains intercept winds and clouds,
making the amount of precipitation large. The clouds are generally
intercepted by the mountains at an elevation of five thousand feet,
and then descend in rain; higher up the precipitation is in the form
of snow. There is great difference in annual waterfalls, the greatest
being as we approach the Alps, whether from the north or south. The
annual rainfall is thirty-five inches at Basel, sixty-four and a half
inches at Interlaken, sixty-nine at Schwyz, rising to eighty-eight on
the Grimsel and one hundred and two on the St. Bernard, and falling
at Lugano to sixty-three. The percentage of snow in the total annual
rainfall varies from sixty-three on the St. Bernard to six at Geneva.
The importance of this precipitation may be understood when it is
recalled that a precipitation of twenty-eight inches is considered
essential to agricultural security. The meadows are aided in no less
degree than the climate by constant fertilizing and extraordinary care
in the way of watering, draining, etc. A Swiss acre of good grass-land
is worth, in the richer and more populous Cantons, from 1500 to 2000
francs. Milk, and what is made from it, constitute the most important
resource of the peasant’s income. The manufacture of cheese is one
of the most ancient industries of the country, instruments for this
purpose having been found in different parts among the ruins of the
“Lake-dwellers,” whose date is anterior to all historical records.
On wedding occasions it was formerly the custom to present the
bride and bridegroom with a large cheese, the joint contribution of
their relatives; and this cheese was handed down, generation after
generation, as a family register, on which were inscribed births,
deaths, and marriages. Cheeses bearing date of 1660 are still to be
seen. In some parts of the country cheese forms the staple food of
the people, and the laborers are often paid with it. There are no
fewer than five thousand five hundred cheese-making factories, and
nearly 13,000 tons are exported annually, the value of which is over
$7,000,000.

In 1887 there were exported to the United States 4,262,000 pounds, at
an invoice valuation of $658,000. During the Alpine pasture season the
cheese is made in the little stone huts or _sennes_ of the herdsmen,
and brought down in the autumn; the herdsman will descend from the
pastures with a cheese weighing from one hundred and fifty to one
hundred and seventy-five pounds on his shoulders. The larger the cheese
the better its quality. Each cow is supposed to yield a hundred-weight
of cheese during the summer months. The average of fat contained in the
milk of the best Swiss cows is three and three-tenths per cent., though
in a few cases it may show four to four and a half per cent. of fat or
oil. The several varieties of cheese are classified: either according
to consistency of material, as _dur_, _ferme_, and _mou_ (hard, firm,
and soft); or according to the proportion of fatty matter, as _gras_,
_migras_, or _maigre_ (rich, medium, or thin); or according to the
coagulation, whether by rennet (_à pressure_) or by sour milk (_à lait
aigre_). The better kinds of Swiss cheese are as much the products of
skill and high art as the Swiss watch and Swiss embroidery. The best
and most abundant, retaining nearly all the elements of the milk, with
its nutritive value, is the _Emmenthal_, known as the _Schweizerkäse_,
and is made in the valley of the Emme, Canton of Bern. This is a round
cheese eighty to one hundred centimetres in diameter, ten to fifteen
centimetres thick, and weighing from fifty to one hundred kilos. or
more. Next in importance is the _Gruyère_, called after the village
of that name in Freiburg, around which it is asserted grow succulent
herbs of aromatic juices, that perfume the milk of which this cheese
is made, that is so well known and highly appreciated throughout the
world. Another celebrated cheese is the _Schabzieger_, or green cheese,
known as the Sago or Sapsago. Its manufacture dates back to the tenth
century, and it is still largely produced in the Canton of Glarus. The
peculiarity of this cheese is due partly to the method of coagulation,
and partly to treatment with the _Schabziegerklee_, a plant grown for
the purpose in Schwyz. The analysis of the _Emmenthal_ and _Gruyère_
cheeses is given: the former, water, 34.92; fatty matter, 31.26;
caseine, 29.88; salts, 3.94: the latter, water, 34.57; fatty matter,
29.12; caseine, 32.51; and salts, 3.80. There is at Cham the largest
and most successful milk-condensing factory in the world, with branch
establishments in England, Germany, and Orange County, New York. It
uses the milk of not less than six to seven thousand cows, and its
product is known far and wide. At Romanshorn, also, the Swiss Alpine
Milk Exporting Company does an immense export business of pure milk
produced from healthy, grass-fed cows. These companies claim to have
satisfactorily solved the problem of condensing and preserving milk
without altering its original composition, either by the addition of
sugar or other preservative substances. Switzerland is veritably the
land “flowing with milk and honey, and cattle upon a thousand hills.”
Great attention is paid to apiaries; the honey is famed for its aroma
and delicacy; though some tourists are disposed to doubt if that which
is on every breakfast-table is all the product of the little busy
hymenopteran.

The first railway on Swiss soil was a short piece from St. Louis to
Basel, opened in 1844; but the first purely Swiss line was that from
Zurich to Baden, opened in 1847; yet Switzerland has to-day more
railways in proportion to area than any other country of Europe. Its
railroad mileage per ten thousand population, stands third in Europe,
being exceeded only by Sweden and Denmark; and in outlay for the same
per capita, it comes second, England being first. By a federal law of
1872, the right to grant concessions to railroads was vested solely
in the Confederation, but the co-operation of the Cantons was to be
sought in the preliminary negotiations. The revised Constitution of
1874 expressly sanctioned the condition into which railroad affairs
had been brought by previous legislation; for the 23d article repeats
the constitutional provisions of 1848 regarding public works, and
another article is added; the 26th declaring that “legislation on the
construction and management of railroads belongs to the Confederation.”
All railroad companies, whether confined to a single Canton or running
within the limits of more than one, and of whatever length, from trunk
lines down to the shortest funicular, desiring a concession, must first
apply to the Federal Council, submitting the necessary documents and
information. These are at once transmitted by the Federal Council to
the cantonal government or governments through which the projected
railway proposes to run, and negotiations take place between cantonal
authorities and representatives of the railway as to the concessions
asked for, under the presidency of a delegation of the Federal Council,
including the chief of that particular department. After the Federal
Council has settled the terms of the concession, it sends a message,
with the text of the proposed conditions, to the Federal Assembly for
their consideration. The ultimate decision rests with the Federal
Assembly, and they may grant a concession even if the Canton opposes
it. The purchase of the Swiss railways by the Confederation has
been much discussed of late years, but so far without any result.
The Confederation has left the development of railroads to private
enterprises, and never exercised its right of subsidies to railways
except in the case of the St. Gothard Company, which pierced the Alps
with a tunnel of incalculable value to the whole of Switzerland. By
this tunnel Switzerland overcame the isolation resulting from an
altitude above the sea; linking north and south, central Europe and
Italy, in new bonds of amity, and opening through the very heart of
the Alps a new highway for the nations. It is one of the greatest
triumphs of modern engineering, one of the grandest monuments of human
skill. It is the longest tunnel in the world, being fifteen kilometres
long, or nearly nine and a half miles; one and a half miles longer
than the Mont Cenis tunnel. In addition to the great tunnel there
are fifty-two smaller tunnels approaching it, making a total length
of tunnels in getting through the Alps fifteen miles. The St. Gothard
railway proper extends from Immensee, in Switzerland, to Chiasso, in
Italy, a distance of one hundred and thirteen miles, and there are in
all not less than fifty-six tunnels, comprising more than one-fifth
of the whole line, or twenty-three miles of tunnelling. The width of
the great tunnel is twenty-six feet and the height nineteen feet. It
requires, at express-train speed, sixteen minutes to pass through it.
It is about one thousand feet below Andermatt, and five thousand to
six thousand five hundred feet below the peaks of the St. Gothard. The
preliminary works were begun at Göschenen, on the north side, June the
4th, and at Airolo, on the south side, July the 2d, 1872. Louis Favre,
of Geneva, was the contractor.[83] On February 28, 1880, a perforation
from the south side penetrated the last partition between north and
south sections, and the workmen on either side exchanged greetings. On
the 22d of May, 1882, the first train passed over the line, and every
town from Luzern to Milan celebrated the completion with banquets and
excursions; and its business, passenger and traffic, at once assumed
immense proportions. The construction cost 56,000,000 francs; which was
partly paid by subventions from Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, the
conditions and respective amounts of which were the subject of a treaty
between these governments. It penetrates the mountain like a corkscrew,
making four complete loops within a distance of twenty miles, in order
to attain the requisite elevation, when it emerges into daylight only
to enter again the main tunnel. The waters of the Reuss and the Ticino
supplied the necessary motive power for working the screws attached
to the machinery for compressing the air. The borers applied to the
rock the piston of a cylinder made to rotate with great rapidity by
the pressure of air, reduced to one-twentieth of its ordinary volume;
then, when they had made the holes sufficiently deep, they withdrew the
machines and charged the mines with dynamite. After the explosion, the
_débris_ was cleared away and the borers returned to their place. This
work was carried on day and night for nearly ten consecutive years.
The official report shows that three hundred and ten of the workmen
were killed by accidents during the building of the tunnel, and eight
hundred and seventy-seven were wounded or received minor injuries. The
work was done by Italians; no others would accept so much toil and
danger for so little pay. There were used in its construction 2,000,000
pounds of dynamite and 700,000 kilos. of illuminating oil. The problem
of keeping the temperature and atmosphere of the tunnel within a limit
involving perfect safety to persons passing through it, proved one
of the most difficult encountered. It was satisfactorily solved by
the establishment of immense steam-pumping machines, which constantly
throw in an ample supply of fresh air, and maintain a temperature never
rising above 20° Celsius or 68° Fahrenheit. There is at present being
projected, by the Italian and Swiss governments, the Simplon tunnel, to
pierce the Alps about midway between Mont Cenis and St. Gothard, which
will be one kilometre longer than the St. Gothard,--that is, sixteen
kilometres, or about ten miles in length.

In practical engineering the Swiss may challenge rivalry with any
other nation. The suspension bridge at Freiburg, constructed in 1834,
at that time had the largest single curve of any bridge in the world,
being nine hundred feet in length, and one hundred and eighty high.
One of the most daring feats of modern engineering is the cog-wheel
railway up to Pilatus-culm, on the Lake of Luzern, six thousand seven
hundred and twenty-four feet high. The road-bed is of solid masonry
faced with granite blocks. Streams and gorges are traversed by means
of stone bridges. There are seven tunnels from thirty to three hundred
feet in length. The rack-rail, midway between and somewhat higher than
the tracks, is of wrought steel, and has a double row of vertical cogs
milled out of solid steel bars. The locomotive and car containing
thirty-two seats form one train, with two movable axles and four
cog-wheels gripping the cogs, and which, on downward trips, can be
controlled by vigorous automatic brakes. The speed of the locomotive
is two hundred feet per minute. The road has an average gradient of
about one foot in every two. Another piece of skilful engineering and
of much scientific interest is the new electric mountain railway up the
Burgenstock, also on the Lake of Luzern, it being the first application
of this powerful agent to a mountain railway. The primary source of
the motive power is three miles away, where an immense water-wheel of
one hundred and fifty horse-power has been erected. This works two
dynamoes, each of thirty horse-power. The electricity thus generated is
transmitted for three miles across the valley, by means of insulated
copper wires, to another pair of dynamoes, the negatives of the first,
placed in a station at the head of the railway. Here the electric
force is converted into mechanical power by the ordinary connection
of leather belts, gearing the dynamoes, to two large driving-wheels
of nine feet diameter. Then by shafting and cogs the power is carried
on to an immense wheel of sixteen feet diameter, and around this
passes a wire rope with each end connected to the cars. One man only
is required to control the motion of the cars. The whole apparatus
for this purpose is arranged compactly before him, and no scientific
knowledge is required to manage it. Switzerland has developed the use
of electricity to a greater extent, probably, than any other country;
the mountain streams furnishing a power ready to hand, and the Swiss
in every possible way are utilizing it for electrical purposes. There
is a railway to the summit of the Jungfrau being projected that will
surpass all existing works of the kind. It will be built entirely in
the rim of the mountain, in order that it may be completely safe from
storms, avalanches, and landslips. The tunnel will be on the western
slope, which is very steep but the shortest route. It will start from
Stegmalten, two miles from Lauterbrunnen, a point two thousand eight
hundred feet above the sea, running a southeasterly direction, under
the Mönch and the Silver Horn, to the summit. The road is estimated
to be twenty-one thousand four hundred and fifty feet in length, and
will run as close beneath the surface of the mountain as possible.
The engineers supervising the construction are Herr Köchlin, who was
one of M. Eiffel’s principal assistants in building the lofty tower
in Paris, and Colonel Locher, of Luzern, the constructor of the Mount
Pilatus Railway. The cost is put at 56,000,000 francs, and it is to
be completed within five years. The magnitude of this work is shown
in the statement that the quantity of rock necessary to be removed is
thirteen times that taken from the St. Gothard tunnel. At Winterthur
and Schaffhausen, locomotives, other engines and heavy machinery of
superior character, are being made, with occasional shipments even to
the United States. The recent movement of Switzerland, following the
example of other civilized nations, in adopting a patent law, will give
a new impulse to the natural mechanical genius of its citizens, and
the resultant establishment of other prosperous manufacturing plants.
This patent law, which went into effect November, 1888, protects only
material objects and not _processes_. This feature is said to be due
to the efforts of the manufacturers of aniline colors and chemicals,
whose interest would be injuriously affected by a law as comprehensive
as that of the United States, which protects “useful arts” and
“compositions of matter” as well as tools and machines.

If a country’s roads be the “measure of its civilization,” Switzerland
would be easily first. Many of the roads, specially in the Alpine
districts, represent an immense cost and the boldest engineering. There
is not in the country a road for the use of which toll is charged;
for, to their apprehension, a toll would be a contradiction of the
very purpose for which the road was made. There is a road-master
(_wegmeister_) for every Commune, but he is appointed and paid by the
Canton. Though there is so much rainfall, the soil being permeable
and favorable to the percolation of the water, the roads, even after
a heavy rain, rapidly become dry and clean; everywhere you find them
as skilfully constructed and vigilantly repaired as the drives through
a park; the cost of their construction and maintenance is defrayed by
cantonal and communal taxation. The importance of the mountain roads
is recognized by a provision in the constitution, by which the Cantons
of Uri, Grisons, Ticino, and Valais receive an annual indemnity on
account of their international Alpine roads; to Uri 80,000 francs; to
Grisons 200,000 francs; to Ticino 200,000 francs; to Valais 50,000
francs, with an additional indemnity of 40,000 francs to the Cantons
of Uri and Ticino for clearing the snow from St. Gothard road, so long
as that road shall not be replaced by a railroad.[84] These sums are
to be withheld by the federal government if the roads are not kept in
suitable condition.

The “_fremden-industrie_,” or exploitation of foreigners, is not the
least profitable industry of the country. There are over 400 mountain
resorts, and, in fact, for months the entire country is one great
consolidated hotel company.[85] Palatial hostleries with metropolitan
_menus_ and _salles à manger_, bengal lights and brass bands, reached
by cable roads, are perched on crags where only the eagle used to build
his eyrie or the chamois seek refuge. In July and August a quarter of a
million tourists fill this little mountain country through its length
and breadth with their joyfulness and jargon. This annual irruption
constitutes a perennial well-spring of good fortune to many branches of
industry and to a large number of Swiss people.




CHAPTER XVI.

PEASANT HOME AND LIFE.

  “Mid the murmurings of his fountains,
  And the echoes of his mountains,
  Where the lordly eagle soars,
  Where the headlong torrent roars,
  He is, as he was meant to be,
  Poor and virtuous, calm and free.”


The industry, thrift, helpfulness, and simple contentment of the Swiss
peasants, next to the natural scenery, attract our attention. One
must respect their laborious industry, frugality, and perseverance,
and regret that so much toil, with such close and unfailing economy,
should have such meagre results. Dwelling among the crags and clouds,
their flats mostly water and their slopes mostly ice, they get out of
their little holdings every farthing that they will yield, and squander
nothing. There is a kind of manliness in their never-ending struggle
against the niggardliness and severity of nature; out-braving and
beating its hard opposition. Sharp-pressing need spurs them to wring
a difficult and scant subsistence from the mountain-steeps. Secluded
and poor, yet brave and cheerful, they recall the lines from the
description of the old Corycian peasant:

  “And wisely deem’d the wealth of monarchs less
  Than little of his own, because his own did please.”

Every little scrap of ground is turned to the best account. If a few
square yards can anywhere be made or reclaimed the requisite labor is
not grudged. Many of these sturdy people compel an incredibly little
spot of ground to yield them enough, and some to spare. This surprising
product from a soil, much of it very poor, is due to the perfection
of spade-work; each field, or rather patch, has the perfection of
shape given to it to facilitate cultivation and drainage. This small
cultivator, only with spade in hand, can fertilize the waste and
perform prodigies which nothing but his love of the land could enable
him to accomplish. These peasants have a proverb that “if the plough
has a ploughshare of iron, the spade has a point of gold.” In the
mountainous districts the land is reclaimed by this _petite culture_.
In fact, the man makes the very soil. He builds terraces along steep
inclines, lining them with blocks of stone, and then packs the earth to
them, transforming the mountain and the rock into a little patch where
he plants a vine or raises a little oats or maize. Up the heights of
rocks which even goats cannot climb, on the very brow of the abyss, the
peasant goes, clinging to the precipice with iron crampers on his feet
in search of grass. He hangs on the sides of the rocks which imprison
the valley and mows down a few tufts of grass from craggy shelves. The
hay thus gathered is called _wildheu_, and the reaper _wildheuer_. This
peasant mountain-mower is essentially _sui generis_. He is accustomed
to all the perils of the mountain, and the day before the mowing season
begins--a day fixed by communal decree--he bids farewell, perhaps for
the last time, to his wife and children. His scythe on his shoulder,
armed with his iron-shod stick, provided with his clamp-irons, a cloth
or a net rolled up in his bag, he sets out at midnight, in order that
the dawn may find him at his work. During the two months of hay-harvest
he only goes down to the village three or four times to renew his
supply of food or linen. By this hard and perilous occupation an Alpine
mower makes from three to five francs a day, his food not included;
and many times under some projecting rock he must seek a bed and pass
the night. Once dried, this wild hay is carefully gathered into a
cloth or net and carried down to the first little plain, where it can
be made into a stack, which is loaded with large stones to prevent it
being blown away. In winter, when everything is covered with snow, the
mower climbs again the perpendicular sides of the mountain, carrying
his little wooden sledge on his shoulders. He loads it with hay,
seats himself on the front, and shoots down with the swiftness of an
arrow. At times, the snow softened by the warm wind which blows upon
the heights, is detached in an avalanche behind him, and swallows him
up before he reaches the valley. This aromatic hay, composed of the
nourishing flora of the high Alps, of delicate and succulent plants,
of the wild chrysanthemum, the dwarf carline thistle, the red-flowered
veronica, the Alpine milfoil with its black calyx, the clover with its
great tufts, and the meum, an umbelliferous plant, gives a delicious
milk, and is greatly sought after for the fattening of cattle. In these
steep solitudes where the grass is found, the life of man is so exposed
and accidents are so frequent that the law forbids there should be
more than one mower in a family. With him it is a fight for life, not
infrequently conducted to the death. At all times great charges of
wrath hang over him,--a beetling crag, a stream of stones, a cataract
of ice, a moving field of snow, the flash that rends his roof, the wind
that strips his trees, the flood that drowns his land, against each of
these messengers of ill he must hold a separate watch, and must learn
to brave each danger when it comes, alike by flush of noon and in the
dead of night. The little valley below lies at the mercy of these ice-
and storm-engendering heights. Year by year the peasants fight against
its being extorted from their dominion. Yet this feeble community in
the valley, by their stout hearts and virtuous lives, continue to make
it smile on the frowning mountains:

  “Durum! sed levius fit patientia
  Quicquid corrigere est nefas.”

It is a strange and savage reverence which the peasants feel for the
mountains. They seem to grow like each other in spirits, even as a man
and wife who live in peace grow like each other year by year. With no
people is the love of home and the native soil so strongly developed.
To return to his village in the midst of his beloved mountains is the
constant dream of his life, and to realize it he will endure every
privation and bind himself to the hardest and most painful toil.
One hope possesses him,--to see again the snows, the glaciers, the
lakes, the great oaks, and the familiar pines of his country. It is a
sentiment so human--of home, of kindred, of the accustomed locality, of
country--that has fostered itself on him and binds him to the spot with
a chain he has no power to break. The Almighty himself has implanted
in the human breast that passionate love of country which rivets with
irresistible attraction the Esquimau to his eternal snows, the Arab to
his sandy desert, and the Swiss to his rugged mountains:

  “Cling to thy home: if there the meanest shed
  Yield thee a hearth and shelter for thy head,
  And some poor plot, with vegetables stored,
  Be all that Heaven allots thee for thy board,
  Unsavory bread and herbs that scatter’d grow
  Wild on the river-bank or mountain brow,
  Yet e’en this cheerless mansion shall provide
  More heart’s repose than all the world beside.”

There is a quietness and a sombre severity in the lives of these
peasants. In spite of occasional merry-making, pleasure-seeking is
rare. They have no great sensibility or expression of joy, but a
composed satisfaction, a kind of phlegmatic good humor, marks the
boundary of their happiness. Many visitors to the country are disposed
to complain of the plainness of their demeanor; that their speech is
rough and their style hard. The simple abruptness of the peasant’s
greeting is not without its charms. How far one feels from the
obsequious manners of the city, from profuse and insincere compliments!
Is there not to some extent in all this a philosophical basis? In
general, is it not true that the members of a republic, conscious of
their independence and self-importance, adhere less scrupulously to the
conventional regularity of forms? Again, the extreme politeness which
sometimes characterizes the subject of an arbitrary government may be
the result of that policy which introduces and encourages an exterior
air of civility as the mark of subordination and respect. The Swiss
peasants have neither the time, disposition, nor necessity to affect
these elegant improvements,--fopperies of a trifling and superficial
elegance which frequently serve merely to soften the deformities of
vice. They are delightfully natural human beings, human nature simple
and unabashed, and manifest a courteous consideration for each other’s
comforts and sensibilities. They have no occasion to assert offensively
that equality of right which nobody denies, and they respect each
other’s rights as they do their own. There are no castes to clash,
no lower class to assert itself in rudeness, and no higher class to
provoke rudeness by insolent assumption. They maintain old-fashioned
habits of courteous hospitality, and the workmen in the field will
shout out to the passer-by a kindly _guten tag_ or _guten abend_,
with the _a_ prolonged beyond the amen of a chant, and the children
invariably take off their caps or drop a courtesy. Even the pastoral
beggars present a species of attractive mendicity, as the little
children come out to meet you with offerings of Alpine roses, cherries
on their branches, and strawberries in the leaves, extending their
hands, with the common entreaty--_bitte, bitte_ (pray do).

We hear a great deal of the peasant’s chalet. Though very picturesque
in appearance, as they glisten in the sunbeams on the slopes or dot
the pastoral valleys, these chalets are by no means such charming
dwellings as often pictured. Owing to the original abundance of timber,
it was almost the only material employed in the building of these
houses. There are practically three styles: the so-called block-house,
in which the logs are laid one upon the other, notched at the ends
so as to fit into each other at the angles where they cross; the
post-built house, in which upright posts and a strong framework are
filled in with planks; and the _riegelhaus_, with brick or stone.
All soon become dark-brown of hue, and are quaint and distinctive in
form. They are covered with low flat roofs of shingles, weighted with
stones to prevent them from being carried away by the wind; the roofs
overhang the walls like the brim of a hat, widened to protect the
face from the rain, and are frequently shaped and sculptured by the
knife with curious and patient skill. There is a peculiarly sheltered
look in the broad projection of the thatched roofs, which, with the
thick covering of moss, and their visible beams, making all kinds of
triangles upon the ancient plaster of the walls, are very odd and
attractive things. The low panelled rooms are innocent of gilding and
of painting, but are cleanliness itself. Hollow niches over the doors
contain statues of the Virgin, heroes, or saints. The plain benches,
tables, cupboards, and chairs are made of the whitest wood, and are
so scoured, washed, and polished that to paint or varnish them would
be to defile them. Most articles of furniture are quaintly shaped and
ornamented, old looking, but rubbed bright and in good preservation,
from the nut-cracker, curiously carved, to the double-necked cruet,
pouring oil and vinegar out of the same bottle. They are heated with
porcelain stoves, cylindrical in shape, two and a half to three feet
in diameter, reaching from the floor almost to the ceiling, and bound
with bright brass rings to give them strength. These stoves are built
of white enamelled tile, which is two or three inches in thickness, and
the blocks of tile are put in layers, the inside of the stove being
lined with heavy fire-brick, leaving the flue not more than ten inches
in diameter. From this wall of fire-brick run a series of small valves
up and down and around, carrying the hot air to a number of caps at the
top and bottom of the stove, and thence into the room. Wood or turf is
used, and it is astonishing how little fuel is necessary. A fire is
started in the morning, the damper remains open until the gases have
all passed up the chimney, and only the smouldering ashes remain, then
the damper is closed, and no more fuel is needed for twelve hours; if,
before retiring, the process of the morning be repeated, it will remain
warm through the entire night. The stoves are not unsightly, but in
many instances ornamental, having a clean and well-polished surface,
with doors and caps of brass highly burnished. In the centre of the
stove is a receptacle for warming dishes or keeping a supply of hot
water. The stoves are placed close up in the corner, or form part of
the partition between rooms so as to be out of the way and heat two
rooms.

To some cottages there is an outside stair leading to the second
story, or even to the third, if there be one, for these houses are
frequently the property of several owners. The peasant who, in the
Valais, possesses the third part of a mule and the fourth part of a
cow, has often only the half or third of a house. “The Jura cottage
has no daintiness of garden nor wealth of farm about it,--it is indeed
little more than a delicately-built chalet, yet trim and domestic,
mildly intelligent of things other than pastoral, watch-making and the
like; though set in the midst of its meadows, the gentian at its door,
the lily of the valley wild in the copses hard by. My delight in these
cottages, and in the sense of human industry and enjoyment through the
whole scene, was at the root of all pleasure in its beauty.”[86]

Within and without these chalets are mural inscriptions and symbols:

    “Quarter’d o’er with scutcheons of all hues,
    And proverbs sage, which passing travellers
  Linger to read, and ponder o’er their meaning.”

They are put upon the beam, upon panels, carved in the cornices
everywhere to catch the eye. They are most various in character,
friendly welcomes, praises of their native land, exhortations to unity,
to freedom, and to courage. On the great projecting beam supporting the
roof, called _sablière_, are often painted, amid ornaments and flowers,
the initials J.M.J. (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph), as well as the name of
the man for whom the house was made, and that of the master carpenter
who built it. Those of the Bernese Oberland have inscriptions reminding
man of his duty and the solemnity of life; of which the following are
samples:

    “The friends from whom we needs must part
      ’Twill pleasure give to meet again.
    ’Gainst malice, lies, hypocrisy,
      Closed may this house forever be.”

    “My God, my strength, whom I will trust,
      A buckler unto me;
    The horn of my salvation
      And my high tower is He.”

  “On account of one day, be afraid of all days.”

Many of the inscriptions are from the Bible, and thus not only the
churches, but public buildings and private houses teach morality. In
the Grisons you see on many the arms of the three leagues engraved; one
will bear a cross, another a wild goat, a third a man on horseback, and
above them the lines carved,--

    “These are the arms of the Grisons,
    On the mountains their strongholds lie;
  God will have the graciousness
    To preserve their liberty.”

This inscription is on a church-bell, dating back four centuries:
“Vivos voco, mortuos plango, fulgura frango” (“I call the living, I
mourn the dead, I break the lightning”).

The stone chalets in Ticino have their fronts painted pink, and
decorated in Italian fashion, with garlands of flowers and symbolical
vases, pouring out wine and milk. The finest of these houses are not
ducal palaces, the poorest are never hovels. A real Swiss cottage is as
much adapted to Swiss scenery as the Gothic is suited to the holy and
sublime feelings of devotion; there is a fitness in the subdued color
of the resin from the larch to an association which requires extreme
simplicity; the same cottage painted white would be found offensive
and obtruding. Near by is the barn, a wooden bridge thrown over the
entrance, with a long and gradual ascent, that conducts the wagons
loaded with hay to the loft. Some of these are as generous in size and
as well built and equipped as the best Pennsylvania barns. It may be
that the dwelling, barn, and dairy are all under one roof; but if so,
they are separated with a scrupulous regard to neatness. All wastes are
corded and covered up outside like so many piles of treasure, to renew
the soil when summer comes round. This _fumier_ is the special pride of
the peasant, and is frequently an imposing object, arranged in layers,
with the straw rolled and platted at the sides; it stands proudly by
the roadside and often the ornament of the front yard. Everything is
in its place; order reigns by virtue of some natural law. There is a
kind of Robinson Crusoe industry about their houses and their little
properties; they are perpetually building, repairing, altering, or
improving something. Thought and care are day by day bestowed on every
bit of ground to secure a sufficiency of the things that will be needed
in the long winter. Every plant is treated by itself as though it was
a child; every branch pruned, every bed watered, every gourd trained.
From hour to hour the changes in the heavens are observed and what
they import considered; for they may import a great deal; the time
allowed for bringing the little crops to maturity is so short that
the loss of sunshine for a few days may cause anxious thought. It is
a sight which awakens reflection and touches the heart. There is much
of healthy purity prevailing around these cottage homes. Every one,
according to his means, endeavors to make the homestead an ornament
to the grassy and elm-shadowed wayside. The green rock-strewn turf
comes up to the door, and the bench is along the wall outside. Flowers
surround and adorn the windows, the luscious clusters of the vine ripen
above the porch, and the little violet creeps over the stone steps or
hangs in a sunny niche, its flowers gleaming remotely. Nothing can be
more charming than the large carnations which often brighten the dark
larch or pine-wood chalets, with their glossy red blossoms hanging
from the windows and balconies. The pleasant vine-sheltered door seems
to hospitably invite the imagination of the passer-by into the sweet
domestic interior of this cottage life. And there is about the inner
life of these humble homes a something one may almost say of sanctity,
which is not so apparent, at all events on the surface of things, in
splendid mansions. Their splendor is transmuted money, there is no
poetry in it; if hearts are moved by it, it is not in that fashion or
to that issue that it touches them. Quite different with these quiet
and secluded homes. There every object has a pleasing history. There
industry has accumulated its fruits, frugality its comforts, and virtue
diffused its contentment. The care that is taken of it tells you how
hard it had been to come by. You read in it a little tale of the
labor, the self-denial expended on its acquisition; it is a revelation
of an inner life which you are the better for contemplating and for
sympathizing with. Shut off from the world, untainted by luxury,
unstained by avarice mid lonely toil, practising the simple forms of
life and faith, maintaining bravely and contentedly a hard struggle
in their Alpine glens, these peasants are on better terms with life
than many people who are regarded to have made a better bargain. “To
watch the corn grow or the blossoms set, to draw hard breath on the
ploughshare or spade,” have attractions for them, not accounted for in
the meagre train of advantages and comforts they bring, and must be
sought in the inspiration of the poet,--

  “Happy the man whose wish and care
    A few paternal acres bound;
  Content to breathe his native air
    On his own ground.

  Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
    Whose flocks supply him with attire;
  Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
    In winter fire.”

Often the cottage is perched on a mountain crag, and the peasant must
be sleepless and prompt, for he lies down with danger at his door and
must rise to meet it when the moment comes. There is a continual menace
of desolation and ruin:

  “No zephyr fondly soothes the mountain’s breast,
  But meteors glare and stormy glooms invest.”

At dusk you see a cottage on a shelf of rock, a hut in which the
shepherd churns his milk, a bit of soil in which he grows his herbs,
a patch of grass on which his heifers browse, a simple cross at which
his children pray. At dead of night a tremor passes through the
mountain-side, a slip of earth takes place, or a “thunderbolt of snow”
which no one hears, rings up the heaven. At dawn there is a lonely
shelf of rock above, a desolate wreck of human hopes below, and

  “The gentle herd returns at evening close,
  Untended from the hills, and white with snows.”[87]

Some of the Alpine districts are entirely pastoral, where naught save
cow-herd’s horn and cattle-bell is heard. In the spring it is a pretty
sight to see the groups of cows with tinkling bells start for the
mountains. The bells are nearly globular, thin, and light, of different
sizes, from one foot to two inches in diameter; they are various in
pitch, all melting into one general musical effect, forming in right
harmonious proportion to produce the concord of sounds without any
clashing tones, just as the song of many birds does.

  “The tintinnabulation that so musically swells
  From the bells, bells, bells, bells.”

The cows are assembled in herds on the village green, and to the call
of the herdsmen they begin their march to the mountain pastures. Each
herd has its queen, who leads the procession. The choice of the queen
depends on her strength and beauty. Great care and expense are incurred
in the ambition to procure one peerless animal for this purpose, and
in order to develop a combative and fearless spirit they are said
to be fed on oats soaked in spirits. The queen wears a finer collar
and larger bell than the others. Proud of her superior strength, she
seems, with the calmness of a settled conviction, to be defying her
companions, and to be seeking--impatient for combat--some antagonist
worthy to measure strength with her. See

  “How gracefully yon heifer bears her honors!
  Ay! well she knows she’s leader of the herd,
  And take it from her, she’d refuse to feed.”

At the end of the herd marches the bull, with his compact body, little
pointed horns, curly hair, and, if he is of a wicked temper, a plate of
iron over his eyes. Then comes the train of dairy-girls and cow-herds,
who tend the cows in the summer pasturages, with wagons loaded with the
implements of their calling, the milking-stool, peculiarly constructed
pails, and the wooden vessels in which milk is carried up and down the
precipices to the chalet.[88] When different droves meet, it is almost
sure to happen that the two queens defy each other to single combat.
The herdsmen themselves promote these struggles, and are very proud
of the victory of their own queen cow. The herds begin by browsing
on the grass at the foot of the mountain, and then gradually, as the
snow disappears and is replaced by a fresh carpet of verdure, they go
higher, mounting insensibly till in the month of August they reach
the summit of the Alp. Then in September they descend slowly and by
degrees, as they went up. On their way up the mountain, if the start be
made too early in the spring, the water may be found high, and the herd
stops at the edge of the torrent, afraid to cross. The chief herdsman
seeks the parsonage, knocks at the door, and explains to the curé the
critical situation of the herd, and begs his prayers and blessings.

  “Il faut que vous nous disiez une messe
  Pour que nous puissions passer.”

The shepherd leads a more solitary and perilous life in the mountains
than the herdsman, living on polenta and cheese, and for drink, water
or skimmed milk; and a little hay spread on a plank serves for a bed.
The highest and steepest parts of the Alps are apportioned to the
grazing of sheep and goats. Indeed, sometimes the sheep are carried up
one by one on men’s backs, and left there till the end of the summer,
when they are carried down, considerably fattened, in the same fashion.
Here the shepherd passes months, his only companions besides his flock
are the chamois,[89] who, in the moonlight, cross the snow-fields, the
glacier, or bound over the crevices and come to pasture on the grassy
slopes; and the snow-partridge, or white hen, and the _laemmergeier_,
or bearded vulture, a bird whose size surpasses that of the eagle,[90]
and who circles around these peaks as he watches for his prey, and, by
a sharp blow of his wing, to precipitate into the chasm any animal he
can take unawares and defenceless. Alas! for the poor shepherd belated
in a snow-storm, seeking vainly to recover the lost track; when the
wind seems like some cruel demon, buffeting, blinding, maddening, as
along ways rendered unfamiliar by the drifts he plunges, helpless,
hopeless; fainter and more faint, until at last there comes the awful
moment when he can fight no longer, and he sinks powerless down,
down into the soft and fatal depths; the drift sweeps over him,--he
is lost as surely as “some strong swimmer in his agony” who sinks in
mid-Atlantic among the boiling surge.

When the flock is taken to the Alps, the sheep, instead of being driven
before the shepherd, regularly follow him as he marches majestically
in front,--tall, thin, sunburnt, and dirty,--armed with his long
iron-pointed stick. Behind him the whole mountain is covered with
a moving mass of gray fleeces; other shepherds and Bergamese dogs,
with long woolly hair, the most vigilant of guardians, are scattered
at different points in this “living flood of white wool surging like
foaming waves.” The sheep do not disperse to feed until the chief
shepherd, turning his face round to them, either by a whistle or notes
from his pipe, seems to remind them that it is proper to do so. This
leader or captain literally marches abroad in the morning piping his
flocks forth to the pasture with some love sonnet, and his “fleecy
care” seem actually to be under the influence of his music. It is
by whistling that thousands of sheep are guided, the straying lambs
called back, and the dogs sent out and checked. In September, when the
shepherds bring down their flocks from the mountains, their wives and
children, who have remained in the plain making hay, the harvest, the
vintage, and gathering in of other fruits, go to meet them with songs
and waving flags. In the evening the whole village rejoices, dancing
goes on, and it is everybody’s festival:

  “At night returning, every labor sped,
  He sits him down, the monarch of a shed;
  Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys
  His children’s looks, that brighten at the blaze;
  While his loved partner, boastful of her hoard,
  Displays her cleanly platter on the board.”

The shepherds are happy men, content with their lot, loving their
free and nomad mountain life with its long lazy times of rest and its
moments of perilous activity. No simpler, honester, braver hearts are
to be found anywhere.

There is also the female swine-herd, who daily takes to pasture the
pigs and goats. She tends them all day on some stony, irreclaimed waste
land. In the evening when she returns with her four or five score, each
porker knows his own home in the village; some run on in advance of the
herd to get as soon as possible to the supper they know will be ready
for them; others do not separate themselves from the herd till they
arrive at the familiar door. Behind the swine follow the goats with
distended udders,--the poor man’s cow. They, too, disperse themselves
in the same fashion, from the desire to be promptly relieved of their
burden. Last of all come the deliberately-stepping, sober-minded cows.
The tinkling of their bells is heard over the whole of the little
village. In a few minutes the streets are cleared; every man, woman,
and child appear to have followed the animals into the houses to give
them their supper or to draw the milk from them, or, at all events,
to bed them for the night. Thus do these peasants from their earliest
years learn to treat their dumb associates kindly, almost as if they
were members of the family, to the support of which they so largely
contribute. They begin and end each day in company with them, and are
perfectly familiar with the ways and wants of the egotistic pig, of the
self-asserting, restless goat, and of the gentle, patient cow.

Sound travels far in these mountain solitudes, and the bells of the
flocks may be heard through them night and day. This concert of
cow-bells and of sheep-bells, suddenly heard in solitude and repeated
by the echoes, like a distant and mysterious choir, is one of the
features of Alpine life that most powerfully impress the feelings and
take hold of the imagination.

The mountains’ response to the “alphorn” is most singular and
beautiful. When the tune on the horn is ended, the Alps make, not
an echo, but a reproduction of it, in an improved and heightened
character; they take up, as it were, and chant the air again with
infinite sweetness and a dancing grace that is delightful. They seem to
constitute a natural instrument of music, of which the horn is but the
awakening breath. The writer, on behalf of the New England Conservatory
of Music, Boston, requested of the Swiss government samples of musical
instruments of Swiss origin. In answer an “alphorn,” of ancient form,
well constructed and of superior tone, was furnished, accompanied with
the statement that, after careful investigation, it was believed to be
the only musical instrument of “Swiss origin.” Distance softens the
tone of the “alphorn,” and assimilates it more nearly to the flute-like
sweetness of the echo which seems a sort of fairy answer coming out of
some magical hall in the rock. The tone is powerful, and the middle
notes extremely mellow.

The peasants call and answer their companions from peak to peak in
musical notes. The _Ranz des Vaches_, German _Kuhreihen_, are a
class of melodies prevailing and peculiar to the herdsmen. There is
no particular air of this name, but nearly every Canton has its own
herdsman’s song, each varying from the others in the notes as well as
in the words, and even in the dialect. There are as many songs and airs
which go by this name as there are valleys in Switzerland. A verse of
one, as rendered in the Canton of Appenzell, runs:

  “The cow-herds of the Alps
  Arise at an early hour.

CHORUS.

  Ha, ah! ha, ah!
    Come all of you,
  Black and white,
    Red and mottled,
  Young and old;
    Beneath this oak
  I am about to milk you,
    Beneath this poplar
  I am about to press,
    Liauba! Liauba! in order to milk.”

It is a song of melancholy, of the homesickness in which the absent
Swiss sees again, as in a musical vision, the chalet in which he was
born, the mountain where the herds shake their mellow bells as they
graze. It is, however, only in the refrain that is heard the melancholy
note, in this _Liauba! Liauba!_ thrown lingeringly to the winds,
and going from echo to echo, till it expires like a lament, and is
lost like a sigh in the infinite depths of the valley. The herds are
said to love and obey its strains. Without anything striking in the
composition, it has a powerful influence over the Swiss. Its effect on
Swiss soldiers absent in foreign service was so great, giving rise to
an irrepressible longing to return to their own country, that it was
forbidden to be played in the Swiss regiments in the French service,
on pain of death. All the music of the mountains is strange and wild,
having most probably received its inspiration from the grandeur of the
natural objects. Most of the sounds partake of the character of echoes,
being high-keyed but false notes, such as the rocks send back to the
valleys when the voice is raised above its natural key in order that it
may reach the caverns and savage recesses of inaccessible precipices.
The Swiss _yodel_, with its falsetto notes, is heard everywhere. Nor
must the sounds of the landscape be forgotten. With the bleating of
the flocks and the chimes of the cow-bells are mingled the murmuring of
the bees, the running streams, whispering pines, the melancholy voice
of the goat-herder, and the plaintive whistle of the mountain thrush.

Every member of a Swiss family produces his share. The whole family
take up their daily work before sunrise, suspend it only for their
meals, and end it only when the candles are put out at early bedtime.
The feeble efforts of old age and the petty industry of childhood
contribute to the sum of human toil. Children all work with their hands
for the common support, they help the elders in the common family
interests as soon as they can rock a cradle, drive a cow, or sweep a
floor; they thus acquire at home habits of application and industry
which stand them in good stead in after life. The little ones who are
taken by their parents to the field and are too young to work have
bells fastened to their belts, not for amusement, but, as the mothers
explain, “when we are in the fields and the children wander away,
thanks to the bells, we can always hear and find them, and, besides,
the sound of the bell drives away the serpents.”[91] Even the infant in
its baby-carriage passes the day amid the scenes of labor in which it
will soon be called to join. The women are not exempt from work, even
in the families of very substantial peasant proprietors. A stranger,
seeing the smart country girls at work about the cows’ food or in the
harvest field, perhaps barefooted, is apt to consider it as a proof
of extreme destitution. This is a mistake; it is merely the custom
of the country. A well-to-do peasant’s daughters, who are stylishly
dressed on Sundays, may be seen in the fields during the week. You see
the sturdy sunburnt creatures in petticoats, but otherwise manlike,
toiling side by side with their fathers and brothers in the rudest work
of the farm. They wear a broad-brimmed straw hat, and as the breeze
blows back its breadth of brim, the sunshine constantly adds depth to
the brown glow of their cheeks. In the absence of the men the women
do all the work,--mow the grass, cut the wood, look after the cattle,
make the cheese, bake the bread, and spin the wool. Whether they
are employed in spreading the litter on the floor of the stable, in
carrying the pails foaming with the freshly-drawn milk, or in turning
up with long wooden rakes the newly-mown hay, all their different
labors resemble festivals. From one hill to another, above the bed of
the mountain torrent, they reply to the songs of the young reapers by
chanting national airs, it may be _Rufst du, mein Vaterland_ (“callest
thou, my country”)! Their voices resemble modulated cries emitted by a
superabundance of life and joy; musicians note them down without being
able to imitate them; they are indigenous only on the waters or on
the green slopes of the Alps. The distinction between the sexes as to
labor in Switzerland has passed the temporary stage of evolution. Is
it not true everywhere that women are entering a new era of self-care;
that they are undertaking not only office-work, but professions, and
trades, and farm-work? and the change is going on with great speed.
The woman of fifty years ago would not only have refused to undertake
what the woman to-day achieves; she would have failed in it if she had.
The field of housework was in the last century vastly wider than it
is to-day; yet woman filled it. She spun and wove and knit as well as
sewed; and each household was a factory as well as a home. This sort
of work was differentiated by machinery and taken away from our houses
and wives. For a time woman was made more helpless and dependent than
ever before. But a readjustment appears to be going on. Woman has gone
out of the house and followed work. The sex is developing a robustness
and alertness and enterprise that we had attributed to man alone; it is
a revolutionary change in the mental adaptability, physical endurance,
and business capacity of woman.

The Swiss peasants may not shine by brilliant qualities or seductive
manners, but they are strongly framed, broad-chested, powerful, calm
in countenance, frank and open in expression, with bright eyes, and
largely sculptured features, but of rather heavy gait. The women are
active in figure, with expanded shoulders, supple arms, elastic limbs,
blue eyes, and healthy complexions. Light hair largely predominates,
ninety out of one hundred have hair of the different shades that make
auburn, from the very light-brown to the very fair, but few have red
hair, and scarcely any black. A mixture of manly beauty and feminine
modesty is harmoniously blended in their physiognomy; they appear
robust without coarseness; and their voices are soft and musical,
common to dwellers in cold countries. With these peasants where the
homespun is not unknown every one eats the bread of carefulness. They
are frugal and sparing in food; in the larder there is left little for
the mice at night. The diet of rye bread, milk, cheese, and potatoes
is at least wholesome, for they are all produced at home. They use
but little fresh meat, and mostly vegetables and bread. Of the latter
they are the champion consumers, it being estimated that the yearly
bread consumption is as high as three hundred and six pounds _per
capita_. Meeting children on the country road or village street, you
are sure to find almost every one of them munching bread, and it will
be entirely guiltless of sugar or jam. With the poorer classes meagre
cheese is the staple food. This is made of skimmed milk, and if not
positively bad, this negation of badness is its only virtue. Also dried
or mummy beef is much used. In the high mountain valleys the air is
so dry that for nine months out of the twelve meat has no tendency to
decomposition; availing themselves of this favorable condition, they
kill in the autumn the beef, pork, and game they will require for the
ensuing year. It is slightly salted and hung up to dry; in three or
four months’ time it is not only dried, but also cooked, at least the
air has given it all the cooking it will ever receive. It has become as
dry and hard as a board, and internally of the color of an old mahogany
table; externally there is nothing to suggest the idea of meat, and it
is undistinguishable from fragments of the mummies of the sacred bulls
taken from the catacombs at Memphis. Strange as it may appear, when
cut across the grain in shavings no thicker than writing-paper, it is
found not badly flavored, nor unusually repugnant to the process of
digestion. What is lacking in quality of the peasant’s food is made up
in quantity or rather the frequency with which it is partaken of. There
is early breakfast, lunch at nine A.M., called from its hour _s’nüni_,
dinner at twelve, lunch again at four P.M., called _s’vierli_, and
supper. It is astonishing to see how much solid flesh, good blood, and
healthy color can be produced by such inferior and limited diet.

The language of the peasants is characterized by rough gutturals
and the force with which dentals and hissing sounds are pronounced,
a sing-song accent, with numerous diminutions, contractions, and
omissions of the final syllable. There is much of what is designated
under the general name of _patois_,--a mixture of Celtic, Latin, and
Italian words; a Babylonish dialect,--a parti-colored dress of patched
and piebald languages. This corrupt dialect is very sonorous and very
harmonious, but is the relic of an almost extinguished antiquity. In
the Engadine, and the remote valleys of the Swiss Alps adjoining Italy
and the Tyrol, the peasants use the Romansch and Ladin; the latter is
more musical, and to give an idea of it the following verse from a
popular song is transcribed:

    “Montagnas, ste bain!
    Tu gad e valleda,
    Tu fraischa contreda,
    Squir eir in mi adsinga,
  Montagnas, ste bain!”

    “Ye mountains, adieu!
    Thou vale with green bowers,
    Fresh meadows and flowers,
    When from you I must sever,
  Ye mountains, adieu!”

The peasants still observe many manners and customs of the olden times:
some the imprints of the early influences of the Burgundians, others of
the Alemanni and the Ostrogoths. The separation by the mountain ranges
of populations near and akin to each other, which led to the formation
of so many dialects, also favored the growth and long continuance of
local customs and traditions, giving to many localities a strongly
marked individuality.

In one part of the Canton of Ticino a very quaint marriage ceremony
prevails. The bridegroom dresses in his “Sunday best,” and, accompanied
by as many relatives and friends as he can muster for the fête, goes
to claim his bride. Finding the door locked, he demands admittance;
the inmates ask him his business, and in reply he solicits the hand of
the maiden of his choice. If his answer be deemed satisfactory, he is
successively introduced to a number of matrons and old maids, some,
perhaps, deformed and badly goitered. Then he is presented to some big
dolls, all of whom he scornfully rejects amid general merriment. The
bewildered bridegroom, with his impetuosity and temper sorely tried,
is then informed that his lady love is absent, and he is invited in
to see for himself. He rushes in, searches from room to room until he
finds her ready to go forth in the bridal-dress to the church. These
obstacles thrown across the path of accepted suitors, in order to
test their fidelity or to restrain their ardor, are of very ancient
origin. Who has not read of the self-imposed task of Penelope or of
Atlanta, in classic fable; or the story of Brunhilde, in the Norse
mythology, when Gunther’s courage and skill were tested not in vain? In
other remote places the peasants still observe the old German idea of
regulating matrimonial affairs by the Sundays of the month, each Sunday
having a distinct part and significance assigned to it and designated
in turn,--Review Sunday, Decision Sunday, Contract Sunday, Possession
Sunday. On the first the girls appear in dress-parade for the benefit
of the young men with hymeneal hearts. Then they separate, each one
to ponder for a week over the image which caught his or her fancy.
On the following Sunday the enamored swains are permitted to bow to
the objects of their choice; if the bow is returned with a pleasant
smile, he feels encouraged; if his salute is returned coldly, he is
correspondingly discouraged. The third Sunday he is interviewed by
the parents of the young lady, and, if character and conditions are
satisfactorily established, the marriage is arranged to be celebrated
on Possession Sunday. In Uri a citizen was not allowed to marry a
stranger without paying to the village a fine of 300 francs. In many
places the local spirit is strong as to social relations, and the
youth in one Commune who would court a girl of another district meets
a rude reception from her fellow-villagers. During the fourteenth
century the attendants at a wedding were limited to a very few guests.
In Zurich the most distinguished personage dared not invite more than
twenty mothers of families to the wedding feast, nor have more than
two hautboys, two violins, and two singers. The bridegroom paid for
the wedding dinner, the cost of which was fixed so much _per capita_
for every invited male, married female, and maiden; the allowance for
the first was double that of the second, and four times that of the
third. In other Cantons the wedding was a grand occasion, an imposing
and public affair in which the whole village was expected to take
part. In the house of the newly-married pair there were open tables,
and drinking, dancing, and feasting went on all night. But these
Pantagruel repasts are now no longer in fashion anywhere. The day fixed
for the wedding, among the peasants, is always Sunday. In the morning,
before going to church, the invited guests meet at the bride’s house
to partake of wine, soup, and fritters. After the marriage ceremony,
the party go in procession to the bridegroom’s house, where dinner is
served; the priest delivers a long discourse, and other orators hold
forth. In the evening there is dancing, and at the stroke of midnight
the guests form a ring round the wedded pair and take off their
crowns, and, after a few words of encouragement, they are left alone.
In some places a man was not permitted to marry unless he had certain
possessions, and could show himself able to defend his homestead from
fire and robbers; he must have arms and uniform, hatchet, bucket, and
ladder. Custom, at least, was law to a woman. She must have acquired
a sufficient stock of linen and have learned many domestic arts; thus
Swiss women became famous for their linen, and a girl would begin
laying up her stock of household and domestic articles _pour mon cher
petit ménage_ long before she met her partner for life. The custom
of Saturday-night visits among the young peasant people, whose daily
labors keep them away during the week, still prevails. On Saturday
night the young Swiss comes under the window of the fair lady to whom
he intends paying his addresses, or with whom he only wishes to become
acquainted. Being visiting-night, and expecting company, she is at the
window, neatly dressed, and admits or rejects the petition, for which
her suitor is not at any trouble of improvisation, for it is according
to a received form, learned by heart, and generally in verse; and the
answer is in verse also. The young man, permission obtained, climbs
up to the window, and there he sits on the sill and is offered some
refreshments. According as his views are more or less serious, and he
proves more or less acceptable, he is allowed to come into the room or
suffered to remain outside.

The last solemnities, those of death and burial, have among the
peasants of the Latin Cantons something violent and passionate in their
character. For several Sundays after the funeral the women, dressed in
mourning with a head-band across the forehead, meet in the cemetery
around the grave, and, in a mournful and harrowing concert, renew their
tears and lamentations. The nearest relations carry the coffin; little
children follow, dressed as angels, all in white, with crowns on their
heads; then come the _white penitents_, dressed in their death-shirt,
or the robe of the brotherhood. White is the mourning color, and
persons with whom you meet with a broad white band on their dress have
lost a member of their family.

The picturesque costumes of the Swiss peasantry, which formerly were
the pride and distinguishing marks of the several Cantons, have almost
disappeared; their use being confined to holidays, festivals, or as
advertisements at public resorts. The Bernese have their snow-white
shift-sleeves rolled up to the shoulder exposing to view a sinewy
sunburnt arm, the dark-red stays laced with black in front, silk
aprons, silver chains, and buckles, colored skirts just short enough to
show a home-made white stocking, a heavy gaiter shoe, a beehive-shaped
hat, and long yellow hair in a single plait hanging down nearly to the
heels, along a back made very straight by the habit of carrying pails
of milk and water on the head. In French Switzerland long tresses,
trimmed with black ribbon, descend on each side of the neck, a narrow
dark bodice restrains the waist, the bosom is covered by a chemise
plaited in a thousand folds and whiter than snow, a short and ample
under-petticoat leaves the leg exposed above the ankle, and red garters
full in sight. These costumes really have nothing to recommend them
except their peculiarity; there is something very irresponsive in them,
adding nothing to the beauty of person or grace of bearing, but simply
tending to make the wearers, like Lord Dundreary’s girls, “look more
or less alike, generally more alike;” none of them are pretty except
on paper, yet even the ugliest of them all, worn by the homeliest
women, help to make up the sum of national peculiarities and add to the
picturesqueness. The men affect immensely broad pants, a large round
coat high in the collar, short in the waist, with two little ludicrous
tails in the very small of the back, and a soft beaver hat pushed
sideways on the head; the complete appearance is sometimes suggested
of a walking porpoise. The present ordinary male and female dress is
somewhat sombre, little use of bright color is made, and regard is had
for that which will wear best and require least washing; the material
is either undyed homespun woollen cloth or coarse blue frieze, and the
garments are clumsily made, stiff and heavy.

Human character appears to consist of two opposite varieties: one
that makes a fetich of the past, and shrinks from changes as from a
rude immorality; the other, that dashes forward impatiently after
progression and development. In most states these temperaments are
brought together in the diversity of persons, and the reforming and
conserving influences work out in harmony the course of society.
But in Switzerland can be found peasant communities where nothing
but conservatives are generated. Time seems to have slumbered among
them for centuries; their character has continued ancient in modern
times.[92] They have always been and will ever be peasants. They are
religious, unaffected, industrious people; shepherds, agriculturists,
artisans, soldiers, patriots, and, above all, freemen, full of song,
labor, and fight. They wish to be ruled by habits rather than laws,
with traditional customs as a legislative code. What matters if the
storm rages, and if it snows, if the wind blusters in the pine forest,
if a man shut up in his cottage has but black bread and cheese, under
his smoky light and beside his fire of turf? Another kingdom opens to
reward him, the kingdom of inward contentment; his wife loves him and
is faithful; his children round his hearth spell out the old family
Bible; he is the master in his home, the owner and protector; and if so
be that he needs assistance, he knows that at the first appeal he will
see his neighbors stand faithfully and bravely by his side,--

    “And each shall care for other,
    And each to each shall bend,
  To the poor a noble brother,
    To the good an equal friend.”

Quite a different world from the every-day world of railways and
electricity; this carefully got-up world, gloved and starched, that
scorns the unbought charm and the sublime simplicity, the severe and
contented virtue, of the children of nature. The peasant in rags,
coming out of his larch forest, brings with him a breath of wild
nature; and the young girl, mounted on her donkey, fresh and rosy as
the rhododendrons, is as simple and natural as they. This blue-bloused
son of the soil, trained to the habits of order by centuries of
freedom, understands his rights and has been taught at school his
civic duties, and knows something of the laws and the constitution
of his country. Inquire of him, and you will probably learn that he
is a Deputy and a Communal Councillor, and may one day be President
of the Confederation. There is much of all that constitutes both the
good man and the good citizen distributed throughout the peasants. In
their great cathedral of nature, the harsh clamor and ceaseless unrest
of the outer world find but little place and less concern. Rejecting
those factitious wants which luxury creates, the expense and way of
living are proportioned to their small means, and every one, sooner
or later, is sure of something which he enjoys in quiet and security.
The very spirit of picturesqueness hovers over their mountain homes,
and lingers in their peaceful vales whispering of a past fraught with
quaint traditions and glorious memories; and of a present, full of
self-supporting energy, reciprocal dispositions to neighborly help,
a spontaneous tendency to order, forethought, plodding industry,
sobriety, and contentment.

  “And e’en those hills that round his mansion rise
  Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies.
  Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms,
  And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms;
  And as a child, when scaring sounds molest,
  Clings close and closer to the mother’s breast,
  So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind’s roar,
  But bind him to his native mountains more.”




CHAPTER XVII.

NATURAL BEAUTIES AND ATTRACTIONS.

  “A wilderness of sweets: for nature here
  Wanton’d as in her prime, and play’d at will,
  Her virgin fancies pouring forth more sweet,
  While above rule of art, enormous bliss.”


No spot in Europe can compare with Switzerland in loveliness and rural
charms; in variety, boldness, and sublimity of scenery; in tonic,
steel-strong air, a fine intoxicant of mental and physical joy and
power. It is a land of valleys, exquisite in their loveliness, enriched
by numberless streams, lakes, mountains, peak, and pass:

  “Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.”

Nowhere else, in one quarter of the globe, has nature laid her hand
on the face of the earth with the same majesty; no other division
of it presents the same contrasts in a panorama so astonishing; no
other exhibits so surprising a diversity of landscapes, caverns and
waterfalls, fields of ice and cascades, green and broad mountain-sides,
pastoral abodes and smiling vales, winding and rocky paths, aerial
bridges and infernal glens, eternal snows and luxuriant pastures,
forests of dark larches and congress of hoary mountains, austere
loveliness and lofty nobleness:

  “Ever charming, ever new,
  When will the landscape tire the view?
  The mountain’s fall, the river’s flow,
  The wooded valleys, warm and low;
  The windy summits wild and high,
  Roughly rushing on the sky;
  Town and village, tower and farm,
  Each give to each a double charm.”

If the Neapolitan be moved to call the environments of his capital
“_un pezzo del cielo caduto in terra_” (“a bit of heaven fallen upon
the earth”), the Swiss may more modestly claim that they have that
piece of the Garden of Eden only which the angels of the legend lost
on their way. It is impossible to convey a vivid, and at the same time
an accurate, impression of grand scenery by the use of words. Written
accounts, when they come near their climax, fall as much below the
intention as words are less substantial than things.

The _mountains_ come first in the glory and charm of Switzerland’s
natural beauties and attractions. They encompass us on every hand; fill
our eyes when we are walking and haunt our dreams during sleep,--so
beautiful, so majestic, and yet so lovely. Grandeur of bulk and mass
is conjoined with splendor and fulness of detail; form and shape are
crowned with soaring peak and matchless line; and the summits mingle
with that sky which seems to be the only fitting background for the
eternal hills. On the face of a topographical map Switzerland appears
to consist chiefly of mountains lying near together, or piled one upon
another, as if the story of the Titans was realized, and with narrow
valleys between them. Of the western, central, and eastern Alps,
constituting the whole Alpine system, a part of the first, the whole
of the second, and none of the third division belong to Switzerland.
The entire giant fabric, rising concentrically and almost abruptly from
the surrounding plains, offers its grandest development in Switzerland
and Savoy. There are points of view in Switzerland whence the array
of Alpine peaks, semicircular in form, presented at once to the eye,
extends for more than one hundred and twenty miles, and comprises
from two hundred to three hundred distinct summits, capped with snow
or bristling with bare rocks. The Swiss Alps are divided into several
sections,--the Pennine Alps, the Helvetian Alps, the Rhetian Alps, and
the Bernese Alps; all radiate from a central group, the St. Gothard
being the key of the entire system, and all converge upon it. The
Pennine are the loftiest, including Mont Blanc,--

          “the monarch of mountains:
    They crown’d him long ago,
  On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
    With a diadem of snow.”

It is true that Mont Blanc is in Upper Savoy, just across the Swiss
frontier, but it is a part of the same wonderful formation, and few
people think of it without passing it incontinently to the credit of
Switzerland.

Then come the Finsteraarhorn and Monte Rosa, being, next after Mont
Blanc, the two highest mountains in Europe. The most important ranges
are the Alps, which run along the Italian frontier, the Bernese
Oberland, and the Juras, which separate Switzerland on the west from
France. Of the Bernese Alps the Finsteraarhorn, Jungfrau, Eiger, and
Schreckhorn are the most conspicuous. As to height, the Alps are
divided into the High Alps, rising from eight thousand to fifteen
thousand feet above the level of the sea, and covered with perpetual
snow and ice; the Middle Alps, beginning at about five thousand five
hundred feet above the sea and rising to the point of perpetual
congelation; and the Low Alps, commencing with an elevation of about
two thousand feet. The actual height of the Swiss mountain fluctuates
as much as twenty-five feet, owing to the varying thickness of the
stratum of snow that covers the summit. Some present pure white peaks;
some are black and riven under the frown of imperious cumuli; some
have cornices, bosses, and amphitheatres; others have blue rifts,
snow precipices, and glaciers issuing from their hollows,--“a chaos
of metamorphic confusion, paradoxical conglomerates, strata twisted,
pitched vertically or upside-down, levels changed by upheavals or
depression.”

  “As Atlas fix’d, each hoary pile appears
  The gather’d winter of a thousand years.”

A mountain guide will enumerate for you the names of the celebrated
summits, as a cicerone points out the most illustrious figures in a
museum of sculpture. Each of these mountains has its biography,--its
history,--which the guide will be sure to relate. One takes life, it
is a sanguinary homicidal Alp; another, on the contrary, is humane,
hospitable, it offers safe sheltering-places to strayed travellers.
The Matterhorn is a great storm-breeder.[93] The Schreckhorn is a peak
of terror, the grimmest fiend of the Oberland; the Finsteraarhorn is a
black peak of the Aar; Diablerets (Devil’s Strokes) is a name given to
another in consequence of its terrible landslips, which have caused a
popular superstition that, like Avernus, it is the portal of hell, and
haunted by evil spirits. Differing in form, altitude, and color, each
of them has its physiognomy and its character, and even “its soul,” as
Michelet says.

  “Veil’d from eternity, the Jungfrau soars,”

not a single massive pyramid, but a series of crests rising
terrace-fashion above each other, with a zone of névés and glaciers.
The pure, unsullied snow which always covers this mountain, it is
supposed, gave occasion to its name, which signifies “the virgin.” It
is a prime favorite with the Swiss,--the great Diana of the Oberland
range. There is some spell, some mysterious potency in it. A sight
never to be forgotten, is to behold the marble dome of this stately
temple of nature, kindling in the fire of the setting sun, or silvering
in the light of a full moon, with the gold-fringed clouds playing
wantonly about,--

  “To bathe the virgin’s marble brow,
  Or crown her head with evening gold.”

On the Wengern Mountain, in full view of the Jungfrau, in 1816, Byron
composed three of his noblest poems,--“The Prisoner of Chillon,” the
third canto of “Childe Harold,” and “Manfred,” in the latter of which
he describes the Jungfrau as

          “This most steep, fantastic pinnacle,
  The fretwork of some earthquake,--where the clouds
  Pause to repose themselves in passing by.”

All the Alps have, more or less, naked excrescences, which rise above
the crest of the range, and which, in the language of the country, are
not inaptly termed “dents,” from some fancied and plausible resemblance
to human teeth.

Professor Tyndall, writing of the wondrous scene presented by the
Swiss mountains, says: “I asked myself, how was this colossal work
performed? Who chiselled these mighty and picturesque masses out of
a mere protuberance of the earth? And the answer was at hand. Ever
young, ever mighty, with the vigor of a thousand years still within
him, the real sculptor was even then climbing up the eastern sky. It
was he who raised aloft the waters which cut out the ravines; it was he
who planted the glaciers on the mountain slopes, thus giving gravity
a plough to open up the valleys; and it is he who, acting through
the ages, will finally lay low these mighty mountains, rolling them
gradually seaward, sowing the seeds of continents to be, so that the
people of another earth may see mould spread and corn wave over the
hidden rocks which at this moment bear the weight of the Jungfrau.”

Mountains at once excite and satisfy an ideal in the soul, which holds
kin with the divine in nature. They ennoble life by their majesty
and fortify it by their stately beauty. The human mind thirsts after
immensity and immutability, and duration without bounds; but it needs
some tangible object from which to take its flight, something present
to lead to futurity, something bounded from whence to rise to the
infinite. “Earth has built the great watch-towers of the mountains,
and they lift their heads far up into the sky and gaze ever upward
and around to see if the judge of the world comes not.”[94] Their
cloud-capped summits are awful in their mysterious shrouds of darkness,
and their sudden thunder crashing amid overhanging precipices is often
terrible in its shock. With many their gloomy sublimity, hard, jagged,
and torn, produces an uncomfortable feeling: Goethe wrote, “Switzerland
with its mountains at first made so great an impression upon me that
it disturbed and confused me, only after repeated visits did I feel
at my ease among them.” There is something inexpressibly interesting
in their society, their age, their duration without change, and their
majestic repose; their fixed, frozen, changeless glory. The sun rolls
his purple tides of light through the air that surrounds their summits,
but his beams wake no seed-time and ripen no harvest. The moon and
the stars rise and move, and decline along the horizon, century after
century, but the sweet vicissitudes of the season and of time move
not the sympathies of these pale, stern peaks, over which broods
one eternal winter. Upon them the vivifying and ordering syllables
of creation seem never to have passed; a realm of chaos reserved to
the primeval empire of the _formless_ and the _void_; where there is
brilliance without warmth, summer without foliage, and days but no
duties. Beneath the overwhelming radiance of a world of light, whose
reflection makes every valley beneath them rejoice, these giants flaunt
their crowns of snow everlastingly in the very face of the sun. They
are so sharply defined and distinct that they seem to be within arm’s
reach; apparent nearness, yet a sense of untraversable remoteness,
like heaven itself, at once the most distant from us and the nearest.
Their angle of elevation, seen from a distance, is very small indeed.
Faithfully represented in a drawing, the effect would be insignificant;
but their aerial perspective amply restores the proportions lost in the
mathematical perspective. “Mountains are the beginning and end of all
natural scenery,” and there is no Landseer for Alpine pictures. They
are too vast and too simple; and the scene, though its objects are so
few, is too expanded for the canvas.

The _Glaciers_ of the Alps, frozen streams of ice, are remarkable
phenomena of nature, and possess the greatest interest for geologists.
The name _Glacier_ is French; the German word is _Gletscher_, and the
Italian _Ghiacciaio_. Ruskin calls them “silent and solemn causeways,
broad enough for the march of an army in a line of battle, and quiet
as a street of tombs in a buried city;” Longfellow describes them as
“resembling a vast gauntlet, of which the gorge represents the wrist,
while the lower glacier, cleft by its fissures into fingers, like
ridges, is typified by the hand.” With the exception of the Engadine,
where the limits do not begin below ten thousand and seventy feet, in
the other parts of Switzerland the limit of the glaciers and of the
eternal snow is met with at eight thousand seven hundred and forty to
nine thousand one hundred and eighty feet. The average height of the
snow-line fluctuates according to north or south aspect, and greater or
less exposure to the south wind, but in exceptionally warm summers, the
snow completely melts away on summits having an altitude of over eleven
thousand feet. The common expression, the “line of perpetual snow,”
is misleading; it is only correctly used to indicate the altitude
above which the mountains always appear white, because at that height
it is merely the surface which at times thus gets partially melted.
These masses of ice or glaciers are called streams, because, though
imperceptibly, they really move along; they are continually descending
towards the valley from the mountain-tops:

  “The glacier’s cold and restless mass
  Moves onward day by day.”

Their immobility is only apparent, they move and advance without
ceasing. Careful investigation has ascertained the rate of motion of
a glacier to be as much as two feet in twenty-four hours; but it is a
curious fact that the whole stream does not move at the same rate; the
centre moves quicker than the sides and drags them after it. Agassiz,
the Swiss naturalist, began in 1842 a series of careful observations
on the Aar glacier, taking up his abode in a little hut constructed on
purpose, and called the “_Hôtel des Neuchâtelois_.” Men mocked at him
when he set up his stakes on the glacier to discover the rate of the
invisible motion, but he persisted in his minute, painstaking labors,
futile and inconsequential as they seemed to the unscientific mind,
till he plucked out from every glacier in Switzerland the heart of its
mysterious movement. He held that the differences in speed between
different and sundry parts of the same glacier were the results of
unequal density and of unequal declivity. Savants differ as to the
causes which set the glacier in motion. Schaelzer holds that its
expansion arises from thaw; Professor Hugi is of the same opinion, that
the glacier, like an enormous sponge filled with aqueous particles,
expands and grows larger when it freezes. Of all the theories that of
De Saussure is the most generally accepted. He attributes the forward
movement of a glacier to gravitation,--that is to say, to the pressure
of the superior masses on the inferior. Certain naturalists affirm that
the glaciers add to their power by their own cold, and that in time,
without the intervention of some new natural phenomenon, they will
eventually extend themselves downward into the valleys that lie on the
next level beneath, overcoming vegetation and destroying life. There
must be a limit somewhere to the increase of the ice, and it is almost
certain that these limits have been attained during the centuries that
the present physical formation of Switzerland is known to have existed.
As a whole, the contest between heat and cold ought to be set down as
producing equal effects.

The constant heavy pressure on the glacial ice, and the tension
resulting from obstacles in the channel followed by it, cause splits
of large masses to occur, and force them so far to separate that
there is no chance of regelation. These splits are the _crevasses_
met with in many glaciers, and one of the most dangerous features
to climbers, especially when they are concealed by a treacherous
coating of snow. The transverse crevasses are so close together and
form such a bewildering labyrinth that it requires a good pilot and
experienced guide to steer clear of their difficulties. In proportion
as the glacier develops, these crevasses or fissures enlarge. Some
of them form into deep valleys, abysses, and unfathomable gulfs. If
one falls into a crevasse, it is alleged he hears everything that
is said above him, but cannot make himself heard. The ice of these
fissures has tints of extraordinary fineness and delicacy; it is of
a pale and tender blue, but if you detach a piece to examine it in
full light, its beautiful ideal blue color disappears, and you have
nothing in your hand but a pale, colorless block. The crevasses, at
times all lined with the purest, smoothest snow, open up like great
alcoves, hung in clouds of ice with delicate ornaments thrown on them
by the wind. They modify and change every spring, when the winter’s
accumulation of snow melts under the action of the heat, and the frost
of the nights incorporates it with the glacier. The guides, therefore,
before conducting parties at the beginning of the season, sound the
old crevasses, and study the new features of the glacier, its curves,
its bridges of snow suspended in the air, its abysses covered with a
frail surface, its fantastic architecture of staircases and terraces
of ice. The glacier ice, made of annual beds disposed in vertical bands
of white and blue, does not resemble ordinary ice, which is homogeneous
throughout; it is granular, traversed by a multitude of small canals,
by a net-work of veins in which a bluish water circulates, and which
penetrates the whole thickness of the ice. The water that escapes
from a glacier is either black, like ink, or green, like absinthe, or
white, like milk; it is always troubled, and charged with mud or earth
full of fertilizing matter. So, while the glaciers make the higher
valleys into a land of desolation and misery, lower down on the slopes
that drink life from its flood, it is a garden, an orchard, a rich
vine country, smiling hill-sides, shaded with trees and crowned with
flowers. While a glacier is a stream of ice, it is not formed of frozen
water, but of frozen snow. The snow of the mountain-top is a fine dry
powder, which is formed into a granular mass by the action of the sun
shining on it in the middle of the day; what is thus partially melted
quickly freezes again each evening into globular forms, consequently
a glacier is not slipping like ordinary ice. This process has gone on
for unknown ages. Geologists think that the glaciers of the present day
are “mere pigmies as compared to the giants of the glacial epoch;” and
that their action has had much to do with the architecture of the Alps;
that the ice exerts a crushing force on every point of its bed which
bears its weight, and the glaciers would naturally scoop out and carve
the mountains and valleys into the slopes which we now see; and that
the plains of Italy and Switzerland are covered with _débris_ of the
Alps. These geologists are pretty well agreed that the Lake of Geneva
was excavated by a glacier. Whatever may be thought of the erosive
theory, there is no doubt that these dreary wastes of ice are of great
use in the economy of nature. They are the locked-up reservoirs, the
sealed fountains which immediately fertilize the plains of Lombardy,
the valley of the Rhone, and of Southern Germany, and from which the
vast rivers traversing the great continents of our globe are sustained.
The summer heat, which dries up sources of water, first opens out their
bountiful supplies. When the rivers of the plain begin to shrink and
dwindle within their parched beds, the torrents of the Alps, fed by the
melting snow and glaciers, rush down from the mountains and supply the
deficiency. Professor Hugi’s hypothesis, that the glacier is alive,
is often suggested by the singular noises produced by the forcing of
air and water through passages in the body of the glacier. In the eyes
of the credulous mountaineers who live in the silence which broods
over the sombre cliffs, the glacier is a place of grief and exile,
of penance and punishment, of expiation and tears, such a place as
described by Dante in his “Inferno,” where

            “... various tongues,
  Horrible languages, outcries of woe,
  Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse,
  With hands together smote, that swelled the sounds,
  Made a tumult that forever whirls
  Round through that air, with solid darkness stained,
  Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies.”

The peasants tell old stories of ice-gods ruling and thundering with
strange sounds, and the “lamentations and loud moans” of prisoners
in these frozen caves. The legends people the glaciers only with
gloomy, unhappy beings, trembling with fear, weighed down by some
malediction. Professor Helm has made a careful survey of the Alpine
glaciers, and reckons them at eleven hundred and fifty-five, of which
Swiss territory includes four hundred and seventy-one. He estimates
the total superficial area of these glaciers between three thousand
and four thousand square kilometres; the area of the Swiss glaciers
is put down as eighteen hundred and thirty-nine square kilometres.
They begin in the Canton of Glarus, extend to the Grisons, thence to
the Canton of Uri, and finally down to Bern. Of these Swiss glaciers,
one hundred and thirty-eight are of the first rank,--that is, over
four and three-quarters of a mile long. Eight glaciers unite at the
foot of Monte Rosa, seven at the foot of the Matterhorn, and five at
the foot of the Finsteraarhorn. The _Mer de Glace_, which surrounds
the Bernina, is more than sixteen leagues in circumference. Its
tempestuous waves, with azure reflections like lava, pile themselves
in the defiles, precipitate themselves into the gorges, or run by a
rapid descent into the depths of the valleys; sometimes they leap up
between two points of rocks, dart into space, and remain suspended
above the abyss till the day when their frozen sheet is broken up and
hurled into its depths. There are few grander sights than the Bernina,
with its boldly contoured granitic rocks and its glaciers creeping low
down into the valleys. The Canton of Grisons, of which the Engadine
forms a part, counts more than one hundred and fifty glaciers. The
great ice-fields of the Bernese Oberland consist of one hundred and
eight to one hundred and twenty square miles in extent, and are the
most extensive in Europe. The boundaries are the Valais, the Grimsel,
the valley of the Aar, and the Gemmi, and spread over more than two
hundred and thirty thousand acres. The longest glacier is the _Gross
Aletsch_ of the Bernese Oberland; it is fifteen miles long, and has a
basin forty-nine and eight-tenths square miles, and a maximum breadth
of nineteen hundred and sixty-eight yards. The Rhone glacier is admired
for its natural beauties, more especially on account of its terminal
face, furrowed by huge crevasses. The lowest point to which a Swiss
glacier is known to have descended is three thousand two hundred and
twenty-five feet, attained by the Lower Grindelwald glacier in 1818.
As to the thickness of the glaciers there exist no reliable data. In
the series of investigations and measurements made by Professor Agassiz
on the Aar glacier, fifty years ago, he excavated to a depth of two
hundred and sixty metres (over eight hundred and thirty feet), and
did not get to the bottom. He estimated the depth of the Aar glacier,
at a point below the junction of the Finsteraarhorn and Lauter-Aar
glaciers, at four hundred and sixty metres, or about fifteen hundred
and ten feet. In viewing these glaciers no one, however sceptical,
however unimaginative, can doubt the honesty of the great fiery Swiss
naturalist’s belief in the historical reality of a glacial epoch, that
this part of Switzerland is the natural result of the terrific orgy and
dynamic force of profound glaciation, and that

                    “Yon towers of ice
  Since the creation’s dawn have known no thaw.”

The upper part of the glacier is known as the _Névé_ or _Firn_, and
it is the lower part alone which is designated among the Swiss as the
glacier. The névés are those fields of dazzling snow which extend above
the zone of the glaciers, and their incessant transformation produces
the glaciers. This snow of the névés does not resemble that lower down;
it is harder, colder, and has the appearance of needles of pounded
ice or little crystallized stars, and the alternations from frost
to thaw give to this snow the brilliance of metal and a consistency
approaching that of ice. The name _Moraine_ is given to those piles
of stones, pebbles, blocks of rock, _débris_ of all sorts that the
glacier brings down with it in its course, and which it gets rid of as
soon as possible. “The glacier is always cleansing itself,” and if it
expands, it breaks up and disperses its moraine; it pushes it, throwing
out and piling on the sides even the largest blocks of stone. If, on
the contrary, it contracts, part of this chaos of _débris_, left in
its place, becomes covered by degrees with a carpet of turf. When two
glaciers descend by opposite valleys, abutting on the same bed, and
meet, their moraines mingle with one another, and are sometimes piled
up till they attain a width of almost a thousand feet and a height of
about seventy. The _Moulins_ form conduits for the surface-water, to
carry it to the under-ground streams flowing beneath the glacier.

Enormous masses of snow accumulate in some angle or on some ledge of
the mountains until they either fall by their own weight or are broken
off by oscillations of the air, or the warm ground thaws the lower
stratum, and then the mass begins to slide, gaining in bulk and speed
in its course. This is the terrible _avalanche_, and dwellings and
even entire villages are buried from thirty to fifty feet deep. It
sometimes descends with a force which causes it to rebound up the side
of the opposite mountain. The avalanche produces a prodigious roar, not
a reverberation of sound, but a prolongation of sound more metallic
and musical than thunder, and may be heard at a great distance. An
avalanche may be set in motion by a very trifling disturbance of the
air: the flight of a bird, the cracking of a whip, the conversation of
persons going along, sometimes suffices to shake and loosen it from the
vertical face of the cliffs to which it is clinging:

  “Ye toppling crags of ice,
  Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down
  In mountainous o’erwhelming.”

The cutting away of trees, at one time a common cause of avalanches, is
forbidden by a federal law:

  “Altdorf long ago had been
  Submerged beneath the avalanches’ weight,
  Did not the forest there above the town
  Stand like a bulwark to arrest their fall.”

There is a distinction between summer and winter avalanches. The
former are solid avalanches formed of old snow that has acquired
almost the solidity of ice. The warmth of spring softens it, loosens
it from the rocks, and it slides down into the valleys; these are
called “melting avalanches,” and they regularly follow certain tracks
which are embanked like the course of a river with wood or bundles
of branches. The most dreaded and terrible avalanches--those of dry
powdery snow--occur only in winter, when sudden squalls and hurricanes
of snow throw the whole atmosphere into chaos. They come down in sudden
whirlwinds, with the violence of a waterspout, and in a few minutes
work great destruction.

The most memorable avalanche in Switzerland occurred in 1806, when
one of the strata of Mount Rossberg, composed of limestone and flint
pebbles, nearly three miles long, one thousand feet broad, and one
hundred feet thick, precipitated from a height of three thousand feet
and annihilated the three prosperous villages of Goldau, Busingen,
and Lowerz, and killed four hundred persons. Enormous blocks, some of
them still covered with trees, shot through the air as if sent from a
projectile or tossed about like grains of dust. In 1501 a company of
soldiers were swallowed up by an avalanche near the St. Bernard. At
Fontana, in the Canton of Ticino, in 1879, the church and town-hall
were destroyed and many lives lost. On this occasion, within a space
of five minutes, no less than three hundred and fifty thousand cubic
metres of earth and rock came down from a height of four thousand three
hundred feet. In the same year an avalanche came rushing down the
westerly slope of the Jungfrau into Lauterbrunnen valley, a distance
of about seven thousand feet. Its peculiar feature was that, not only
along its course, but even on the opposite side of the valley, twelve
hundred feet away, the atmospheric pressure, which its rapid movement
generated, was so great as to level entire forests. In the Rhone
valley, in 1720, a single avalanche destroyed one hundred and twenty
houses at Ober-Gestalen, killing eighty-eight persons and four hundred
head of cattle. The victims were buried in a trench in the churchyard,
where an inscription, still existing, records the event in these words:
“God! what a grief, eight and eighty in one grave!” In the Grisons, the
whole village of Selva was buried, nothing remained visible but the
top of the church-steeple, and Val Vergasca was covered for several
months by an avalanche one thousand feet in length and fifty in depth.
The extraordinary power of the wind, which at times accompanies an
avalanche, is well known and dreaded. A case is recorded in which a
woman, walking to church, was lifted up into the air and carried to
the top of a lofty pine, in which position she remained lodged until
discovered and rescued by the returning congregation. The avalanche
exhibits a striking picture of ruin which nature inflicts upon her own
creations; she buildeth up and taketh down; she lifts the mountains
by her subterranean energies, and then blasts them by her lightnings,
frosts, thaws, and avalanches:

  “As where, by age, or rains, or tempests torn,
  A rock from some high precipice is borne;
  Trees, herds, and swains involving in the sweep,
  The mass flies furious from the aerial steep,
  Leaps down the mountain’s side, with many a bound,
  In fiery whirls, and smokes along the ground.”[95]

Every movement that is grand or beautiful in the course of rushing
waters seems to be the mission of mountain streams to illustrate. The
fierce rivers rush over rocks with such aimless force that the violence
of the torrent creates a back sweep of the overdriven, mad waves; here
and there in the bed of these rivers are seen blocks of stone, many of
them as large as a good-sized house, heaped up most strangely, jammed
in by their angles, in equilibrium on a point, or forming perilous
bridges over which you may with proper precaution pick your way to the
other side. The quarry from which the materials of this bridge came is
just above your head, and the miners are still at work,--air, water,
frost, weight, and time. Other blocks are only waiting for the last
moment of the great lever of nature to take the horrid leap, and bury
under some hundred feet of new chaotic ruins the trees and the verdant
lawn below. All round is the sound of water, the beat of the waves on
the shore, the onward flowing of the river, the rush of the torrent,
the splash of the waterfall, or the bubbling of some little stream;
everywhere the music of a hurrying stream accompanies you. Every valley
has its roar and rush of water and cataracts leaping to join the chorus
of torrents below, making one appreciate Wordsworth’s line,--

  “The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep.”

There is something which fascinates more in the free life, the young
energy, the sparkling transparency, and merry music of the smaller
streams. The upper Swiss valleys are sweet with perpetual streamlets,
that seem always to have “chosen the steepest places to come down for
the sake of the leaps, scattering their handfuls of crystals this way
and that, as the wind takes them, with all the grace, but with none
of the formalism of fountains, until at last they find their way down
to the turf, and lose themselves in that, silently; with quiet depth
of clear water furrowing among the grass-blades and looking only like
their shadows, but presently emerging again in little startled gushes
and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered suddenly that the day
was too short for them to get down the hill.” On summer days even the
glaciers are furrowed with thousands of threads of water; innumerable
little rills, which run and sparkle over its sides like streams of
quicksilver, and which disappear suddenly in the moulins, at the bottom
of which invisible canals join the extremity of the glacier. At night
all these brooklets are silent, and stopped; the cold congeals and
imprisons them in a thin coating of ice, which evaporates again the
next day. Of these mountain streams our own poet Bryant writes,--

  “Thy springs are in the cloud; thy stream
    Begins to move and murmur first
  Where ice-peaks feed the noonday beam,
    Or rain-storms on the glacier burst.”

It is easy to have cascades in Switzerland, with its vast bodies
of snow at an elevation which does not preclude melting in summer,
and from which the water has to find its way down rocky precipices,
sometimes thousands of feet. The most noted of these cascades are the
_Giessbach_ and the _Staubbach_. The first consists of a succession of
seven cascades, embowered in foliage, leaping from a height of eleven
hundred feet, and finally losing themselves in the waters of the Lake
of Brienz; the soft winds swing the spray as light as a mist of the
sunrise or the gentle sway of a bridal veil, while the rainbow hues
rest like kisses on its silver threads. The Falls of Staubbach, or
_Fall of Dust_, is well named; it is so ethereal, or dust-like, that it
appears at times about to sail away like a cloud on the wings of the
wind; it apparently creeps down from its lofty rock, a thousand feet
on high, and seems to throw itself timidly into the abyss, and to win
slowly against the mass of air. This retarded appearance in the fall
is caused by its being broken into mist soon after it leaves the shelf
over which it is precipitated. In its centre the fall is purely vapor;
but the rock advancing somewhat towards the base, it collects again
into water as it strikes it and forms a stream at the bottom. It has
been compared by poets to “the tail of the white horse on which death
was mounted,” and called a “sky-born waterfall,” and Goethe describes
it,--

  “Streams from the high,
  Steep, rocky wall,
  The purest fount;
  In clouds of spray,
  Like silver dust,
  It veils the rock
  In rainbow hues
  And, dancing down,
  With music soft,
  Is lost in air.”

Wherever the sun can get at the naked rock of the mountain, from July
to September, and find an open fissure, there vegetation climbs, and
clinging, establishes itself, and flourishes, and blooms. Charming
colonies of little flowers seem to have emigrated from the valleys,
and come to hide themselves in the cold deserts, where the brevity of
their life appears to enhance the beauty of their color. To better
resist the hoar-frost, they grow in thick tufts closely pressed
against each other. The rocks are velvet with lichens and mosses, that
anchor their roots into a mass of granite, grappling with a substance
which, when struck with steel, tears up its tempered grain and dashes
out the spark. There are familiar pinks, blue-bells, a species of
forget-me-not, a small star-shaped flower of a deep metallic blue
shading upon green, that flashes through the grass with a moist,
lustrous softness,--it is the smaller gentian, so dear to the poet’s
heart and verse. Then great rose-colored beds of rhododendrons; azaleas
of vivid carmine; golden arnicas, with their stately bearing, like rays
of sunshine turned into flowers; in every direction, orchids, diffusing
a strong odor of vanilla; and the narcissi, which are visible a great
distance, and their odor wafted by the wind, is no less penetrating
than that of an orange grove; the Alpine rose, of which Ruskin says,
“when the traveller finds himself physically exhausted by the pomp of
landscape, let him sink down on his knees and concentrate his attention
on the petals of a rock-rose.” Against the cliffs are rich clumps of
the peerless, delicately-cut _Edelweiss_; called by the botanists
“_Gnaphalium alpinum_.” It is a peculiar plant of delicate construction
that grows under the snow; containing very little sap, so that it can
be preserved a long time; the blossom is surrounded by white velvety
leaves, and even the stem has a down upon it. The possession of one
is proof of unusual daring, and to gather it, the hunter, tempted by
its beauty and by his love (for it is immensely valued by the Swiss
maidens) climbs the most inaccessible cliffs on which it grows, and
is sometimes found dead at the foot with the flower in his hand. No
art can simulate its beautiful, ermine-like bloom, and experiments
have been made to cultivate it in other places, but it changes its
character and becomes transformed into a new species; in its Alpine
home alone will it flourish, and there must it be sought, and adorn
the hat as the badge of triumph for the Alpine climber. The mountain
is really a botanical garden; the Swiss flora is the largest on the
European continent, in proportion to the area it covers. The varied
local influences and conditions resulting from such a broken surface,
and differences of altitude concur in producing the graduation and
unbounded variety of botanical specimens.

Trees are also present in great abundance and variety, increasing the
enchantment of the view with their leafy clothing, which, by partly
concealing, adds charm of mystery to the prospect. There are specimens
of noble chestnuts and walnuts, grand old oaks, larches, and gigantic
pines. The walnut-trees disappear at a height of twenty-five hundred
feet; chestnuts and beeches cover the slopes a little higher; to these
succeed the firs, which seem to have sown themselves in a luxuriant
way, some standing alone in green gracefulness, others growing in
pretty little miniature groves; then the knotted oaks, holding by
their strong roots to the precipitous sides; and the burly pines that
flourish at far greater altitudes than either, seeming to require
scarcely any earth, but grasping with their strong, rough roots the
frozen rock, out of which, somehow, they contrive to draw moisture.
Some of the ancient pines on the Jungfrau are supposed to have stood
the blasts of winter for a thousand years; they are affirmed to be as
high as one hundred and sixty feet, and to measure twenty-four feet in
circumference. It is their peculiar conical form which enables them to
bow to, and thus resist the force of, the storm. The pine is the king
of the mountains; he strikes his club-foot deep into the cleft of the
rocks, or grasps its span with conscious power; there he lifts his
haughty front, like the warrior monarch that he is,--no flinching about
the pine, let the time be ever so stormy. His throne is the crag and
his crown is a good way up in the heavens, and as for the clouds, he
tears them asunder sometimes and uses them for robes. Then the stern,
deep, awfully deep roar that he makes in a storm. When he has aroused
his energies to meet the storm, the battle-cry he sends down the wind
is heard above all the roar and artillery of thunder, and when the
tempest leaves him, how quietly he settles to his repose,--the scented
breeze of a soft evening breathes upon him and the grim warrior king
wakes his murmuring lute, and through his dusky boughs float sweet and
soothing sounds. Higher still than the pine are the larches, a wood
highly valued; and at last comes the creeping pine, struggling against
the wind and cold: it is the highest climber among Alpine trees, and is
the immediate neighbor of the glacier.

The perils of wandering in the high Alps remain terribly real, and are
only to be met by knowledge, courage, caution, skill, and strength;
for rashness, ignorance, carelessness, the mountains still leave no
margin, and to these three-fourths of the catastrophes which shock us
are to be traced. Mountaineering without guides is not a thing to be
encouraged. The mountaineer’s instinct on rock and ice is an art quite
as subtle and complex as the art of the seaman or the horseman. The
senses all awake, the eye clear, the heart strong, the limbs steady
yet flexible, with power of recovery in store and ready for instant
action should the footing give way, such is the discipline which these
terrible ascents impose. The mountain guides are not ignorant, they
are licensed only after severe examination. They are obliged to take
courses of study; they are taught topography, and how to read a map and
find their way by it; to use the compass and the other instruments that
are indispensable in journeys of exploration; they are also taught how
to bind up wounds, so as to be able to do what is necessary at once in
case of accident; in a word, they are brave, modest, affable, sunburnt,
and scarred men, who have planted a flag on every summit, and who have
lent to the stern and awful mountains the romance of mountaineering.
It is understood that a true Swiss guide is literally “faithful unto
death;” that he does not hesitate to risk his own life for the sake of
his charge, and that instances are known in which it has not only been
risked but actually sacrificed. Many accidents in mountain-climbing
have resulted from an insane effort to dispense with the services of
accredited guides, or disregarding their directions. In the short space
of not quite a month, in 1887, eighteen tourists lost their lives; one
accident on the Jungfrau involving the loss of six. The fate of blind
guides and those they lead is set forth in unmistakable terms by the
Scriptures. Choose for your guides the hardy men who have learned their
business thoroughly, who have been chamois hunters from their youth,
who have lived on the mountains from their birth, and to whom the snows
and rocks and the clouds speak a language which they can understand,
and then accident is almost impossible. Roping is the common and safest
precaution, especially for ice traversing. A slip-knot is passed over
each climber’s head and shoulders and drawn tight under the arms. It
cannot be particularly pleasant, for at times the one in front makes a
spring, forgetting others are tied behind him, and takes them unawares,
nearly pulling them off their feet; then, on the other hand, oblivious
of the person behind you, suddenly you are checked in the middle of
your jump, perhaps, over a crevasse, or when standing in a little niche
on a steep wall of ice a thousand feet high. The graceful alpenstock,
so often seen in the hands of Swiss tourists inscribed with its roll
of triumph, must be taken _cum grano salis_. Many of them have never
done service beyond mountain hotel parlors, broad piazzas, and great
dining-rooms. They can be bought with “records” complete and shining,
and therefore are not as closely related to mountain-climbing as one
might suspect them to be. It is refreshing to see young lads stalking
about with these alpenstocks and ice-axes, like conquerors amid a
subject race. What lofty scorn they have for every man who has not
ascended the highest peak, and yet they never dared to try it! They
call themselves mountaineers, and at evening and in bad weather stalk
and lounge about the hotel, moody, terrible, and statuesque; they
speak to none but to other young braves, with whom they perpetually
mutter dark things about horrid places and cutting the record. No;
good mountaineering is the education of a lifetime begun in childhood,
and these pretentious youths are no more mountaineers than their boots
are. Under proper precautions, and with an experienced guide, it is
glorious and healthful exercise, and for purposes of science has been
of incalculable value.

In the later Middle Ages invalids came to _Baden_, in the Canton
of Aargau, for the sake of the mineral waters; and the springs
of _Pfäffers_ were known in 1242, and the waters considered very
efficacious, particularly in the case of persons “who had been
tortured.” These places are still visited, but the air-cure of the
mountain has almost superseded them. Jean Jacques Rousseau expressed
surprise that “bathing in the salubrious and beneficial mountain air
had not yet become one of the great resources of medical science or of
moral education.” There would be no occasion to-day for at least one
part of his surprise. The Swiss mountains have developed well-defined
and well-known health phases. They have become mediciners, and the
snow-clad peaks and the upper snow-clad valleys are being looked to
by physicians for the relief of certain ailments not easily remedied
by other means. Davos Platz and St. Moritz, in the Engadine, are
among the most familiar regions famed for the climatic treatment
of disease,--possessing remarkable health-giving properties in
lung trouble. It is the exquisite purity of the air, exercise, and
especial modes of life which the mountains impose that serve as the
chief medicine, and give these heights their beneficial virtues. The
rarefaction has its own and special effect. The breathing becomes
quicker, deeper, and fuller. One breathes fifteen to twenty-five per
cent. less air to produce a given weight of carbonic acid. The action
of the air on the blood in the lungs seems to be facilitated with
decreasing density; one, however, must ascend over two thousand feet
before the lighter air-pressure begins to make itself appreciable,
but for every one thousand feet additional the difference in the
rarefaction becomes of a very marked character. Here the law of “use
and disuse of organs” is illustrated in typical fashion,--parts of
the lungs but little used in ordinary life are brought freely into
use,--one is forced to breathe deeply, thus the vital capacity is
enlarged, and, by favoring exercise of little-used parts banishes the
tendency to disease from one of the seats of life. This so-called
diaphanous rarefied air is not air, it is a celestial ether; and so
with the sun, though it is hot, what you feel is not heat, it is a
permeating, invigorating, life-creating warmth. This warmth, then,
which the sun imparts to this ether pervades your lungs, your heart,
and reaches to your very bones. This virginally pure air makes you
conscious of a lighter and of a quicker life, an unknown facility
in breathing, and a lightness of body. Its electric freshness is a
brilliant vitality,--it is rest, inspiration, resolve. Then you are
surrounded with pine forests, and the bright sun is constantly raising
into the air from their trunks, branches, and leaves myriad molecules
of their resinous exudations. On ascending a mountain the mean annual
temperature decreases on an average of one degree Fahrenheit for every
three hundred and forty-nine feet. The value of fresh air and exercise
is a sentiment possibly as old as humanity itself. It is the same
spirit which animated Hippocrates and Galen when those classic worthies
discoursed upon the art of nature-cure. We really travel in circles in
the case of disease-cure, as in most other things. None the less may we
be thankful that, in our circular search after knowledge, we have come
upon the beaten track of ancient days, and have enlarged the wisdom
which of old showed forth the benefits of a cloudless sky and a pure
ether.

There are walks and excursions in the mountains for all, for the
invalid as for the cragsman; roads that are marvels of audacity,
crossing tremendous gorges, clinging in dizzy places along the
precipices at the foot of which is heard the boiling torrent, then
sweeping around sudden corners and angles; roads will wind among the
hills which rise steep and lofty from the scanty level place that
lies between them, whilst the hills seem continually to thrust their
great bulk before the wayfarer, as if grimly resolute to forbid his
passage, or close abruptly behind him when he still dares to proceed.
There are broad avenues overarched with spreading elms and maples,
with vistas reminding one of the nave and aisles of a large cathedral.
The mountain-paths are so pretty and charming; they wander about so
capriciously and fancifully; they run so merrily over the moss in the
woods, and beside the murmuring brooks; they climb so cheerfully up the
slopes and hill-sides; they lead you through so much of freshness, and
perfume, and varied scenery, that the pleasures of sight soon make you
oblivious of bodily fatigue. The cemeteries placed among these wooded
rocks and pastoral hills recall the wish of Ossian, “Oh, lay me, ye
that see the light, near some rock of my hills; let the thick hazels be
around, let the rustling oak be near; green be the place of my rest,
and let the distant torrent be heard.”

Switzerland is rich in aquatic landscapes; no country except Norway
and Sweden has such a number of inland lakes. The Lakes of Geneva,
Luzern, Zurich, Thun, Neuchâtel, Bienne, and Zug are all historic, and
have been the subject of numerous pen-pictures. The Lake of Geneva
is the largest of Western Europe, being fifty-seven miles long, and
its greatest width nine miles; it has its storms, its waves, and its
surge; now placid as a mirror, now furious as the Atlantic; at times
a deep-blue sea curling before the gentle waves, then a turbid ocean
dark with the mud and sand from its lowest depths; the peasants on
its banks still laugh at the idea of there being sufficient cordage
in the world to reach to the bottom of the _Genfer-See_. It is eleven
hundred and fifty-four feet above the sea, and having the same depth,
its bottom coincides with the sea-level; the water is of such exceeding
purity that when analyzed only 0.157 in 1000 contain foreign elements.
The lake lies nearly in the form of a crescent stretching from the
southwest towards the northeast. Mountains rise on every side, groups
of the Alps of Savoy, Valais, and Jura. The northern or the Swiss
shore is chiefly what is known as a _côte_, or a declivity that admits
of cultivation, with spots of verdant pasture scattered at its feet
and sometimes on its breast, with a cheery range of garden, chalet,
wood, and spire; villas, hamlets, and villages seem to touch each
other down by the banks, and to form but one town, whilst higher up,
they peep out from among the vineyards or nestle under the shade of
walnut-trees. At the foot of the lake is the white city of Geneva, of
which Bancroft wrote, “Had their cause been lost, Alexander Hamilton
would have retired with his bride to Geneva, where nature and society
were in their greatest perfection.” The city is divided into two parts
by the Rhone as it glides out of the basin of the lake on its course
towards the Mediterranean. The Arve pours its turbid stream into the
Rhone soon after that river issues from the lake. The contrast between
the two rivers is very striking, the one being as pure and limpid as
the other is foul and muddy. The Rhone seems to scorn the alliance and
keeps as long as possible unmingled with his dirty spouse; two miles
below the place of their junction a difference and opposition between
this ill-assorted couple is still observable; these, however, gradually
abate by long habit, till at last, yielding to necessity, and to the
unrelenting law which joined them together, they mix in perfect union
and flow in a common stream to the end of their course.[96] At the
head of the lake begins the valley of the Rhone, where George Eliot
said, “that the very sunshine seemed dreary mid the desolation of ruin
and of waste in this long, marshy, squalid valley; and yet, on either
side of the weary valley are noble ranges of granite mountains, and
hill resorts of charm and health.” At the upper part of the lake are
Montreux, Territet, and Vevay, sheltered from the north wind by the
western spurs of the Alps, and celebrated for their beauty, and beloved
of travellers; places of cure and convalescence for invalids, where
the temperature even in winter is of extreme mildness, having a mean
during the year of 48° Fahrenheit at seven o’clock in the morning,
57° at one o’clock in the afternoon, and 50° at nine o’clock in the
evening; with a barometer register of 28¾ inches at the level of the
lake. Standing at almost any point on the Lake of Geneva, to the one
side towers Dent-du-Midi, calm, proud, and dazzling, like a queen
of brightness; on the other side is seen the Jura through her misty
shroud extending in mellow lines, and a cloudless sky vying in depths
of color with the azure waters. So graceful the outlines, so varied
the details, so imposing the framework in which this lake is set, well
might Voltaire exclaim, “_Mon lac est le premier_,” (my lake is the
first). For richness combined with grandeur, for softness around and
impressiveness above, for a correspondence of contours on which the eye
reposes with unwearied admiration, from the smiling aspect of fertility
and cultivation at its lower extremity to the sublimity of a savage
nature at its upper, no lake is superior to that of Geneva. Numberless
almost are the distinguished men and women who have lived, labored, and
died upon the shores of this fair lake; every spot has a tale to tell
of genius, or records some history. In the calm retirement of Lausanne,
Gibbon contemplated the decay of empires; Rousseau and Byron found
inspiration on these shores; there is

  “Clarens, sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep love!
  Thine air is the young breath of passionate thought;
  Thy trees take root in love.”

Here is Chillon, with its great white wall sinking into the deep
calm of the water, while its very stones echo memorable events,
from the era of barbarism in 830, when Count Wala, who had held
command of Charlemagne’s forces, was incarcerated within the tower of
this desolate rock during the reign of Louis le Débonnaire, to the
imprisonment of the Salvation Army captain.[97]

  “Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls;
  A thousand feet in depth below,
  Its massy waters meet and flow;
  Below the surface of the lake
  The dark vault lies”

where Bonnivard, the prior of St. Victor and the great asserter of the
independence of Geneva, was found when the castle was wrested from the
Duke of Savoy by the Bernese.

Along the shores of Lake Geneva the Romans had many stations and posts,
vestiges of which are still visible.[98] The confusion and the mixture
of interests that succeeded the fall of the Empire gave rise in the
Middle Ages to various baronial castles, ecclesiastical towns, and
towers of defence, the ruins of which still stand on the margin of the
lake or on the eminences a little inland,--

  “Chiefless castles breathing stern farewells
  From gray but leafy walls, where ruin greenly dwells.”

The Lake of Luzern, _Vierwaldstätter-See_, is hardly a single sheet
of water, but is composed of a group of seven basins, some joined to
each other by narrow straits, others intersecting each other at right
angles, giving extreme variety to its breadth; its extreme length
in a diverging line is twenty-four miles; its widest part, taking
in the two arms of Küssnacht and Alpnach (southwest to northeast),
is twelve miles, but the average breadth is much less. There are
repeated eclipses of the landscapes caused by abrupt turnings, bold
promontories, and the amphitheatrical closing in of the mountain
strips, and again opening up to view. It is scarcely possible to
imagine any combination of beautiful water and bold mountains more
striking, more effective, and more lovely than the scenes that meet
the view in traversing this lake. A dozen different mountains advance
into the lake and check themselves suddenly in the depths of the gloomy
waters. Bare, steep, turret-like rocks hanging amid the clouds; rich,
lawn-like grass in the intervening glades, sparkling with cottages and
gardens, succeed and blend with each other in infinite alternation.
_Pilatus_ and the _Rigi_ guard the approach to the lake. The former is
full of mysterious legendary pools associated with the haunting spirit
of Pontius Pilate. No less than thirty-five writers have treated of its
supernatural apparitions, but a very natural supposition traces the
name to a corruption of _pilea_ or _pileatus_,--from the cap of clouds
always on its summit. The Rigi, the most frequented belvedere in the
world, stands between the lakes of Luzern and Zug. It is its situation,
rather than its elevation, which renders it famous. Its summit is
little less than six thousand feet above the level of the sea, but
it stands in the midst of most lovely scenery, and from its top is
presented an extensive panoramic view scarcely equalled anywhere in
the Alps. The sunrise from the Rigi is a spectacle that every tourist
contemplates with eager pleasure. Brilliant in dazzling whiteness stand
the mountains under the first light of the morning; it begins to kindle
on their tops its glowing beacon; suddenly the sunbeams strike their
crowns and convert them into a boss of gold; first the tallest presents
a gilded summit while the others wait in silence, then they, in the
order of their height, come afterwards, relaxing, as the sunbeams
strike each in succession, into a blush and smile. The splendor of the
whole spectacle, when the sun streams all the magic of his beams to
cast upon the land an enchantment greater than its own, is such as to
overwhelm the soul with admiration and astonishment. All who sleep at
the _Culm_, or topmost point, may expect to be awakened by the sound
of a wooden horn, about sunrise, when every one gets up with the hope
of a splendid prospect--a hope often disappointed:

  “Nine weary, up-hill miles we sped,
    The setting sun to see;
  Sulky and grim he went to bed,
    Sulky and grim went we.

  “Seven sleepless hours we tossed, and then,
    The rising sun to see,
  Sulky and grim we rose again,
    Sulky and grim rose he.”

The Lake of Zug, or Zuger-See, is set like a fine pearl in a necklace
of woods and gardens, fertile fields and hills, over which white houses
are scattered like tents. Its banks are graceful, and in its waters
are reflected rich and varied vegetation; near by are wide marshes
dotted with pools, in the midst of which great water-lilies shine, and
a few islets covered with vegetation, looking like baskets of flowers
floating in the water.

The Lake of Thun is the golden gate-way to the Bernese Oberland, and
its wealth and variety of scenery is the pride of that Canton.

The Lake of Zurich, while not pretending to vie with the others in
stern and rugged magnificence, is unsurpassed in pastoral beauty; on
either side rise gently-sloping hills of fruitful vineyards, at the
foot of which, lining the shores, are prosperous villages. Here have
been discovered the earliest traces of human activity, back in the age
of Stone and Lake-Dwellers. Excavations from the old basin of the lake
have hinted that it has tales to tell and secrets to reveal which for
ages on ages may have been safely hidden beneath its deep waters.

The Swiss lakes differ in color; some appear to be green as malachite,
and others blue. The water appears commonly of a bluish-green, shading
into blue, with a slightly milky hue in the summer, especially when
fed by the glacier streams, which bring down a quantity of finely
triturated rock. Whenever a lake has high mountains rising from its
edge, the hue is a purple-blue. The transparency of the lake waters is
quite surprising; in many of them minute objects can be seen at a depth
of fifty feet, and even lower down, as clearly as if viewed through
a glass. There is a quiet luxury of excitement, without exercise, in
voyaging in the well-appointed steamers on calm Swiss lakes, which
present a shifting panorama of hill and river scenery.[99]

There is much difference of opinion as to when the natural beauties and
attractions of Switzerland appear to the best advantage. The larger
number of strangers see the country only in its summer charms; it
is a season when the mountains assume a greater brilliance of color
and grandeur of form, the lower atmosphere being cleared of its dark
mists as the clouds lift and give an ever-increasing flood of light.
This greater altitude of the clouds brings the mountains into fuller
sunshine, with their coloring more intense, their forms more massive,
and the blue of the sky behind them deeper and clearer.

Those who see the sun rise each morning in glory over the Alps, and
glowing all day, set in a flood of crimson over the pines, only to
return in the splendor of the after-glow on the glacier and snow, claim
that autumn is a better time for realizing this sum of marvellous
beauty; that it is the season of crimson and gold, when the landscapes
take on incomparable magnificence, when the transformation of the woods
is fairy-like, when the oaks are surrounded with a golden aureola, the
beeches are dyed in vivid red and yellow, and all the wooded hills,
orchards, hedges, and bushes form, as it were, a marvellous symphony
of color, of warmer shades, and tints of an infinite tenderness. Then
comes the advocate of winter, who says, “You should see the loads
of snow, falling almost perpendicularly in thick, heavy flakes, or
whirled about by the wild wind; on the calming of the snow-storm, you
should see the heavy brown clouds in the south assume a tinge more
and more golden and bright, till the first patch of blue sky bursts
forth amidst the gigantic masses, and at last permits the winter sun,
far down in the south, to gladden the earth with a brief sight of the
source of light and life;” and that the trees are more beautiful in
the hoar-frost than in summer or autumn glory; the pines, with their
branches bent, “stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their
bosoms,” and the taller trees seem to beckon with their long, white
arms, like ghosts.

The snow, which long after it has fallen lies as pure and stainless
as the raiment of angels, is the crowning glory of a Swiss winter. It
has an intensity of whiteness which gives a new force to “whiter than
snow.” St. Matthew describes the Lord’s transfiguration raiment as
“white as the light,” but St. Mark as “exceeding white as snow.” This
Alpine snow is light materialized, and snow etherealized--solidified
light. With the snow nature transfigures all the landscape; at one
sweep of her broad brush all the clumsy touches with which man has
marred the beauty of the world are effaced, the hills are rounded to a
riper beauty, the fields lie smooth and white and fair, an unwritten
page waiting as for the bold outlines of some new design.[100] The
mountain air appears to give additional brilliancy even to the rainbow,
as it rests on the turbid blackness of the clouds; it looks so near,
and every band of color so broad and distinct, filling the very air
with the haze of its colors; seeing a rainbow following an Alpine
thunder-storm, one can well conceive how, before it was known what
produced the storm and the rainbow, the one was taken for the wrath and
the other for the smile of God.

“All things are good, as their Creator made them, but everything
degenerates in the hands of man; improving, man makes a general
confusion of elements, climates, and seasons; he defaces, he confounds
everything, as if he delighted in nothing but monsters and deformity;”
these are the first words of the “Æmilius,” and the key-note of the
author’s philosophy. Conceding that man’s work does not deserve this
unqualified condemnation, and is in many respects most admirable, one
must regret to see the work of nature in Switzerland so ruthlessly
spoiled and disfigured; to see the telegraph-pole and the factory
chimney rear themselves against the horizon of every landscape;
mountain fastnesses and remote valleys consecrated to the charms of
nature alone, resounding with the whistle of the locomotive and the
stroke of the hammer; the iconoclastic hand of material enterprise,
divested of all sentiment, reaching out into every nook and corner
where the Divine Artist has surpassed himself in his handiwork, to
discover and develop new commercial opportunities. One now goes by
steam in place of _diligence_, and the lovers of the characteristic
may well regret that the _couleur locale_, so dear to strangers, is
fast disappearing. No more the post-carriage takes you in its moving
house, with the sound of jingling bells, the cracking of the driver’s
whip, and the notes of the horn waking up the echoes of the woods. No
longer the white oxen tug up the steep mountain; no longer the chat
with the village gossips at each post-station; the mid-day halt, where
one dives into castle, church, or old courtyard; the chaffering for
some local trifle; the antique furniture of the salon; the early walk
before the coach was ready,--it is all, all, almost gone. In things
spiritual and things temporal alike, our modern mania is to carry with
us our own life, instead of accepting that which we find on the spot.
Alpine touring has become a highly-organized institution, brought
to perfection by everything that administrative genius, capital,
and science can give. All the inscriptions on the votive offerings
discovered around the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Penninus on the
Great St. Bernard, and which come down to the latest periods of the
Roman Empire, are filled with warm expression of gratitude for having
escaped the extraordinary perils of the passage. Even in the days of
Pliny, several hundred years after the first passage of the Alps by the
Roman troops, and even after the establishment of a station at Sion,
in the Valais, it was spoken of as a “most hidden part of the earth,
in the region of perpetual night, amid forests forever inaccessible
to human approach.” The courage, skill, and ingenuity of man have
overcome all these formidable dangers. Though the mountains are still
lofty and precipitous, safe and convenient passes have been found
practicable, and paths have been contrived, upon these giddy heights,
over which the maiden threads without a thought of danger. The rushing
torrents are loud and furious in the descent to the valley; but they
have been bridged over by stone and timber, or perhaps by the fallen
pine, and the peasant boy sings cheerily, as he strides across the
foaming stream. Steam and electricity make the railway train emulate
the agility of the chamois, and carry the public across precipices to
a height of seven thousand feet. There is scarcely a point of view
that attracts tourists, a summit that climbers make fashionable, but
at once the mountain is rent and insulted; it is stripped of its
beautiful forests, iron rails are screwed to its wounded and bleeding
side, and you are carried up like a bundle of luggage, with no
roadside halts under the trees, no flowers gathered by the wayside,
no rustic inns hidden under the firs, but all along station-masters,
ticket-collectors, and stations; or _chaises-à-porteur_, and long
lines of mules file up the Alps, carrying Saratoga trunks and cases of
Clicquot to the level of the eternal snows. Mountain summits are no
longer reserved for those who arrogantly pride themselves on superior
soundness of wind and limb, but are equally accessible to the blind,
halt, and lame. The circular-tour ticket has brought these summits
within reach of everybody’s purse and everybody’s legs. Greed of gain
and competition are rapidly producing the effect of false mountains,
sham mountains, built by contractors and shareholders; a mountain at
a fair that the people ascend a franc for the round trip; where the
tourist is nothing but a number, and is always dining between two
trains, at the buffet of an international railway station. There is a
tendency all the world over to the loss of the true sense of natural
beauty; and forest solitudes and quiet valleys must retreat before
the spirit of Mammon, and succumb to factories and foundries. Yet
are not the natural beauties of a country an inestimable treasure to
it, and, from a business view, is it wise, lightly to give away what
money cannot buy, nor modern art create? With commercial and economic
disadvantages difficult to overcome, it would appear the wiser policy
for Switzerland to check the rapid transformation of the beautiful and
the venerable into cheap and tasteless novelties, with their cast-iron
uninterestingness. Nature has done all for Switzerland, from its pure
and radiant air to its mountains, lakes, and wild flowers, which spring
up as though Aphrodite were still there, “to sow them with her odorous
feet.” This marvellous and rare beauty of nature is too often taken as
a matter of course, and “holy men, in recommending of the love of God
to us, refer but seldom to those things in which it is most abundantly
and immediately shown; though they insist much on His giving of bread
and raiment and health, they require us not to thank Him for that
glory of His works which He has permitted us alone to perceive; they
tell us often to meditate in the closet, but they send us not, like
Isaac, into the fields at even.”

Fortunately, the grandeur of Alpine scenery cannot be altogether
destroyed, though seriously injured, by the spade, the pickaxe, and
the blasting-powder. There is a poetry of science, even of practical
science, and the invaluable and ubiquitous engineer cannot after all
do much to the everlasting hills, except here and there a simple climb
may be made simpler still, and an opening effected through what looks
like one of the permanent barriers of the world. The physical geography
of Switzerland is still a stupendous unit. Man may enormously modify
its surface, but its original conditions remain dominant, forcing a
stern recognition of their supremacy; mountain-ranges may be passed or
surmounted; they have never yet been lowered or removed; Switzerland
will ever be mastered by its sublime physical features. While much of
the simplicity which was formerly the attraction of the country has
passed away, never to be restored, still it presents an unrivalled
scene, in picturesque combination, with advantages of atmospheric
relief, and aided by the contributing glories of a luminous and
sensitive sky. There is beauty of every sort; beauties to enrapture
every sense; beauties to satisfy every taste; forms the grandest and
loveliest; colors the most gorgeous and the most delicate; harmonies
the most soothing and the most stirring; the sunny glories of the
day; the pale grace of moonlight; the silent pinnacles of aged snows;
tropical luxuriance; the serenity of peerless sunsets; the sublimity of
unchallenged storms; pomp of summits and world of clouds; witchery of
water, sky, and mountain; a very cluster of delights and grandeurs, to
enchant the vision and animate the spirit,--warming commonplace persons
into something approaching to poetic fervor, and persons of genius to
pour forth their inspirations in verse or lofty prose. You may have
read the most vivid and accurate description, yet the reality will
burst upon you like a revelation; a few cherished hallucinations may be
uncovered to the raw air of truth, but you will look again and again,
day after day, and a perennial glory will surround the kaleidoscopic
panorama, “ever charming, ever new,” photographing it in the mind
forever. Scarcely a day, or an hour of the day, when there is not
being produced, scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after
glory, and working still upon an inexhaustible source of constant and
perfect beauty. It is indeed a beautiful land, meriting the words of
the Psalmist, “a fair place, the joy of the whole earth.” It is a place
where all save the spirit of man seems divine; so fascinating, that,
like Virgil, who on his death-bed longed to view once more the nymphs
of Bacchus as they danced on the banks of the river of Peloponnesus,
one who has visited Switzerland sighs again for its glorious sun,
its delicious air with the shivering freshness of the glacier, its
magnificent scenery, its gorgeous mountains, its valleys of idyllic
beauty, its beautiful roads shaded by hedges, its streams bordered with
hazel copses, its forests carpeted with moss, its corners of shade and
solitude with freshness and luxurious ease, its happy and tranquil
retreats, and its asylums for modest pleasure or for calm repose:

  “Who first beholds those everlasting clouds,
  Those mighty hills, so shadowy, so sublime,
  As rather to belong to heaven than earth,
  But instantly receives into his soul
  A sense, a feeling, that he loses not;
  A something that informs him ’tis an hour
  Whence he may date henceforward and forever?”




CHAPTER XVIII.

WILLIAM TELL.

  “Almighty powers! That was a shot indeed;
  It will be talked of to the end of time.”


Trite and worn out as the subject may appear, it is impossible by any
amount of familiarity to divest the historical legend of William Tell
of its undying charm; and he who has visited the scene, so far from his
interest in it being exhausted, has only been made more enthusiastic
in its favor. It is a perfectly simple and natural story, when read in
the light of the times, the circumstances that led up to it, and the
impulses which sustained it throughout.

Nearly in the centre of Switzerland, around the Lake of Luzern, were
the Forest Cantons of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden; defended on the
north by the stormy waves of the lake, on the south by inaccessible
peaks and glaciers, on the side of Germany by precipices and unbroken
forests, and the Rigi in the midst. This district was inhabited by a
shepherd race; the elevated and barren site of their habitations had
secured them from the cruel caprices of the petty tyrants who ruled
over the lower valleys, and they governed themselves under the forms of
a republic. Rudolph of Hapsburg, the father of the founder of the House
of Austria, a distinguished soldier and leader of the Zurich troops,
the son of an Alsatian landgrave, had his castle near the confluence
of the Reuss and Aar, and in 1257 was voluntarily chosen by the people
as their governor. Sixteen years later he ascended the imperial throne
of the Roman Empire of Germany; for eighteen years he kept the throne,
and, remembering that he was by birth a native of Switzerland, he
protected his countrymen from oppression, and was esteemed for his
humanity, prudence, and valor. He gave firm assurance that he would
treat them as worthy sons of the Empire, with inalienable independence;
and to that assurance he remained true till his death, which happened
in 1291. His son, Albert, who had been made Duke of Austria, ascended
the throne. He was grasping and eager to make territorial acquisitions.
He desired to be first Duke of Helvetia, and proposed to these Forest
Cantons that they should sever their relationship, as a province of
the German Empire, and become a member of his Dukedom. Though Emperor
of Germany, he was Duke of Austria, and his ambition was to aggrandize
the Austrian House. The peasants rejected his proposition. Jealous
of this remnant of independence, which the snows and rocks had left
to the peasants of upper Helvetia, he undertook to subjugate them.
Failing to seduce them by diplomacy or pretended kindness, he sent
_landvogts_, or governors, to reside in their midst; these governors
bore the title of Imperial Bailiffs. Instead of sending, as was usual,
some noblemen for imperial governors, whose functions were only those
of high judges in capital crimes, he sent two dependants of his family,
men whose dispositions were as hostile and cruel as their orders.
Their mission was to goad and persecute the people into some act of
rebellion, that might be used as a pretext for reducing them to the
level of common slavery. There were two of these bailiffs, Berenger
and Gessler, the former stationed at Sarnen, the latter at Altdorf;
they were unbounded in their tyrannies, using their powers wantonly,
with all the stings of insolent authority. Gessler was the most cruel;
he pillaged private property, imprisoned husbands, carried off the
wives, and dishonored the daughters. It was now the beginning of the
fourteenth century, and the country was in a degraded and miserable
condition. The land groaned under violence; the despotism was distant
and delegated; the sovereign too far removed to hear the universal
lamentation. It became intolerable. A few brave hearts reasoned,
that God had never granted power to any emperor, king, or bailiff to
commit such injustice; and that death was preferable to a continued
submission under so ignominious a yoke. The wife of Werner Stauffacher,
of Schwyz, being brutally treated by one of the bailiffs’ officers, in
the absence of her husband, on his return reporting the affair to him,
exclaimed, “Shall we mothers nurse beggars at our bosoms, and bring up
maid-servants for foreigners? What are the men of the mountains good
for? Let there be an end of this!”[101] Stauffacher sought the counsel
of Walter Fürst, of Uri, and Arnold Melchthal, of Unterwalden; and
these three, from the result of that counsel, became famous as

  “The Patriot Three that met of yore,
    Beneath the midnight sky,
  And leagued their hearts on the Rütli shore
    In the name of liberty.”

Being well acquainted with the most injured, the most intrepid, and
the most implacable of their countrymen, they determined to see them,
and ascertain whether they would be willing to risk their lives in
defence of their liberties. If the blood of the martyrs is the seed of
the church, no less true is it in all history, that the insolence of
tyranny is the cradle of liberty. Rütli, so called from the uprooting
and clearing of the trees (German, _ausgereutet_), a secluded field
below Seelisberg, in the Canton of Uri, on a steep, small promontory
standing out from the mountain and surrounded on three sides by the
waters of the lake, was the spot chosen for their council chamber.[102]
On the night of the 7th of November, 1307, descending from their
mountains, or crossing the lake in small fishing-boats, came the
patriot three, each, as he had agreed to do, bringing ten true and
brave herdsmen, stout of heart and strong of limb. They silently
gathered at the lonely spot, as they had concerted. The love of native
soil, the feeling of freedom and security under the protection of the
laws of the country, the feeling of being ill treated and subjugated
by a foreign debauchee, a determination to throw off so obnoxious
a yoke--all these great and good qualities were shared by these
untutored, but heroic, noble-minded peasants. A handful of patriots,
meeting at midnight, and attesting the justice of their cause to the
Almighty Disposer of events, the God of equity and mercy, the protector
of the helpless; calm and united, proceeding to the delivery of their
country; retaining all the serene forbearance of the most elevated
reason, amid the energies and the fury of vindictive right. They could
bear to die, but not to be subdued:

  “They linked their hands,--they pledged their stainless faith
  In the dread presence of attesting Heaven,
  They knelt, and rose in strength.”

They met to interchange oaths, and not to utter exciting speeches;
“words could not weigh in the balance with that decisive night,
brooding under cover of its darkness the resurrection of a nation, with
those mountains, stars, rocks, and waves, and with the sword ready to
be drawn in the most sacred of causes.” They were summoned, and were
bidden in a few brief sentences, uttered in a low tone, to choose;
and they chose wisely and greatly; they chose liberty, born of the
heavens, breathing of all their odors, and radiant with all their
hues. With hands uplifted to the starry firmament, Fürst, Stauffacher,
and Melchthal, with subdued and slow accent, their comrades repeating
after them, proclaimed, “We swear in the presence of God, before whom
kings and people are equal, to live or die for our fellow-countrymen;
to undertake and sustain all in common; neither to suffer injustice,
nor to commit injury; to respect the rights and property of the Count
of Hapsburg; to do no violence to the imperial bailiffs, but to put an
end to their tyranny.” One of the men who at that momentous assembly
engaged each other by the pledge of “All for each and each for all,”
was William Tell, a fisher of the lake and a hunter of chamois, of
Bürglen, a half-hour from Altdorf in Uri, and a son-in-law of Walter
Fürst. In the mean time, Gessler thought he perceived that the people
walked abroad with more confidence, and carried in their looks a
haughtier expression; when satisfied that the spirit of resistance was
ripe, with a view to confirm his suspicions, he determined to put down
by force the first symptoms of disaffection, and invented a crime to
trap the most daring and dangerous. His hat, surmounted by the Austrian
crown, was placed on the top of a pole, erected in the market-place of
Altdorf, and all who passed by were ordered to uncover their heads, and
bow submissively before this symbol of the imperial sovereignty:

  “It is the lord governor’s good will and pleasure
  The cap shall have like honor as himself;
  And all shall reverence it with bended knee
  And heads uncovered....
  His life and goods are forfeit to the crown
  That shall refuse obedience to the order.”

Guards were posted round the pole, and ordered to arrest all who
refused thus to pay homage. It happened that William Tell was passing,
and failed to pay the required homage. He was instantly seized and
taken before the bailiff. The bailiff first tried to extract from
Tell whether his conduct had been premeditated, and if so, who were
his friends and abettors; but he remained stubbornly silent. Gessler,
incensed at his contumacy, determined to punish him, and, the offence
being one unknown to the land and of his own invention, he was likewise
compelled to invent a punishment. Tell had only one child, a boy, who
was with him at the time, and, as all peasants were accustomed to the
cross-bow, Gessler condemned him to shoot from off his son’s head an
apple, saying, “Know, audacious bowman, that thy own art shall serve to
punish thee.” The lad was blindfolded, the apple placed on his head,
and Tell led away to his position:

  “And let him take his distance,
    Just eighty paces, as the custom is,
  Not an inch more or less.”

To one side stood the cruel Gessler to watch the dreadful archery. Tell
looked well to his aim, and let the arrow fly:

  “See Roman fire in Hampden’s bosom swell,
  And fate and freedom in the shaft of Tell.”

The twang of the bow was heard, and the eager crowd for the moment held
their breath; then a joyful shout proclaimed that the child was safe,
and the apple was pinned by the unerring arrow. Gessler observing that
Tell had a second arrow, inquired why it was. “It was the custom of the
archers,” he answered. Being further pressed, with the promise that
he might speak freely without fear of losing his life, and excited by
those generous emotions of resentment which a brave and simple race
have seldom the discretion to repress, he replied, “That was reserved
for you, had the first arrow hit my son.”

  “If that my hand had struck my darling child,
    This second arrow I had aimed at you,
  And be assured, I should not then have missed.”

The tyrant, exasperated by the candid reply of Tell, said to him, “I
have promised thee life, but thou shalt spend it in a dungeon.” He
was pinioned by the guards, and thrown into Gessler’s boat, and they
started for the castle of Küssnacht at the other end of the lake. Soon
a dangerous surge came on, such as at certain seasons occurs suddenly,
produced by contrary winds. The boat was in imminent peril from this
tempest. Tell being a skilful boatman, and familiar with the sunken
rocks and dangerous reefs of the long narrow lake, was unbound, placed
at the helm, and ordered to land the boat. He at once steered straight
to a flat piece of rock beneath the sharp sides of the Achsenberg. No
sooner had the boat touched than Tell seized his bow, sprang on to
the narrow ledge, and, at the same time, with his foot pushed back
the frail craft into the angry waters. Quickly finding his way up the
rock, and knowing where his enemy must land, he hastened there, and
as Gessler approached, shot him through the heart. “A wife, Lucretia,
liberated Rome; a father, William Tell, disenthralled Helvetia.”

No one can go to that rock-framed, mountain-embosomed, “that
sacred lake withdrawn among the hills,” and so well known as the
Vierwaldstättersee, or Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, and specially
that part famed as the theatre of Tell’s exploits, and called the
Urnersee (or Uri Lake), and examine the historic spot and see the
numerous evidences, many of them contemporaneous, without being
convinced that William Tell was as much an historical personage as
Julius Cæsar, Napoleon Bonaparte, or George Washington; and that he
lived, acted, and died, as the legend relates. One visiting these
various places, must feel the force of what Latrobe wrote: “There
is something in the grandeur and magnificence of the scene which
surrounds you, which gently but irresistibly opens the heart to a
belief in the truth of the page upon which the events which have
hallowed them are recorded. Whatever a man may think, however he may
be inclined to question the strength of the evidence upon which the
relations of these facts rest while in his closet, I should think there
are but few sufficiently insensible and dogmatical to stand firm and
bar their hearts against the credibility which steals over them while
contemplating the spots themselves.”

At a bend of the lake, a short distance from Brunnen, there rises from
the water a slender rock pillar, some eighty feet in height. This is
the _Mythenstein_, a noble monument, fashioned in the morning of the
world by Nature herself, for the bard who was to hymn the rise of
Helvetian freedom and the praise of its hero. The rock bears in golden
letters the simple inscription:

  “Dem Sänger Tell’s
  Friedrich Schiller
  Die Urkantone
  1859.”

    (“To the bard of Tell, Friedrich Schiller, the original
    Cantons, 1859.”)[103]

A little farther on, opposite Brunnen, at the foot of the rocky
ramparts of Seelisberg, lies a long meadow, Rütli-platte, where, the
peasant tradition says, the spirits of the Patriot Three sleep in the
rocky caverns, ready to awaken in their country’s hour of danger:

  “When the battle-horn is blown
    Till Schreckhorn’s peaks reply,
  When the Jungfrau’s cliffs send back the tone,
    Through their eagles’ lonely sky;
  When Uri’s beechen woods wave red
    In the burning hamlet’s light,
  Then from the cavern of the dead
    Shall the sleepers wake in might!
  They shall wake beside their forest sea,
    In the ancient garb they wore,
  When they link’d the hands that made us free
    On the Rütli’s moonlight shore.”

We now reach on the eastern bank, projecting into the lake, the
platform of rock, Tellsplatte, with its little chapel marking the
spot where Tell leaped ashore and escaped from Gessler’s boat. After
the expulsion of the bailiffs and the demolition of their castles, it
became customary among the Swiss to make pilgrimages to this place;
and in 1388, only a little more than thirty years after the death
of Tell, the Canton of Uri erected this chapel in the presence of a
hundred and fourteen persons who had been acquainted with Tell. Müller
the historian suggests as a reason why there were only a hundred and
fourteen persons who had known Tell to gather together, not much more
than thirty years after his death at the erection of the chapel, was,
that Tell did not often leave Bürglen, and the deed, according to the
ethics of that period, was not likely to attract inquisitive wonderers
to him. It was Tell’s deed alone; the people had no part in Gessler’s
death, the hour which they had agreed upon for their deliverance had
not come. All the old chronicles agree as to the erection of the
chapel and the persons present. The chapel was restored in 1883,
the old frescoes being carefully removed, and now preserved in the
Council House of Altdorf. The restored chapel has four large frescoes
of artistic merit. On the back wall above the altar, to the left is
the “Leap from the boat;” to the right the “Death of the tyrant;” on
the north wall the “Apple scene;” on the southern wall the “Oath of
Rütli;” this last fresco is very frequent in Switzerland, representing
the Patriot Three (_Les Trois Suisses_, or _Die Drei Schweizer_); one
holding a short-handled flag with a cross upon it; the central one
leaning on a spear; and a third sustaining a tall standard which rests
on the ground; all wearing their swords. On Sunday following Easter,
annually, a procession of boats, appropriately decorated, proceeds
slowly to this chapel, consecrated by art, religion, and patriotism to
the great deeds or yet greater thoughts of its olden time hero, and a
solemn memorial service is held. Near by at Küssnacht there is another
chapel marking the place where Gessler was shot, and over the door is
an illustrated painting with the date 18th of November, 1307, and under
it the inscription,--

  “Here the proud tyrant Gessler fell,
  And liberty was won by Tell;
  How long ’twill last, you ask, and tremble:
  Long as the Swiss their sires resemble.”

At the upper end of the lake, retired a short distance, is Altdorf, the
capital of Uri. Here in the public square are two fountains. The pillar
in the centre of one of them is surmounted by a figure of Tell holding
his boy under one arm and pressing his bow to his bosom with the other;
it marks the spot where Tell stood when he launched the fearful arrow.
The other fountain is placed on the supposed site of the lime-tree by
which the boy stood awaiting his father’s unerring aim. A figure of
Gessler indicates where the pole bearing the hat and crown was erected;
close to the second fountain is an ancient square tower, on the outside
of which are painted the scenes of Tell’s history. Near by Altdorf runs
the small stream of Schächen, where Tell met his death in 1354: seeing
a child fall into the swollen stream as he passed that way, he plunged
in to rescue it, and, being old and feeble, lost his life. The museum
at Zurich contains the cross-bow of Tell; the little hamlet of Bürglen,
his birthplace, has many reminiscences to show; old houses in Altdorf,
Arth, and Schaffhausen are frescoed with representations of facts in
his history. In Schaffhausen is a fountain having an old stone figure
of Tell with the bow and arrow, on the base of which is the date 1682.

But we are told that history records six other apple-shooting feats,
performed by different individuals before and after the time of Tell.
It is difficult to see how this decides whether Tell was a real
character or not. Such skill in marksmanship was not rare in the days
of archery. A similar, indeed identical, feat is mentioned of the
Scandinavian hero Egill, who was commanded by King Nidhung to shoot
an apple from the head of his son. Egill, like Tell, took two arrows,
and, on being asked why, replied, as Tell did to Gessler, “To shoot
thee, tyrant, if I failed in my task.” Similar stories are recorded of
Eindridi, of Norway; of Hemingr, challenged to the display of skill by
King Harald, son of Sigurd, in 1066; of Toki, or Palnatoke, the Danish
hero, in 1514; and of William of Cloudesley, who, to show the king his
skill in shooting, bound his eldest son to a stake, put an apple on his
head, and at a distance of three hundred feet cleft the apple in two.
This is described by Percy in his “Reliques:”

  “I have a son is seven years old,
  He is to me full dear;
  I will hym tye to a stake
  And lay an apple upon his head,
  And go sixscore paces hym fro,
  And I myself with a broad arrow
  Will cleve the apple in two.”

In modern times the same skill is seen with the gun instead of with the
cross-bow. Snuffing a candle, cutting a string, barking a squirrel,
breaking glass balls thrown in the air, are all, perhaps, more
difficult than for a firm hand and a steady eye to pick off an apple
from the head of a boy. The same thing was done in the seventh century
that is recorded of Tell in the fourteenth century, _ergo_ William Tell
is a myth,--this is the question reduced to a logical form. Any one may
see that such an inference is absurd. Yet this is the greatest fact
that has been adduced to prove that Tell’s heroism is a mere figment
of the past. To believe in one tradition and repudiate the other is
not less arbitrary than unphilosophic. Voltaire, whose function it was
to deny, even sneered at the existence of the men of Rütli simply on
account of “the difficulty in pronouncing their names.” The story of
Tell is told in the chronicle of Klingenberg, that covers the close
of the fourteenth century; then again in 1470, in the “Ballad of
Tell,” one of the chief treasures in the archives of Sarnen; in the
“Chronicles of Russ,” 1482; and by Schilling, of Luzern, in 1510, who
had before him a “Tell-song;” and the chronicle of Eglof, town clerk
of Luzern, in the first half of the fifteenth century. The first to
clothe these traditions in the dress of historical narration of great
substantial clearness was the celebrated Swiss chronicler, Ægidius
Tschudi, of Glarus, in 1570. All the early Swiss and German historians,
Stettler, Huldrich, and Müller, sanction it. Then it furnished Florian
with the subject of a novel in French, 1788; Lemierre with his tragedy
of _Guillaume Tell_, 1766; Schiller with a tragedy in German, _Wilhelm
Tell_, 1804; Knowles with a tragedy in English, _William Tell_, 1840.
In 1829, Rossini, the most famous composer of the land beyond the
mountains, wove the magic of his music round Schiller’s greatest drama
with the Italian opera of _Guglielmo Tell_, the delight of the musical
world.[104] Smollett, in his sublime “Ode to Independence,” thus
alludes to Tell:

   “Who with the generous rustics sate
    On Uri’s rock, in close divan,
  And wing’d that arrow, sure as fate,
    Which ascertain’d the sacred rights of man.”

Goethe writes: “I picture Tell as an heroic man, possessed of native
strength, but contented with himself, and in a state of childish
unconsciousness. He traverses the Canton as a carrier, and is
everywhere known and beloved, everywhere ready with his assistance. He
peacefully follows his calling, providing for his wife and child.” Sir
James Mackintosh, one of the most impartial of historians, visited the
region associated with the name and deeds of Tell; he examined history,
and became perfectly convinced of the existence of the mountain hero,
and of the truth of the part he played in Switzerland when

  “Few were the numbers she could boast,
  But every freeman was a host,
  And felt as though himself were he
  On whose sole arm hung victory.”

Thus a seemingly unimportant event in the remote Alps became the
key-note of European thought, literature, art, and language; for it
inspired not only statesmen, historians, orators, and poets, but
painters, sculptors, and composers. It influenced and exercised pen,
pencil, and chisel, and expanded the vocabulary; for who has not seen,
heard, read _Wilhelm Tell_ in his own or some other language?

The legend of Tell has a companion piece doubtless as mythical to the
sceptical, being of the same historic period, and occurring at the
battle of Sempach. This was one of the great battles which terminated
the long and obstinate struggle begun at Rütli, and, like all other
famous achievements, is remembered in connection with a special example
of personal self-sacrifice; still it passes historical scrutiny
unchallenged, though no better authenticated, and in many respects
more contentious than the heroism of Tell. On the 9th of August, 1386,
Duke Leopold was marching against Zurich to fight the last battle
which Austria presumed to try against the Forest Cantons. He had the
flower of the Austrian nobility, 4000 knights and barons, each with his
own vassals, forming an army of veterans in columns 20,000 strong. A
handful of brave Swiss, numbering 1400 stout and fearless mountaineers,
went out on foot to meet them; they came up with the enemy at Sempach.
The mail-clad warriors, dismounting from their steeds, presented a
solid and impregnable barrier of lances; the Swiss were rudely armed
with halberds and _morgensterne_.[105] According to their ancient
custom, they knelt in silent prayer; arising, they placed themselves
in column, presenting an angle, and charged. Again and again they
dashed against these protruding lances that stood as firm as a wall
of stone. Out of their little number sixty had died in vain; hearts
seemed ready to fail; the Austrians were beginning to open in order to
surround them. At this crisis Arnold Winkelried, “a trusty man amongst
the confederates,” dropped his weapon, and, rushing forward, cried out,
“I will open a way to freedom; protect my wife and children!”[106]
Being of great size and strength, he clutched as many of the enemy’s
lances as his arms could embrace, gathered their points and buried them
in his bosom, and as he fell drew his enemies with him. Before the
Austrians could extract them his companions took advantage of the gap,
rushed over his expiring body into the ranks of the enemy; a breach
being made in the wall of mailed warriors, what seemed an inevitable
defeat was turned into glorious victory. “Heed not the corpse,” says
Byron’s Saul to his warriors and chiefs, admonishing them as to what
they are to do should the lance and the sword strike them down in the
front. Sempach is a story of thrilling heroism, and in little over half
a century was followed by the battle of St. Jacob in 1444, when 1600
Swiss met a predatory invasion of the French, a corps of 8000 horse and
a large detachment of infantry, in all numbering over 20,000, called
Armagnacs, the disbanded mercenaries of the English war, led by the
Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI. Though they might have retreated without
loss, the Swiss determined rather to perish on the spot, and fought
with heroic fury, tearing the enemy’s arrows from their wounds to send
them back dripping with blood. Their valor and terrible sacrifice never
were surpassed. The Dauphin lost 6000 men; and of the 1600 Swiss,
only ten lived to tell the tale, and they were immediately proscribed
throughout Switzerland for having deserted their comrades. A monument
is erected near the Birs, on the battle-field, consisting of a figure
of Helvetia at the top with four dying soldiers on the pedestal, with
the inscription: “Our souls to God, our bodies to the enemy.” At
Morgarten, in 1315, 1300 Swiss routed Leopold’s army of over 20,000,
killing 9000, when

  “There were songs and festal fires
    On the soaring Alps that night,
  When children sprung to greet their sires
    From the wild Morgarten fight.”

Then there is the battle fought near Wessen, in the Canton of Glarus,
where 350 Swiss attacked 8000 Austrians and gained the field. Eleven
pillars are erected on the field of battle to mark the places where
the Swiss rallied, for history says they were repulsed ten times,
but, rallying the eleventh, broke the enemies’ line and put them to
flight with great slaughter. This victory is celebrated every year;
the people, in procession, fall upon their knees at each pillar, sing
a _Kyrie_ and thank God for so signal a victory. When they come to the
last pillar, one of their orators makes a eulogy of the three hundred
and fifty, and, when he has finished, reads over a list of their
names,--just as the Spartans caused the names of their three hundred to
be cut in brass, to transmit their memories to posterity. There are,
in addition, such duels of individual valor recorded as men fighting
when mortally wounded, like Fontana, of Grisons, who cried out, “Do not
stop for my fall, it is but one man the less;” or like John Walla, of
Glarus, who met alone and put to flight thirty horsemen. These events,
and many others well authenticated and unhesitatingly accepted in Swiss
history, sound infinitely more of knight-errantry than the story of
Tell.

Macaulay holds that intense patriotism and high courage are peculiar
to people congregated in small spaces. Acts of unflinching bravery
and of a noble self-immolation in the cause of conscience, duty,
and freedom have been conspicuous in Swiss history. As habits of
courage are formed by continual exposure to danger, the hazardous
state, the perils and hardships which they hourly encountered, braced
their nerves to enterprises of hardihood and daring. Turbulent times
created a necessity for great sacrifices and daring exploits, and on
the same principle, that the supply of a commodity in transactions of
commercial life is generally found to be commensurate with the demand,
the frequent call for heroic achievements raised up the patriots who
were to perform them. There may be something in the deeply religious
character of the Swiss favorable to this virtue. Cicero maintained that
a belief in the immortality of the soul and a future state of rewards
and punishments was indispensable to the steady sacrifice of private
interests and passions to the public good. Some, perhaps, in their
brighter visions of fancy, would aspire to those blessed abodes amidst
the laurel groves of Paradise, which the poet of Mantua has assigned to
the self-devoted victims of patriotic enthusiasm:

  “Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi.”[107]

The renown, likewise, of the heroes of ancient stories is indebted for
no inconsiderable portion of its brightness to their mode of warfare,
which, by rendering personal courage more effective, rendered it at
the same time the object of higher estimation. Prodigies of valor, by
which the fate of a kingdom is decided, are now rarely performed, and
victory inclines much more to the side of skill than either of physical
strength or individual prowess.

With the Swiss no fable hangs about the deeds of William Tell and
Arnold Winkelried or the battles of Morgarten, Sempach, and St. Jacob.
They are the common glory of the people, their most cherished heritage;
but it is in William Tell their pride centres. His very name to this
day stirs the Swiss heart with the deepest emotions of pride and
patriotism.

All the mementoes connected with his history are cherished with the
fondest affection and veneration. Tell’s chapel is the Mecca of all
Switzerland. The admiration for his character is an unbounded national
passion. Every emotion of patriotism, national gratitude, and ardent
love of liberty seems to find its readiest mode of utterance in
passionate expressions regarding this heroic man. Ballads are sung to
his memory, and in every popular gathering one may hear the familiar
words from the old Swiss song,--

    “William Tell, he scorned the hat,
    To death condemned was he for that,
  Unless an apple, on the spot,
    From his own child’s head he shot.”

In canvas and marble his effigy adorns the national and cantonal
capitals and the public buildings generally. On mountain, rock, and
lake his history is carved indelibly.[108] “It cannot be otherwise,”
says the honest peasant; “it did so happen, and I believe it; not to
believe it would be treason to my country.” In 1760, a pamphlet, under
the title of “Fable Danoise,” was issued by a clergyman of Bern named
Freudenberger attacking the historical character of this legend. It so
aroused the patriotic indignation of the people that no one dared to
give it circulation, and the government of the Canton of Uri caused the
book to be publicly burned.

In the presence of so many memorials of the deeds of this hero,
sustained by evidences of an antecedent and general popular conviction,
and feeling that these things are entitled to have some weight, it is
difficult to feel any sympathy with the doubts which bookish students
have suggested as to the reality of Tell’s existence. No one can visit
the lake, the rock, the fountains, the chapel, read the story painted
on wall and tower, hear the local traditions in every man’s mouth,
witness the annual festivals, study the history of Switzerland, and
consider the character of its people, then think of Tell as a myth,
more than he would say that Switzerland and all its heroic people
have been a fable since Uri’s handful of patriots rid it of Gessler’s
despotism. No! The simple story bears a striking analogy to the
primitive and pastoral people who commemorate the name and actions of
this hero. They know that no character of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries is better attested in their history, and will religiously
regard him as one of the noblest men that ever lived, so long as the
Finsteraarhorn and Jungfrau present themselves in the vast firmament
as the ever-enduring symbols of liberty. “The artlessness of Tell’s
history resembles a poem; it is a pastoral song in which a single
drop of blood is mingled with the dew upon a leaf or a tuft of grass.
Providence seems thus to delight in providing for every free community,
as the founder of their independence, a fabulous or actual hero,
conformable to the local situation, manners, and character of each
particular race. To a rustic, pastoral people like the Swiss is given
for their liberator a noble peasant; to a proud, aspiring race, such as
the Americans, an honest soldier. Two distinct symbols, standing erect
by the cradles of the two modern liberties of the world, to personify
their opposite natures; on the one hand, Tell with his arrow and the
apple; on the other, Washington with his sword and the law.”[109]

The doubt thrown upon the existence of Tell came from an influence
that bears upon things of a graver import. They originated at the
time when religion was dead, and when rationalism, with an appearance
of erudition, was rife. Many critics formed theories of their own in
regard to Homer and the ancient writers and heroes in general. Book
after book was issued from the press filled with the most absurd
theories. Every student who came from a university had the ambition
to write a book. Each one thought himself a veritable Daniel come to
judgment; nearly every historical character was a being of imagination.
They did not stop with human characters, they laid hold upon the Word
of God. Moses became a myth in their hands; and Job was a mere story
in poetry, like the Arabian Nights; Ecclesiastes was the blating of
an Epicurean philosopher no longer young. Good, however, came out of
this evil. The best men were led to examine the basis on which the
truth stands, and to study more profoundly than ever the “faith once
delivered to the saints,” and the result was the overthrow of this
school of specious reasoning and crude theories. The details of Tell’s
story, at last, do not signify much; they form only the drapery of
the figure, which stands to this day one of the few heroes who have
been able so to forget themselves, and so to inspire other men with
self-forgetfulness, as to obtain with them a nation’s freedom. And thus
Tell lives, safely, in the people’s songs and in the faithful hearts of
his countrymen.

Ideals, the symbols of the truth which we conceive, of the beauty
which we imagine, and of the good which we long for, have as great an
influence in the world as _ideas_, if not even greater. High ideals
and loyalty to them are virtues which are requisite to the existence
and safety of a progressive society. We cannot afford to surrender the
least of our high and pure ideals to the iconoclasm that would declare
every grand historical character to be apocryphal; a spirit that revels
in the breaking of images simply for the pleasure of breaking, even if
chiselled by the hand of Praxiteles; a folly not content with robbing
us of Tell and his apple, but would deprive us of Newton’s apple, too,
and vainly talks of a cryptogram lurking in Shakespeare’s dramas,
which points to his mythical existence. We have too few immortal names
identified with their country’s glory. Let us not seek to inquire too
minutely into their title to fame, to see if it is embarrassed by vague
and contradictory traditions; but let us rather associate their names
with the greatness, the virtue, the durability of their race, and
invoke blessings on them down “to the last syllable of recorded time.”

In this day, so given to materialism, pitiful rivalries, and ignoble
ambitions, we want more hero-worship, a greater reverence of heroism, a
more just and delicate appreciation of individual worth, the traditions
of noble deeds, and the “passion of philanthropy;” and not to believe
that all men are much of a sameness, and the old days in which the
gods lived on earth are forever gone. There are certain great events
embalmed in tradition that it will not do to question, and which, if of
doubtful historical support, it is unwise to disturb, as they are so
many incentives to noble deeds, and should be cherished in our hearts
even as an inspiring fiction. It is easy for cynics to deride heroism,
and scoff at the superiority of ideal existence over the facts of life.
But it is not good to be confined to what the physical eye can see, and
refuse to use the eye of faith and imagination. Enthusiasm lives and
flourishes with imagination and idealism; and together they purify,
as well as ennoble, every nature they touch. They paint the world and
men as they should be; all that human heart can do; all of which human
nature, at its highest, is capable. The craving for the real is good
and healthy, but it ought by no means to be set in opposition to the
craving for the ideal, for

  “A deeper import lurks in the legends told our infant years
  Than lies upon the truth we live to learn.”




CHAPTER XIX.

BERN.


From the end of the thirteenth century Bern was the great,
influential, and growing town of Switzerland; rich, enterprising, and
self-asserting. For the sake of securing their friendship, it made
citizens of many of the nobility who lived far from the city walls, and
established guilds with many valuable privileges. Some of these guilds
still exist, and a membership is quite an expensive privilege, costing
from 8000 to 10,000 francs; besides the applicant must possess property
to the value of 15,000 francs. In early times Bern held a firm grasp
on the lands from Aargau to Lake Leman. Besides conquering them, it
largely bought out the neighboring territorial nobility. It was the
feudal idea, taking root and growing in mediæval times, that the right
of government was as property, and the possession of landed property
was looked on as carrying with it a kind of right of government. The
whole early history of Bern is the greatest example in modern times
of an inland city ruling over a great collection of subject towns and
districts. It was an aristocratic republic, having been founded as
a refuge for the inferior nobility from the oppression of powerful
counts. The rapid development of industry within its substantial
walls attracted also peasants, artificers, and tradesmen, who flocked
in from the neighborhood. The burghers secured many privileges, and
were eligible to the highest offices; but they generally concurred
in the election of members of the patrician family. These young
patricians were literally apprenticed to political life by the singular
institution of the _Ausserstand_, a copy of the real commonwealth, with
councils and magistrates of its own, and the _Schultheiss_, or chief
magistrate of the mimic republic, was commonly elected a member of the
Great Council of the real one.

The French Revolution submerged the aristocracy in a general Helvetian
republic, and, when the flood had passed, the ancient landmark could
only be partially restored. The Bernese, however, continued to
acknowledge the ascendency of these noble families, what few were left
to them, whose ancestors had been the founders of the city, and whose
courage, virtues, and patriotism had secured the confidence of the
people. It was not until 1847, under the influence of the Sonderbund
excitement, that the last vestige of class privilege was abolished, and
perfect equality of all citizens before the law established; political
rights granted to every male citizen over twenty years of age,
civil administration and justice organized after modern democratic
principles, guaranteeing the rights of man, and promising trial by jury.

Tradition has it that Bern was founded by Berchtold V., Duke of
Zähringen, in 1191. Being persistently opposed both by the Alpine
and the Burgundian nobles, who took up arms against him, he met and
defeated them twice in the field, and then began to look about for a
suitable site, at an equal distance from both parties, where he might
build a town larger and more important than any that yet existed.
Different derivations are given for the name of Bern; some etymologists
say it is a corruption of the Celtic name of Verona; but the only one
that satisfies the Bernese is that given by the old recorder Justinger,
who wrote at the end of the fourteenth century, “How the town was
called Bern:” There were many wild animals in the oak woods, and Duke
Berchtold determined that the town should be called after the first
that was caught there; so the first that was caught was a bear, and the
town received its name from _Bären_, the Swabian for bears; and the
Duke also gave the burghers a shield and armorial bearings, namely, a
black bear on a white field. A bronze statue of the Duke is erected in
the cathedral promenade, upon which is the inscription, _E bellua cæsa
sit urbi futuræ nomen_ (“from a monster slain, let there be a name to
the future city”). The Emperor Frederick II. declared Bern a free city
of the empire in 1218, and confirmed its privileges by a charter, which
is still preserved in the archives. Its first prominence was in 1339,
when in June of that year the Bernese, under Ulric von Erlach, were
completely victorious over the allied forces, and struck the death-blow
to the feudal nobility of western Helvetia. In 1405 the greater part
of the city was destroyed by fire, but was soon rebuilt on the same
site. In 1798 it was plundered by the French. Immediately after their
entrance into the city, the French soldiers made themselves masters
of its treasure, which, no doubt, was one of the motives and most
immediate cause of the invasion and attack. The exact amount taken was
never ascertained, but by the most moderate estimate made it reached
20,000,000 francs; everything of value that could be taken away became
the prey of the victors.

From the date of its accession to the Confederation, in 1351, Bern
has been one of the most conspicuous and influential of Swiss towns.
The history of the city is the history of the Canton, and in some
measure it is the history of the Confederation. From 1798 to 1815 the
Federal Diet met in turns at Zurich, Bern, Luzern, Freiburg, Solothurn,
and Basel. From 1815 to 1848 the three cities of Zurich, Bern, and
Luzern were the seats of the government, the Diet sitting biennially
in each place in turn. This system of having three capitals did not
work satisfactorily, and the necessity for the country possessing one
centre was generally seen. Zurich and Luzern surrendered their claims,
and Bern became the central and fixed capital of the Confederation in
1848, the Canton assuming the cost of erecting the necessary public
buildings. It is also the capital of the largest and most populous
Canton, which has a population of 539,305, out of a total for the
Confederation of 2,933,612, or nearly one-fifth. It is the most
important of the sisterhood by its territory, wealth, and population,
and may be called the Empire Canton of the Confederation. The city
itself contains a population of about 50,000, with a superficial
surface of an American village of 2500 people. No great city in
Switzerland overtops the rest and draws them into moving around it
by its mass and weight. Population and wealth are not concentrated
in “enormous and apoplectic heads upon a bloodless body,” as great
cities were designated by Mirabeau. The largest Swiss towns would be
fifth-rate towns in the United States. The Swiss villages are on the
declivities of the Alps; the towns either on advanced promontories
or on the borders of the lakes. They are all small, and contain
none of the monuments which mark the luxury of great nations. They
are municipalities rather than capitals, to whom the nature of the
country and the smallness of the population have denied the power of
increase. Many of these towns are located with a view to the natural
defence, furnished by the topography of the site, and were originally
walled places of refuge. They resemble those towns of prehistoric Italy
described by Virgil, as “perched on precipices of rocks, with rivers
gliding beneath their antique walls.” Bern occupies a bold promontory
of sandstone rock, seventeen hundred and ten feet above the sea, and
its position in early times entailed great strategical advantages.
It is nearly surrounded by the Aar, a bold, strong tributary of the
Rhine, which rises in the southeast mountains of Bern, and carries to
its mouth the waters of fourteen Cantons. A sudden bend of the stream
encloses the town on all sides but one. The magnificent slopes to this
rapid river are in some places covered with turf, and supported in
others by lofty terraces planted with trees.[110] It is not an easy
matter to account for the first impression you receive on entering
Bern; you certainly feel that you have got to an ancient and remarkable
place. Passing under any of its old gate-ways for the first time, one
feels as if he had strayed upon a stage conscientiously prepared for
the playing of a mediæval comedy or tragedy. No town in Switzerland has
been so preserved from the hands of the spoiler and the restorer; the
whole town is a sort of informal museum of archæology. A small portion
that has grown up around the Federal Palace, which was erected on the
outskirts of the old town, when it was made the permanent capital in
1848, is modern in appearance. That which constitutes the town proper
is composed of ancient houses of an early age, with curiously frescoed
and carved fronts, and many remnants of ancient architecture. The main
streets are broad and regular, the houses constructed of sandstone of
a grayish-blue color, found in the adjoining hills; in other streets,
the tall, thin houses are clustered together as if to use as little as
possible of the margin which nature and industry have drawn so closely
around them. These houses are six, seven, and eight stories high. Every
floor, with the exception of the first, which in all probability is
used for business purposes, accommodates a family, and, among the poor
classes, several families. It would be difficult to find a town where
every part of the house is so fully put to use and little waste or idle
room. It is doubtful if a dozen families in Bern each occupy an entire
house, and a very small number more than a flat of one floor. All the
houses, including the most ancient, are admirably constructed for this
multiform occupancy, and Swiss domestic life, as practised in Bern, is
a fine art of many centuries’ growth. The walls being very thick, the
front windows are made to serve the purpose of verandas. They have neat
iron railings encircling them, swung on hinges, and when thrown outward
are both a protection and a rest for inclining against. In all pleasant
weather these are the favorite places to sit. Furnished with bright
red or orange cushions, and probably those on no two floors being
uniform in figure, they present from the street a novel and variegated
spectacle; touching up the projecting balconies, highly worked and of
a glossy black, and complementing the green Venetian shutters. These
houses preserve a mediæval physiognomy; the pomp and strength of feudal
Switzerland are called up before our mind when we look at the solid
walls, at the buttresses which support them, and their steep peaked
roofs.

The streets are kept scrupulously clean, as much so as the floor of a
well-kept house; a gang is constantly at work sweeping and carrying
off the dirt as soon as any can be found. Entering the town from the
south, two gate-ways are passed, at short distances from each other,
beneath towers which mark epochs in the extension of its walled period.
In the upper portion of these gate-ways, still standing over the empty
arches, where there is no longer a gate to shut, peaceful pigeons have
a cote. They are the only wardens and watchful sentinels to challenge
the passer-by. The fronts of the houses rest upon arcades, which form
covered walks and are lined with shops. The heavy piers of the arcades
exclude the sun, making the shops dark, and the arcade as damp as it is
gloomy. All these objections are felt to be more than compensated by
the protection furnished from the long winter’s snow. The streets are
provided with numerous public fountains of strange devices. They are
sculptured and decorated, as if the people loved the water and wished
to heighten the pleasure of seeing, welcoming, and using it. This water
is brought a great distance from mountain streams, and ceaselessly
pours its limpid stream through the open viaducts, and at convenient
places is diverted into gigantic stone basins; it is never muddy, and
is always delightfully cool. Through each of the principal streets flow
additional subterraneous streams of this water, furnishing the best of
sewers. This is one of the most pleasing sights common to the smallest
Swiss village,--the abundance of good water with which it is supplied;
it is ever in sight; overflowing, sparkling everywhere, for every use
of man and beast. These fountains resemble those of an Eastern well;
to them daily come all the women of the village for the water they
will require for their families; and they have other uses, the milk
vessels and the cooking utensils are for the most part washed there,
and on certain days they are surrounded by groups of _blanchisseuses_.
Here, too, the daily news of the village is discussed. Besides their
beauty and convenience, these fountains are a species of living
records of the taste and manners of past ages. Many date from the
sixteenth century, and are ornamented with colossal representations of
Swiss warriors, clad in steel, with wasp-shapes and stuffed breasts,
wearing diminutive caps, contrasting with their vast exuberance of
beard and stern countenances; then come goddesses, archers, bagpipers,
and one--the terror of children--the _kinder-fresser-brunnen_, or
“child-gormandizer-fountain.” Upon the top of a stone pillar, ten feet
high, is seated an obese-looking old man; he has the head and shoulders
of one poor baby in his gaping mouth, in the very act of swallowing;
a bag full of similar choice morceaus hangs around his neck, and they
are apparently struggling to escape the fate of their comrade. In one
hand of this ogre are the lower extremities of the child whose head he
is masticating, and in the other a basket full of urchins to finish his
repast; two or three of these have gotten out of the basket, and are
scampering off around the pedestal. There is a very beautiful fountain
in front of the Federal Palace, adorned with a statue of Berna. But
it is the effigy of the bear that perpetually recurs to the eye in
various forms and armor; it is the ensign of Bern, its heraldic animal,
and cherished with religious care as the palladium of the state. On
a fountain in the street of Justice, the Canton is represented in a
militant attitude, by the figure of a bear in armor, with sword, belt,
and banner; another fountain has a bear attending a cross-bowman as his
squire; and the equestrian statue of Rudolph von Erlach is supported
at the corners by four life-sized bronze bears as helmet-bearers. From
the day of the legend connecting Bruin with the city’s foundation
the bears have played a prominent part in local heraldry, that sage
and grave beast being cunningly reproduced in print, coin, stone,
wood, and confectionery of great artistic and amusing caricatures.
The effigy appears upon the cantonal coat-of-arms, and is inseparably
connected with the conquests of the warlike burghers. As a memorial
of the seven hundredth anniversary, in 1891, of the foundation of the
city, the municipal council intend opening a competition for designs
of the statue of a bear more modern than that which has already
existed for seven centuries. Every visitor to Bern is certain to see
the _Bärengraben_, the bears’ den, containing the live animals. It is
told that a whimsical old lady left a handsome estate to the town to
maintain a family of bears. In 1798 they became associated with the
spoliation of Bern, as they had been with its rise and prosperity.
They were transported to Paris by Napoleon’s troops, the huge cage
containing the father of the family having upon it an inscription not
yet forgotten by the Bernese, “_Avoyer de Berne_.” For some time these
bears, like the eagles of Geneva, held their court in the _Jardin des
Plantes_, where the Gallic cock flapped his new-fledged wings and
crowed over all the beasts in Europe--whether rampant or couchant--upon
the field of honor. Only one lived to return to his home at the general
restoration of the spoils; but this one was the aristocrat _Martin_,
whose descent was traced directly from the pair given to the town by
Réné of Lorraine, the ally of Bern in the war against Charles the Bold.
Others were subsequently presented by friends of the town in Russia,
and the family circle now numbers half a dozen. During the summer
they enjoy a great feast from the constant stream of tourists, who
persuade them to perform many antics by throwing them bread, fruits,
and vegetables, of which they are fond; they literally lay themselves
out for your amusement, catching these things lazily as they roll about
on their backs. In the centre of the dens a pine stem is erected, and
renewed annually; on this the bears take air and exercise, and practise
a variety of gymnastics, to the great amusement of the spectators.

Probably next in interest to the bear-pit comes the _Zeitglockenthurm_,
or clock-tower. A minute or two before the hour strikes, a wooden
chanticleer, as large as life, seated on a projection of the tower,
flaps his wings and crows a warning twice, and at the corresponding
time after the striking of the hour he repeats his salutations. A
figure, representing Father Time sitting on a throne, marks the hour
by reversing his hour-glass, a mail-clad figure strikes the hour on
the bell at the top of the tower, then a circle of bears emerge and
move round Father Time, who at every stroke of the bell slowly opens
his mouth and inclines his sceptre as if he himself were rather bored
with Time. Of other objects of interest there may be mentioned the
military depot, erected at a cost of 5,000,000 francs, and used as
a drilling-school for that military district; the Federal Palace, a
handsome stone structure of the Florentine style, and though only in
use since 1852, will soon be relegated to subordinate federal offices
and a more modern and capacious building, now under construction, will
take its place as the federal capitol; a public library, founded at
the time of the Reformation, and containing more than fifty thousand
volumes; a museum where is to be seen the stuffed skin of the famous
St. Bernard dog Barry, who rescued and saved the lives of more than
twenty persons overcome in snow-storms and drifts; botanical garden;
mint; University, with its faculties of law, medicine, theology,
science, languages, etc.; art gallery, and numerous scientific
collections, and societies; arsenal with its mediæval treasures,
and a most complete system of charitable institutions, including
foundling, orphan, blind, mute, and lunatic asylums. The Münster, or
Cathedral, is an immense Gothic structure, dating from 1421, with a
most elaborate sculptured group on the principal portal, representing
the last judgment and the wise and foolish virgins; it is otherwise
adorned with endless carvings in stone and flanked with two lofty
square towers, which still remain in an unfinished condition; few
sacred edifices on the continent are better calculated to make a
strong impression. In front of the Cathedral stands the fine bronze
equestrian statue of Rudolph von Erlach, the brave defender of Bern at
Laupin; it is a name celebrated in the Confederation for five hundred
years. An ancestor led his countrymen in the fourteenth century, and
Rudolph led the forces of the Canton against the French invasion at the
close of the eighteenth century; descendants of the name still live
in Bern and enjoy the highest respect and esteem of the people. The
Cathedral _platz_, a small well-shaded park, raised and walled at a
great expense, a hundred and eight feet above the river, overhangs the
lower town, built on the narrow margin of the rapid Aar. The outer wall
bears an inscription that, in 1654, a young student’s horse, frightened
by some boys, plunged over this precipice with his rider, the horse
being killed, but the rider escaped with only a broken arm and leg, and
survived the accident thirty years as a preacher.

On market day, Tuesday in each week, the streets of Bern are crowded
with booths and tables exposing for sale every sort of merchandise,
garden and farm products, and live animals, from a goat to a cow, a dog
to a horse; pigs and lambs are held in the embrace of their owners,
happy and contented with the nursing-bottle. The _Abattoir_, just out
of the town, on the banks of the river, with its handsome buildings
and beautiful grounds, sooner suggests to the passer-by an attractive
pleasure resort than a public slaughter-house.[111] Much of the garden
truck and all the dairy product are brought into market in small carts,
heavy and stoutly built, pulled by two dogs, one on each side of the
shafts, between which is the woman to uphold and guide it, and for
this motive power a woman and a dog or a boy and a dog tug together
in friendly yoke-fellowship. Dogs are used throughout Switzerland for
all light draught purposes; and not always very light, for these dogs
have been bred through generations for this purpose, until they have
almost the bone and strength of a small horse or ox. They do not seem
to be of any distinct canine family, varying much in size, color, and
appearance,--

  “Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
  And curs of low degree.”

They serve the twofold purpose of beasts of burden and vigilant
guardians; the moment the woman stops and puts down the shafts of the
cart the dogs go beneath it and lie down, but their eyes never leave a
stranger who comes near, and he would find it dangerous to attempt to
touch anything in the absence of their mistress. In the evening, when
readiness is made to return home, these dogs express their pleasure
with a deep-mouthed barking, forming a chorus of corresponding variety
to their breeding; as in procession they pass through the streets
this barking becomes a deafening yelp; in their struggle to pass one
another, the carts being lightened of their loads, often the women are
unable to check them with their own force and that of the brakes, with
which the cart is provided, and a general stampede occurs. The dogs
are highly valued and kindly treated by their owners; passing along
at noon, when the women and the dogs are taking their dinner side by
side from their respective tin buckets, you will find that the dogs are
not eating of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table, but are
furnished with rather a more generous repast. The law limits how many
pounds these dogs shall pull, but the woman may pull all she can.

Though Bern is the national and cantonal capital, it has an essentially
small-town, provincial system of life. There is no capital in Europe
more remote from the stir and impulse of the world’s activities.
Isolated by its insignificance rather than by any geographical
position, free from all extraneous influences, it maintains a mummy
condition, bound up in the swaddling-clothes of quaint customs and
antiquated ideas. It has been within this generation that a butcher
of the town made the advertisement that “all persons, without respect
of religion, can have fresh meat every day.” To the stranger, life in
Bern soon stagnates into a fearsome weariness. There is absolutely
nothing to break the _tædium vitæ_ unless you devote yourself to the
task of doing it. From the first of December to the middle of April
there is an annual hibernation. Silence reigns in the streets, and
the tradesmen will tell you they do not make enough to pay for their
light. Amusements are few and too poor to lure one from his melancholy,
and, tired with all things else, the weary heart must seek new life
and joy in nature. Yet the very silence and absence of bustle, a
certain stateliness and reserved demeanor in the inhabitants, showing
it not to be a money-making town, imply that its importance at some
time must have sprung from more solid and permanent sources than
trade can afford, and that another spirit animated its inhabitants.
Aristocratic pride is still excessive, and the antique simplicity of
its magistrates, the plain and easy manners they uniformly preserve in
their intercourse with the people, are not by any means at variance
with the assertion. For that external simplicity and affability
to inferiors is one of the characteristics of the aristocratic
government; all assumption of superiority being carefully avoided
when real authority is not in question. Zurich suggests the idea of a
municipal aristocracy; Bern of an ancient one. In the one we think we
see citizens of a town transformed into nobility, in the other ancient
nobles who have made themselves citizens. By the side of those gigantic
terraces, of those fine fountains, those massive arches and noble
shades you now see none but simple and solid dwellings, yet scarcely
any beggarly ones; not an equipage to be seen, but many a wagon,
with a fine team of horses or oxen, well appointed in every way. The
aristocracy of Bern, in times past, was distinguished by its elegant
accomplishments and the splendid ornaments and furniture of its houses,
heirlooms of the wall and of the cupboard, which were the pride of
generations. The value of the furniture of a Bernese patrician, called
Zeguti, was ascertained by his last will, A.D. 1367, to be equal to
the public revenue of the city for one year. The aristocratic Bernese
officials of those days had under their door-bells written: “_Ici on
sonne et attend._” Bern is in the centre of one of the most beautiful
landscapes in Europe; the country is broken, but cultivated like a
garden, and so well wooded as to resemble a vast park. Every town
in Switzerland possesses some feature of originality, and none are
destitute of lovely and refreshing walks; but there is none richer in
umbrageous roads, or where they are kept in better repair, than Bern.
Graceful foot-paths wind among the fields, which are little encumbered
with fences or hedges, and roads as good as those which are seen in
pleasure-grounds. The fine wood of Bremgarten, with its magnificent
avenues of trees, extends almost to the very gates of the town, and is
reached by a boulevard lined on each side with limes, which in their
season perfume the air. A more beautiful or highly-cultivated region
is scarcely to be found than the banks of the Aar in its vicinity. The
environs abound in views over hill and dale, over wood and river; and
the most unobservant cannot fail to remark how superior in brilliancy
of color and elegance of form even the wayside flowers appear; the very
weediest of weeds seem attractive and ornamental. In the rare pure air
of this mountainous section the whole plant population becomes, as it
were, refined and aristocratic. Then Bern looks from her peninsula on
the beauties and snows of her Oberland, a continuous chain the most
regular in all Switzerland, and the most imposing and pompous panorama
that can be found in the whole realm of mountains. In the grand barrier
which separates Bern from the Valais there are six celebrated peaks,
commencing on the east with the Wetterhorn,[112] then the Schreckhorn,
the Finsteraarhorn, the Eiger, the Mönch, and the Jungfrau, ranging in
height from twelve thousand to fourteen thousand and twenty-six feet.
They all pierce the empyrean, but the Finsteraarhorn overtops all the
others. They look so sharp and wildly precipitous that the bare thought
of standing on any one of them would make you shudder. The horizontal
extent of this range is vast, the grouping magnificent, the scene
unparagoned. They present bold outlines cut sharply against the sky,
summits veiled with clouds, crests alternately gently rounded or rugged
and broken, noble slopes, steep precipices, outlines of mingled grace
and boldness.[113] In the course of a clear day there is a beautiful
variety of aspect, bright, pure, rich, harmonious,--from the dark
shadows cast by the rising sun, the brilliancy of mid-day, the violet
hues at sunset, and the ashy and almost ghostly paleness of evening.
Imagine frozen snow piled in the heavens and stretching miles across
the boundary of an otherwise beautiful view, having its sides shaded
by innumerable valleys, with here and there a patch of hoary, naked
rock, and the upper line all tossed into peaks and swelling ridges,
like the waves of a colossal ocean. The grandest scene of all, and seen
in greater perfection at Bern than any other point in Switzerland, is
that brief period when the majestic architecture of the Alps, with its
capitals and bastions, is flushed with the warm light of the lowering
sun; when the _Alpenglühen_[114] (_Abendglühen_) bathes the stern faces
of the ramparts with a flood of light and shade such as only nature
can produce from the rarest tints of infinite beauty. As the sun sinks
lower the ruddiness of his light seems to augment until the filaments
resemble streamers of flame; when the sun sinks deeper the light is
gradually withdrawn, all is cold and gray again; the stars come out all
at once and leave the mountain like a desolate old man whose

                          “Hoary hair
  Stream’d like a meteor in the troubled air.”

The vapor at times causes a great deal of refraction, and above the
clouds rises the whole of the Oberland to an altitude which seems
greater than usual; every peak and all the majestic formation are
clearly visible, though the whole range appears to be severed from the
earth and to float in the air; the line of communication is varied,
and while all below is enfeebled by the mist, the snow and ice above
throw back the fierce light of the sun with powerful splendor. The
people of Bern, of all conditions and ages, may be seen, day after
day, waiting and watching for the _Alpenglühen_. As the hour of sunset
approaches, the numerous little parks which furnish a view begin to
fill up with the old and young; with the first announcing ray of the
_Alpenglühen_ the children cease to be boisterous, the fingers that ply
the knitting-needle are still, the laborer at work pursues his vocation
sedately, and all gaze in silent admiration. Bern abounds in these
humanizing, tranquillizing, and health-giving parks or promenades,
ornamented with beds of bright flowers and provided with comfortable
seats. Although the Alps are not necessary to render the views from
these parks pleasant, yet there they are, to add a background of
sublimity to a foreground of surpassing loveliness. The Aar flows
towards Bern in a northwest direction, through a valley of some width
and several miles in length: to this fact the Bernese are indebted
for their fine view of the Oberland Alps, which stretch themselves
exactly across the mouth of the gorge at a distance of forty miles in
an air-line. There is a story of a king, who said he dearly wished he
had never had any picture or statue in his palace so that he could once
again have, even for a moment, the crude, sincere delight of a boy
staring at a wax-work group. The Bernese will never have need to frame
such a wish. To them their Oberland will always be new, a picture that
can never fade, a strain of music which can never sound tuneless or
harsh.

But in this sin-cursed world

  “The sea of fortune doth not ever flow;
    She draws her favors to the lowest ebb;
  Her tides have equal times to come and go;
    Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web.”

This same _Alpenglühen_ casts its kaleidoscopic rays directly at the
foot of the Oberland on eyes that are incapable of appreciating the
wealth of beauty that is around and above them. Here are a most sadly
afflicted people; here prevail, to a remarkable degree, _goitre_ and
_cretinism_. We find in Juvenal, “_Quis tumidum guttur miratur in
Alpibus?_” (“Who wonders at goitres in the Alps?”) Congenital cases
are not infrequent, but, in a majority of instances, it makes its
appearance on a child at about the age of twelve or fourteen. The size
these goitrous growths may attain is extraordinary, hanging down on the
breast, enormous and unsightly things, recalling the description in
“The Tempest,”--

  “When we were boys,
  Who would have believed that there were mountaineers
  Dew-lapp’d like bulls, whose throats had hanging at ’em
  Hideous wallets of flesh.”

In some portions of this district, the goitre or swelling of the
thyroid gland in front of the neck is so prevalent that

  “Optimus ille est
  Qui minimus urgetur.”

It is not painful, and not always apparently inconvenient, and the
few who are free from it are laughed at and called “goose-necked.” A
stranger once entering a church in the neighborhood where but few were
absolutely free from these unseemly appendages, during service the
congregation betrayed improper curiosity, and the pastor, after a sharp
reproach for their want of manners, reminded them that it was not the
fault of the poor man “if he had no goitre.” By some it is actually
considered, in a mild form, to be desirable; for it possesses a
positive money value in furnishing exemption from military service. Now
and then these monstrous excrescences become too large to be borne, and
the poor victims crawl on the ground because they cannot walk upright
under the weight. There is a popular as well as scientific belief
that water is the vehicle of the poison that produces it; that it is
impregnated with _tufa_ or _tuf_ a calcareous matter, whose tendency
to concrete among the glands of the neck, aided, perhaps, by stagnant
evaporation of narrow villages, produces these wenny protuberances.
This goitrous condition is often accompanied with an imperfect or
arrested state of mental development known as _cretinism_, a distinct
and most distressful form of idiocy. The _cretin_ has an enormous head
that drops listlessly on the breast; a vacant countenance; goggling
eyes; thick tongue hanging out over moist, livid lips; mouth always
open, full of saliva, and exposing decayed teeth; limbs misshapen;
and wanting at times even the power of articulation. Many are deaf
and dumb,--in fact, physical abortions, with every sign of bodily
and mental imbecility. Few of these poor creatures can do any work,
and many are even incapable of taking care of themselves, and not
safe to leave alone. These distorted, mindless people, of semi-human
attributes, excite a pitying disgust by their loathsome appearance,
lolling tongue, obscene gestures, degraded appetites, and senseless
gibberish as revolting as their aspects. The word _cretin_ is thought
to be derived from the older _cretins_ of the Alps, whose name was a
corruption of _Chrétien_ or _Christianus_, and who, being baptized, and
idiots, were supposed to be “washed from original sin” and incapable
of actual sin. Cretinism is regarded by physicians as hereditary, for
it appears in the most pronounced type in successive generations of
the same family. This unfortunate district borders on the most fertile
and beautiful valley in Switzerland, the Emmenthal, the rich plain in
the northern part of the Canton of Bern, noted for its cheese and its
_schwingfeste_ (winnowing-festivals). Here the peasants are sturdy and
strong of aspect, and on Sunday the men may be seen walking among
their acres like lords of the soil, in their immaculate shirt sleeves
of a fulness suggestive of episcopal dignity. It was the neat houses,
comfortable dresses, highly-cultivated and generous soil, giving a
cheerful and prosperous look to the face alike of the people and the
country in this section, that caused so high an authority as Burke to
write, “That he had beheld throughout Switzerland, and above all in the
Canton of Bern, a people at once the happiest and the best governed on
earth.”




CHAPTER XX.

SWITZERLAND THE SEAT OF INTERNATIONAL UNIONS.


It is not a little surprising--when we consider the great and rapid
advance that has been made during the last century in diplomacy,
jurisprudence, statesmanship, and political economy, and, indeed, in
the multifarious branches of knowledge,--that international relations,
upon which depend to such an extent the most precious interests of the
nations and of all mankind, should remain so long in a condition very
crude, indefinite, and incomplete. The “mills of God grind slowly,”
but the mills of human government seem even more tedious and rusty.
Now that, in the advance of intelligence and civilization, the nations
have passed from the self-subsistent stage of national life into the
dependent one; now that, through the great discoveries of modern times,
the nations have been brought together, compacted into one community,
and the interests of all have been blended; now that “the separate
threads of national prosperity have been entangled in the international
skein,” publicists have found it necessary to enlarge their opinions
and judgments, so as to represent, not the narrowness of local
prejudice, but the breadth and depth of the whole mind of civilized
mankind. This tendency has found practical expression in international
treaties, with objects neither sectarian nor political; concerning not
individuals alone, not nations alone, but the whole community of man.
With aims the most comprehensive, desirableness and practicability
manifest, they are founded in a philanthropy seeking to promote the
honor and welfare of every nation, and to bring additional blessings
to every home and every heart in the wide world. International unions,
with their noble and beneficent objects, constitute the fellowship of
nations, under the dominion of law, in the bonds of peace. Central
bureaus are required for the management of these unions, and it needed
but little reflection to discover that the Swiss republic presented
peculiar advantages for their location. Its neutrality stood guaranteed
by the powers; it could not come under any suspicion of political
ambition or territorial aggrandizement; it was thus mapped out to be a
neutral state, with every reasonable prospect of this _status_ being
sustained. This neutrality, with its strong assurance of immunity from
“all entangling alliances” and the untoward complications of war or
foreign occupation, and the central position in Europe with convenience
of communication with the principal European capitals, were in
themselves sufficient to recommend Switzerland. Then the Swiss possess
perhaps the most marked genius of any people for the administration of
an office; the government itself is surely the most laborious, the most
economical, the least pretentious, yet withal systematic, thorough,
and efficient; the same sobriety of demeanor, conscientious discharge
of duty, with painstaking, patient labor at their desks, pervade
the entire Swiss bureaucracy; these were distinct and all-important
advantages. And, last, the supposition that affairs which influence
the conduct and affect the interests of nations might be discussed
amid its mountains with a calmness and candor which the contemplation
of nature inspires, contributed no little to the cheerful consensus
as to the propriety of its selection for the seat of the bureaus.
There are now a sufficient number of these unions, with their central
bureaus or seats established in Bern, to confer upon the Confederation
a singularly conspicuous position of distinction and usefulness.
Uncontaminated by the ambitions of its neighbors, Switzerland offers to
contending nations a quiet spot in which to settle their disputes by
the peaceful means of arbitration. It is not only a place of occasional
conventions, but also the official headquarters of a host of continuous
international agreements, commercial treaties and unions, which render
peace and freedom necessary, and therefore secure within its borders.

The first step from which resulted the concentration of these bureaus
in Switzerland was taken in 1863. In that year a private committee,
composed of different nationalities but animated by one noble impulse,
assembled at Geneva to consider the practicability of making some
better provision for the protection of the wounded in battle, the
inadequacy of existing official means to meet the humane requirements
of the sick and wounded soldiers in great wars having long been
painfully apparent. It will always redound to the honor of Switzerland
that upon its soil the first formal international conference was held
with a view to the mitigation of some of the horrors of war. On that
occasion the institution of national aid societies was organized, and a
few Swiss gentlemen were formed into an international committee for the
purpose of constituting, on their neutral territory, an intermediary
for the aid of similar societies in all countries. This committee
soon discovered that their movement was everywhere attracting the
attention and winning the warm approbation of all humane people, and
determined to place it upon a broader and firmer basis. They requested
the Swiss Federal Council to propose to such other governments, as
it deemed expedient, that a diplomatic conference should be held
in Switzerland, to discuss and, if possible, give the undertaking
international character and support. The Federal Council promptly
acceded to the memorial of the committee, and the invitation, as
desired, was officially extended in the name of the Swiss government.
Many of the leading powers accepted the invitation, and accredited
delegates to the conference, which assembled the following year in
Geneva. This conference was brought to a successful conclusion by the
signing of the memorable “Geneva Convention of August 20, 1864,” by
the representatives of sixteen governments. Within four months it was
ratified and formally acceded to by eight European states, and at the
present date has been joined by a grand total of thirty-three states.
This convention embraces a wide field of practical philanthropy, being
designed to remove soldiers when sick or wounded from the category
of combatants, affording them relief and protection without regard
to nationality. This protection extends to all persons officially
attached to hospitals or ambulances, and to all houses so long as
they contain invalid soldiers. Inhabitants of a locality occupied
by a belligerent army, and who are engaged in the care of the sick
and wounded, are likewise included; provision is also to be made for
the return of invalid soldiers to their respective homes. “While the
gun-carriage bears its death-dealing burden across the battle-field,
in the ruts which rushing artillery wheels have torn up follow quickly
the ambulance wagons of this Christian brotherhood, bringing hope
and succor to the wounded.” The insignia of hospital and ambulance
is the Swiss flag, with its colors reversed, a red cross on a white
ground; and individuals in their employment wear a white armlet
with a red cross, and every red-cross flag must be accompanied, in
time of war, by the national flag of those using it. It is no mean
distinction for the Swiss Confederation that its national emblem is
so intimately and exclusively associated with this great exhibition of
international humanity. It is a grand and elevating education, a wise
and philanthropic conception embodying the best principles of social
science, and that true spirit of charity which counts it a sacred
privilege to minister to one’s fellow-men in time of suffering. To
supply material wants, great as this may be, is not all of its mission;
it seeks to carry to men’s hearts the message of universal brotherhood,
with “peace on earth, good will to men” as its ensign. The United
States gave their adhesion to this convention in 1882, and in the
conferences had since that date, among the large number of delegates
assembled, composed of royalties, nobilities, military and scientific
celebrities, no one commanded more respectful attention or contributed
more to the deliberations than a lone feminine delegate who bore the
credentials of the United States. The name of Clara Barton is known
the world over in connection with the burning cross on a snow-white
field. To her labors are largely due the widening of the scope of the
red-cross activities, and the assimilation of its workings to the
advance plans already put in execution in her own country. These plans
were chiefly of her own suggestion, and she had been instrumental in
their reduction to successful use, for which she found opportunity in
the late civil war, and subsequently during the Franco-German war,
when she followed the German army into Paris, working faithfully alike
in French and German camp; when all the nations of Europe rang with
praises for her splendid work. She then first became acquainted with
the Red Cross Society, and at once united with it; returning home with
the iron cross of Baden on her breast, she organized the Red Cross
Society of the United States, and was made its president. Her influence
mainly contributed to the favorable action of the United States in
joining this convention in 1882.

In 1865, one year after the conclusion of the Red Cross Convention,
occurred the initiative of the International Telegraph Union upon the
signature of the Convention of Paris. For a time the Union dispensed
with a central administration, and at the conference held in Vienna in
1865 the policy of having a shifting administration, as between the
capitals where the conferences took place, was seriously considered,
but the necessity for a fixed and central administration was finally
conceded, and the Swiss Confederation was asked to take charge of it.
The central office was organized without delay at Bern. Correspondence
was opened with thirty-seven telegraphic administrations, twenty-six
of which belonged to the contracting states and eleven to private
corporations. The last report from the bureau-director shows the
number of state administrations corresponding with the central
office to be forty; in addition to these are ten cable or submarine
companies and eleven private land companies. The budget for 1888
reports the total expense of this bureau at 84,000 francs, or about
$16,500, an incredibly small outlay for so important and responsible a
work, involving an extensive line of correspondence and at times the
adjustment of very technical questions. The bureau issues an official
gazette, _Le Journal Télégraphique_. To this union the United States do
not belong, having no government control over the telegraph companies.

Next came the Postal Union in 1874, and immediately upon the exchange
of ratifications of the convention a year later the central office
was likewise organized at Bern. Correspondence opened with twenty-one
postal administrations, which have now increased to forty-seven;
the annual budget is $15,700, making the contributive share of a
first-class state only a little over $600 per annum, and about half
that sum for a second-class state; certainly a very inconsiderable
tax for so essential a service. The chiefs or directors of the two
above-mentioned unions possess administrative ability that would
readily command in the United States three times the sums paid them.
A journal, _L’Union Postale_, published monthly, in three languages,
English, German, and French, is conducted by the bureau, and enjoys a
large circulation among those interested in knowing something of this
clearing-house process of international mail-matter.

Passing mention may be made of two more limited but very useful
conventions concluded in Switzerland,--one for the extermination of
phylloxera and the other for the regulation of the transportation of
goods by railway. The first had its origin at a conference of persons
interested in the culture of the vine, held at Lausanne in 1877,
and a convention to establish a union was signed at Bern in 1878 by
several states, with the object of promoting joint protection against
a disease which had caused such serious losses to vine-growers. Bern
was agreed upon as the seat of all future meetings, and this union,
which continues to obtain adhesions, is in active and beneficial
operation. The Railway Transportation Union is, from the very nature
and difficulty of the matters involved, one of slow evolution, but
conferences are from time to time held, and its friends do not despair
that it will ultimately result in the text of an international union
with its bureau at Bern; this union, however, cannot expect to embrace
any but the continental states.

A most important event in the history of these unions was the
conclusion, at Paris, in 1883, after ten years’ negotiation, of
the Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, with a
supplemental protocol signed at Rome in 1886. By the terms of the
convention Switzerland assumed the responsibility for the management of
the central administration, and the bureau joined the others at Bern.
There are sixteen states in this union, the last accession being that
of the United States, which was made on the 30th of May, 1887.

Lastly, and one very properly following close on that for the
protection of industrial property, came the Union for the Protection
of Literary and Artistic Property. This, the result of conferences
in 1884, 1885, and 1886 at Bern, was secured by the signature of
the convention on the 9th of September, 1886, and the ratification
exchanged 5th of December, 1887, with ten adhering states. The central
bureau, like those preceding it, was placed under the high authority
of the Swiss Confederation, and is consolidated with its sister Bureau
of Industrial Property. It issues an ably edited monthly journal, _Le
Droit d’Auteur_.

The failure of the United States to adhere to this convention, it
was apprehended by many, would deprive the Union of much of its
contemplated value and practical results. This sentiment found
expression in terms of the most sincere and respectful regret on
the part of the delegates representing the signing states. At the
Bern Conference of 1886, to which the writer was commissioned as a
consultative delegate, he submitted the following statement explanatory
of the attitude of the United States towards the conference:

“Through a circular note of the Swiss Federal Council the United States
have been invited, in concert with the other powers represented in the
Copyright Conference held here in September, 1885, to instruct and
empower a delegate to attend this conference, and to sign on behalf
of the United States the International Convention for the General
Protection of Literary and Artistic Property, drafted _ad referendum_
by the conference last year, and a copy of which draft convention,
with additional article and _protocole de clôture_, had been submitted
to them. The United States again find it impracticable to depute a
delegate plenipotentiary, and are constrained to withhold from any
formal participation, as a signatory to the International Convention
which resulted from the deliberations of 1885, and the transformation
of that convention into a complete diplomatic engagement. To exhibit
their benevolence, however, towards the principle involved, the
United States desire, with, the pleasure of this conference, to be
represented here, and has conferred upon me the honor to attend this
conference as such representative, provided that my attendance is fully
recognized and admitted to be without plenipotentiary powers; but under
the limitation and reservation that the United States, not being a
party to the proposed convention, reserve their privilege of future
accession, under provisions of Article XVIII. thereof, which declare
that ‘countries which have not joined in the present convention, and
which by their municipal laws assure legal protection to the right
whereof this convention treats, shall be admitted to accede thereto
on their request to that effect.’ While not prepared to join in the
proposed convention as a full signatory, the United States do not wish
thereby to be understood as opposing the measure in any way, but, on
the contrary, desire to reserve without prejudice the privilege of
future accession, should it become expedient and practicable to do
so. Should any question exist that the representation of the United
States here, though under the specific and express limitation of a
consultative delegate, is such a participation as would suffice to
exclude them from the category of the ‘countries that had not joined in
the present convention,’ and therefore to deprive them of the privilege
of future accession, in event they desire to avail themselves of it,
I wish to reiterate and emphasize the fact, that the course of the
United States in commissioning a delegate is in nowise intended or
to be construed as a participation in the result of the conference,
either by acceptance or rejection. The position and attitude of the
United States is one simply of expectancy and reserve. The Constitution
of the United States enumerates among the powers especially reserved
to Congress, that ‘to promote the progress of science and the useful
arts, by securing for limited terms to authors and inventors the
exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;’
which implies that the origination and limitation of measures to
those ends rest with the legislative rather than the treaty-making
powers. Copyright and patents are on the same footing of regulation
by federal legislation, and the executive branch of the government
cannot be unmindful of the continued pendency of its consideration
by the legislative department, or disregard the constitutional
right of that department to conclude international treaties on this
important subject. The question of international copyright is one of
great interest to the United States. In fact, few other countries
can lay claim to greater concern than that naturally felt by people
distinguished for enlightened, extensive, and growing intellectual
life, and while not infringing upon the constitutional prerogative
of Congress to initiate and conclude copyright legislation, likewise
to define the rights of aliens and citizens within its jurisdiction,
the Executive, in his first annual message to Congress, inviting
its attention to the conference of last September, said, ‘action is
certainly desirable to effect the object in view;’ and the Secretary of
State for foreign affairs, in his official despatches relating to this
conference, freely expresses his concurrence with the principle sought
to be enunciated by the proposed convention, and conveys the hope that
the time is not distant when rights of property in the creation of
the mind may be universally secured under conditions favorable alike
to the author and to the world’s right to share in the diffusion of
ideas. That the brain that creates is entitled to and should receive
its just and full compensation, is a sentiment having its origin in
the inherent sense of honesty. Literary property has been to some
extent recognized in all ages, and is to-day guaranteed in almost every
State by domestic legislation. This recognition and guarantee should
be without distinction of nationality and without regard to political
frontiers. It is a matter of congratulation, and redounds much to
the credit of the Swiss government, through whose active efforts
this movement was successfully inaugurated, and supplemented by the
patient and intelligent labor of the several conferences assembled
here at its invitation, that a just and permanent settlement, once for
all, of the grave question of the protection of works of literature
and art, so long and unjustly denied, is about to be realized by the
instrumentality of a uniform, efficacious, and equitable international
convention.”

At the close of these remarks the president of the conference thanked
the delegate from the United States, and assured him that the
“accession of the United States would be received at any time with joy
by all the contracting states, and he but reflected the sincere wish of
all present in hoping that within a measurable time the United States
will request that a place be made for them in the Union.”

It is time that the position of the United States on this important
subject should be set free from the thraldom of that short-sighted
selfishness which has hitherto fettered and degraded it. The Congress
of the United States should seek suggestion from those sentiments of
elevated justice and public honesty which are the sources of judicial
counsel, and should act in that spirit of permanent and comprehensive
wisdom, justice, and right which alone gives assurances of deep and
expanding benefits, as well to nations as to individuals. In the
absence of international copyright, just and fair compensation for
native literary and artistic property is out of the question. American
authors ask no protection, they demand no aids, no bounties; they
simply ask not to be subjected to this discrimination against domestic
talent that puts them at a cruel disadvantage with foreign competitors,
the fatal usage of whose cheap reprints, “without authorial expenses,”
has become an inveterate and crushing system. They ask only the
privilege of meeting these competitors on equal terms in a fair
contest. Literary property is the only kind of personal property not
protected by the law when the owner is not a citizen of the United
States. To the foreign owners of patents and trade-marks, which are
so analogous to copyright, protection ample and easily enforced is
accorded. It is half a century since Prussia first set the example of
granting international copyright. In 1837 a law was passed that every
country might secure copyright for its authors in Prussia upon granting
reciprocity. This was followed by England in the succeeding year.
France set the example, during the Empire, of forbidding the piracy of
books and works of art of foreigners, before obtaining reciprocity.
Property in ideas, dating back in England to the Statutes of Anne,
was recognized in the Constitution of the United States, and is now
conceded in every civilized country by legislative enactment. The same
legal protection in the matter of ideas which is given to the natives
of the state, is now accorded to the foreigner and outsider by all
nations of high civilization except the United States. The right to
profit by the product of the brain should secure for the author “that
justice which is not a matter of climates and degrees.” The principle
of copyright being admitted, it cannot logically be confined to state
lines or national boundaries. Grant that it is difficult to give
literary rights the well-defined nature and tangible form of what is
known, technically, as real or personal property; still, outside of the
ethical or abstract right, copyright is a modern development of the
principle of property which commends itself to every sentiment of honor
and justice, regardless of any obscurity which may have surrounded or
inspired its conception. Who steals a man’s book may, indeed, steal
trash, but, at least, it is his own trash, more closely his own than
his purse. In a high state of civilization, a man’s book should be
everywhere regarded as his property, and should ever be protected as
scrupulously as if it were a pair of shoes, upon the construction of
which he has also expended his time, his thought, his patience, and
such talent and skill as he possesses. The sophistical plea that the
culture and education of our people are to be imperilled, and the cost
of books to be placed beyond the reach of the masses, is the mere weak
subterfuge of those who are unwilling to be disturbed in their wrongful
appropriation of the labor of others. The reverse of this claim has
been abundantly shown. France has had an international copyright law
for years, and series of books are issued there for five cents, and
even two cents a number; it is the same with Germany; and these cheap
publications represent all that is best in the literature of their
respective countries. The spirit of literary ambition and activity is
daily becoming greater and more diffused among the people of the United
States, quickening and nourishing into life the seeds of a vigorous
and vast native literature. It is impossible to determine the elements
which must conspire to form and build up a native literature. It is
a mystery, not solved to the satisfaction of scholars, why it should
have put forth so early and transitory a bloom in Italy; why it should
have ripened so late in Germany and Scotland; why in England alone it
should know no vicissitudes of seasons, but smile in eternal spring.
But we may be confidently assured that a people to whom Providence has
given a stirring history, a land abounding in landscapes of beauty and
grandeur, and a high degree of mental activity, extending the range of
knowledge and scattering its seeds among all classes without price,
cannot and will not remain long without an extensive and superior
native literature. The literature of a people is the noblest emanation
and truest measure of the intellect and earnestness and progression of
that community. But there can be no decided literature, national in
its basis, original in its character, independent in its aim, in any
country where authorship is not a firm, reliable, and safe possession.
Already the peer of the proudest in military achievements and material
prosperity, truth, freedom, and civilization never presented a richer
field and a brighter future for intellectual laborers than is to be
found in the United States. Inexhaustible materials sleep in the womb
of the morning, awaiting the forming hand of letters to seize and
vitalize these mighty elements. The day must come when the pre-eminence
of the United States in the field of material products will be rivalled
by the existence of a literature as aspiring, as copious, and as
brilliant as the spirit, resources, and destiny of the country; an
American literature, breathing American ideas, and teaching respect
and admiration for American government, furnishing to the young men
and women of an impressionable age books which are American books, not
foreign books; not the cheap books of fiction dedicated, as Matthew
Arnold has said, to the “Goddess of Lubricity.”[115]

The international unions, indicated as having their seats in Bern,
it must not be forgotten, are practically the only ones which the
world has to show. The _Bureau du Mètre_ in France, the only cognate
institution in another country partaking of an international character,
cannot be reckoned in the same class, being scientific and not
commercial. It is noteworthy, as evidence of the high consideration
given to these international unions, or rather to the location of their
central bureaus in Switzerland, by its statesmen, that the directorship
of the Postal Bureau was on its establishment accepted by an eminent
member of the Federal Council, who thus voluntarily surrendered
virtually a life-tenure position of the highest dignity, coupled with
the certainty of succeeding to the Presidency of the Confederation,
to assume a more laborious and responsible post, with little, if any,
increase of salary. The acquisition by Switzerland of these important
bureaus, with the world-wide scope of their operation, is properly
regarded as forming a more effectual guarantee for its preservation
as an independent state than any other that could be devised. These
unions cannot fail to be also productive of a progressively improving
understanding among all the states composing them, enabling their
several systems to be compared, useful discoveries shared, legislation
simplified and assimilated, the science of statistics facilitated, and
efforts, not merely for the development of commercial, but also of
the intellectual needs of their respective people, wisely stimulated
and directed. These beneficent consequences must favorably reflect
on the state furnishing the safe and common ground upon which this
great work can be peaceably and skilfully prosecuted, and elevate
it to an exceptional plane of importance and security, giving it an
international function which is interesting to note. It will not
do, in connection with these international bodies and episodes in
Swiss history, to omit reference to the fact that the first great
international court of arbitration of modern times had its sessions
in Geneva, in 1872, by virtue of the Treaty of Washington between
Great Britain and the United States to arbitrate what was known as
the “Alabama Claims.” Over this most memorable court a distinguished
citizen of Switzerland was chosen to preside. It was such an imposing
spectacle, and the results were so important, as to give an old process
a new dignity and reputation; and to awaken a fresh interest in the
project of a permanent international high court of arbitration. To this
project the Swiss Federal Council has been frequently addressed to lend
its kindly offices. It is a project that every philanthropic publicist
would be happy to see made practicable. Insurmountable difficulties
seem to interpose, yet the fact of great states submitting their
disputes to a body of impartial arbitrators for decision, and not the
arbitrament of war, is not a new one, but of very ancient origin, old
as history. As a principle, it has received the approval of sovereigns
and statesmen, parliaments and congresses. The chief powers of Europe
gave their sanction to it by the Treaty of Paris in 1856, and the
government of the United States has, upon more than one occasion, given
approval to it as the means of settling international controversy.[116]
Barbarians and early people fought because they liked it, as the
chivalrous Maoris did, and the Mussulmans, and the ancient Greeks. The
romance and poetry of these people are all about war; it was their
sport, their industry, their occupation; there was no other way to
wealth and the heart of woman. Even the ancient Teutones regarded war
as a great international lawsuit, and victory was the judgment of God
in favor of the victor. Civilized people fight because they cannot help
it, not because they like it. Civilized nations of to-day are supposed
to act from motives of justice and humanity, and not upon calculations
of profit, or ambition, or in the wantonness of mere caprice. Nations
are now regarded as moral persons, bound so to act as to do each other
the least injury and the most good. There is a growing international
consciousness that, considered in the abstract, unconnected with all
views of the causes for which it may be undertaken, war is an evil, and
that it should yield to some plan of adjusting international quarrels
more consonant with the present boasted Christian civilization. War, it
is true, has its great conquests, its pomps, its proud associations,
and heroic memories, yet there is murder in its march, and humanity and
civilization, genius and statesmanship, are things to blush for if they
fail to realize that

  “Peace hath her victories
  No less renown’d than war,”

and that these words convey a profound principle, and not merely an
abstraction too refined to be reduced to practice.

The trend of events is towards a peaceable settlement of international
differences. National temperaments are being levelled by the ease of
intercourse. The world is more and more assimilating to a condition
like that of a great family, in which the individual nations, as
members, are linked together by interests, which disputes ending in
wars only impair and cannot benefit. The principle in early Roman law
was that every stranger is a public enemy. The opposite prevails
to-day with civilized peoples, that the normal relation between nations
is one of peace and friendship. Unconquerable time itself works on
increasingly, bringing the nations nearer to one another in the
natural and orderly development of close international intercourse,
strengthening the community of mankind. A deep meaning and philosophic
truth is contained in the words of Vattel, “International justice is
the daughter of economic calculations.” These international unions are
most powerful auxiliaries in removing the hinderances that lie between
nations; through them the lesson is being objectively taught that great
nations are so dependent upon each other, that any disturbance in a
particular one is felt by the others, and that when their friendly
relations are interrupted, the civilized world suffers. Through
this influence nations are beginning to take a wider view of their
mutual duties and relations, and appeal to reason and conscience in
international dealings finds a response and an application which could
not have been expected earlier. These unions generate a spirit that
turns its regard to the circuit of the globe, and to an inspiration in
which international relations obtain a higher form and a more assured
security, with no purpose to interfere with particular states or their
complete autonomous organism, or to oppress nations, but the better
to secure the peace of the one and the freedom of the other. The best
human arrangements cannot completely insure the world against civil
war. This ideal can be only approximated. It would be vain to look for
a political millennium, for a time when the “only battle-field will
be the market open to commerce and the mind open to new ideas,” when
nations shall enjoy the boundless blessings offered them in the perfect
freedom of human industry and in the reign of a perpetual peace,--

  “When the war-drum throbs no longer and the battle-flags are furled
  In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.”

The latest movement, on the part of Switzerland, in the inauguration
of international legislation, relates to “international law” and the
“interest of the working-classes.” The former was organized, in 1888,
at Lausanne, the seat of the Swiss Federal Tribunal, and formed the
“Institute of International Law;” the subjects discussed comprised the
common features of the conflict of civil laws; the conflict of the laws
relative to marriage and divorce; joint stock companies; encounters
at sea; extradition; occupation of unclaimed territory, according
to provisions of the Treaty of Berlin; international regulation of
railways, telegraphs, and telephones in time of war; and the manner
and limit of expulsion of strangers from the territory by governments.
The second, relating to the “interest of the working-classes,” was
foreshadowed by an article from the pen of M. Numa Droz, the chief
of the Foreign Department in the Swiss Cabinet, and published in the
_Revue Suisse_ of February, 1889. In this article M. Droz announced
that Switzerland was about to invite the other nations of Europe to a
congress, in which projects for improving the condition of the laboring
classes of Europe would be discussed. He expressed his confidence that
only good could come from such an official gathering, and stated that
Switzerland would consider it “as a great source of pleasure to offer
cordial hospitality to the first European conference in the interest
of labor legislation.” The distinguished and official authorship of
this article caused it to attract much attention, and it received very
favorable comment from the continental press. As indicated by M. Droz,
within a short time after the appearance of his article, the Swiss
Federal Council issued an invitation to the European manufacturing
states to send representatives to a conference in September, 1889, at
Bern, to consider the “well-being of the working-classes,” and the
organization of an “International Labor Congress.” At the same time
it suggested the following questions for consideration: Prohibition
of Sunday work; fixing of a minimum age for the employment of children
in factories, and a limitation of working-hours for young people;
prohibition of the employment of minors and women in peculiarly
unhealthy or dangerous industries; limitation of night-work; the
adoption of a settled plan for the attainment of these objects. The
second annual session of this conference was recently held at Berlin,
by the invitation of the Emperor, who recognized that he could no
longer depend on the army to repress industrial discontent. Should
these conferences succeed in ameliorating the condition of the laboring
classes throughout Europe, and thus lift from those countries the
darkest and most angry cloud that now hangs over them, it will be the
brightest jewel in the crown of Switzerland’s hegemony in the great
work of international unions.

It can no longer be denied that it is possible to unite the whole
globe in such organizations, now that international law, with its
hypothesis of the union of many states in one humanity, extends over
the greater part of the inhabited earth. There is a steadily-increasing
interdependence of the nations of the world, especially of those which
give themselves to commerce and manufactures, and alike of those
which need a foreign field for a share of their capital. These ties
unite them alike for good and evil, and render the prosperity of each
dependent on the equal prosperity of all the rest. When this great
truth is well understood, it may, perhaps, become the peacemaker of
the world. Nations have their defects and passions like individuals,
and well-established international laws, conventions, and unions
are necessary to protect the weak and helpless from the strong and
ambitious.




CHAPTER XXI.

SWITZERLAND AND THE EUROPEAN SITUATION.


Switzerland has no small influence on the affairs of Europe, as well
by its situation as by its warlike genius. There is much of history,
but still more political anomaly, written in the very conglomerate map
of Switzerland. It is a land of unfulfilled destiny. The eye traces
its great water-courses into the most important countries of civilized
Europe, and recognizes the lines down which potent influences, social
and political, are to descend. Its political boundaries do not coincide
with those of nature; they are erratic, the result of wars and
political vicissitudes. On the one hand, France shoots out spurs of her
territory into Switzerland, and Switzerland, on the other hand, by the
force of circumstances, has overlapped Italian ground, taking in Ticino
south of the main chain of the Alps, which is Italian in climate and
flora; a large part of the Grisons is east of the Rhine, and of the
ranges separating it from Tyrol; while Schaffhausen and a couple of
villages in the Canton of Basel are altogether on the north side of the
line, the German town of Constanz is to the south of the line. Again,
if a Swiss wishes to pass from the Rhine valley to Geneva by the south
bank of the lake, he must cross French territory in order to do so. The
southwest frontier of Switzerland stops at Geneva, instead of extending
to the Jura, which forms its natural frontier. Military writers have
pointed out that the easiest route for an investing force from Germany
would be through Switzerland; and similarly for a force from France,
over the Jura, by Zurich, to the Rhine at Schaffhausen. “That a power
which was master of Switzerland could debouch on the theatre of
operations of the Rhone, the Saône, Po, or Danube; from Geneva an army
could march on Lyons, from Basel it could gain the valley of Saône by
Belfort, from Constance the Danube could be reached; Italy could be
invaded, and the lines of defence of that country against France and
Austria turned.”[117]

This potential position of Switzerland, a prominent point of moral
and political contact between powerful and somewhat antagonistic
powers, on the one side confining the limits of the German empire, and
on the other setting bounds to the French republic, naturally gives
rise to many speculations. The gamut of these is frequently run by
the newspapers; Germany making overtures for a treaty undertaking to
protect Switzerland’s neutrality; France negotiating for the occupation
by Switzerland of the Chablais and Faucigny districts, in Upper Savoy,
in accordance with the treaties of 1815 and 1830, thus preventing the
intervention of Italy as against France; then the right of Switzerland
to occupy certain districts of Savoy, in case of war, is held by the
German authorities to have been settled by the Congress of Vienna and
needs no further discussion; on the other hand, it is alleged that this
right was subsequently denied by Napoleon III., after the annexation
of Savoy to France; and as a culmination, Germany makes a serious
proposition to Italy for the partition of Switzerland, but Italy
declines the offer, preferring to have a little neutral and friendly
republic than a great military empire as her neighbor; the proposition
is submitted to France in turn, and also declined, as the greater
portion of Switzerland being Teutonic in race and tongue, France
could get but a small fragment and Italy a still smaller. The theory
is also advanced of making Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg,
and Belgium into a sort of federated block of neutral territory, the
inviolability of which all the rest of Europe should solemnly pledge
itself to accept. Regardless of these diplomatic tergiversations
Switzerland continues to be governed according to the choice of its
own people, and not according to the _bon plaisir_ of foreign powers.
The sort of negative which the Swiss government practises, and which
is what the position of the country specially requires, is displayed
both in the theory and execution of the Swiss federal system, and by
a great prudence in foreign policy. Its policy since the beginning of
the sixteenth century has been neutrality. The object of the Congress
of Vienna in guaranteeing the neutrality of Switzerland was primarily
strategical; it was also felt to be essential that steps should be
taken to prevent any one power from gaining possession of the line of
the Alps upon the breaking out of a fresh war.[118] The appreciation
of this danger was strongly expressed by the First Consul of France,
in an address issued in 1803, wherein he announced: “I would have gone
to war on account of Switzerland; I would have sacrificed a hundred
thousand men, rather than allowed it to remain in the hands of the
parties who were at the head of the last insurrection; so great is the
influence of its geographical position upon France. The interests of
defence bind Switzerland to France; those of attack render it of value
to other powers.” Switzerland bears relations to the great powers of
contemporary civilization, in some respects, even more remarkable than
those which the little strip of soil along the Jordan, at the meeting
of the continents, bore to the civilizations of antiquity. Like that
of Palestine, its situation, while affording small temptation to
aggression upon its neighbors, is supremely advantageous for defence,
for isolation from foreign influence; and yet, at the same time, for
the exercise of effective influence outward upon the coterminous
nations. To these advantages it adds another, in its polyglot
facility of communication with the most important nations of Europe.
Preserving its ancient character, content within itself, constituting
a confederated republic, which, by its good order and industry,
morals and laws, rivals in age the oldest monarchy with its stability
of self-government,--the greatest of these monarchies cannot afford
to despise its friendship. Not only securing and protecting its own
liberty, but it has been the arbiter of the fate of other people. It
has given examples of those qualities by which men may be so ennobled
that they are respected even amid their comparative poverty and
weakness; heroes, though too few to be feared by the weak, they are too
brave to be insulted by the strong.

In Europe, powers of apparently inconsiderable greatness have usually
brought about its most decided changes, or at least have most
influenced its historical course. Thus did Venice in the times of the
Crusades, and Switzerland during the Burgundian and Italian wars; as
Holland at the commencement of the eighteenth century gave a new form
to Europe, so did Sweden predominate in the seventeenth century, and
in the earlier half of that age surpass France herself in splendor.
It seems to be a capital necessity of great states to have something
placed between them that may relieve the severity of their mutual
friction; an arm of the sea; an impassable mountain; a small neutral
state, one not strong enough to play a great part in foreign politics,
but, with a modest policy, absorbed in domestic affairs; any of these
may be of great importance to limit and moderate the dangerous currents
of great politics. This was illustrated by the action of Austria,
after the partition of Poland and the consequent juxtaposition of
Russia, offering to restore its part of Poland for the purpose of
reconstituting that kingdom. The present age in Europe differs entirely
from that of the Middle Ages. Then the general tendency was to small
states, now it is to large ones. Then there existed a number of petty
monarchies and republics; the unity of the Roman empire was ideal
rather than actual. The tendency to form larger states began with
England, and is seen on the continent after the latter part of the
fifteenth century, and has not yet reached its limits. Everywhere there
is a tendency to the formation of large and important states, speaking
for the most part one language throughout their whole territory. It
is promoted by the quickened impetus of trade and commerce, increased
military and financial resources, improved and extended communication,
and by the entire development of modern civilization. This progress
towards the establishment of extensive and consolidated nationalities
is conspicuously found in the present German empire. Though in no sense
a restoration of the Holy Roman Empire, it is a real restoration of the
ancient German kingdom, and the Kaiser fairly represents the German
kingship from which the thirteen ancient Cantons gradually split off.
Russia is practically the only Slavonic state; Italy comprises nearly
all the Italians, except a few resident upon the head and eastern side
of the Adriatic Gulf; France has by her losses in the Franco-Prussian
war become more French, since neither Alsace nor Lorraine is inhabited
by people of the Gallic race; Spain and Portugal comprise the entire
Spanish Peninsula; Austria is a great mongrel state and represents no
national aim, but is composed of fragments of various nationalities.
The national question in the British Islands is not settled, and may
end in separation or more probably in the formation of a federation.
The smaller semi-independent principalities of Servia, Roumania,
Bulgaria, East Roumelia are simply materials out of which a second
Slavonic state may at some time be formed, perhaps under the authority
of Russia. The natural fate of Holland is absorption into Germany;
of Belgium, absorption into France. Turkey--how this cumberer of
the earth can be disposed of without kindling a general European
conflagration is a question that puzzles the wisest statesman. This
unification might be made to play a beneficial part in checking war and
improving the European situation; but so far it has merely essayed a
science of combination, of application, and of deception, according to
times, places, and circumstances. In the process of absorption there
has not been shown much disposition to take questions of ethics into
consideration in dealing with weaker peoples; even self-interest seems
at times to be a less strong motive than the desire to annoy one’s
neighbors. Bentham somewhere proves that there is such a thing as
“disinterested malevolence;” and if it exists at all, it is certainly
to be discovered in the action of these great European powers. Many of
them present vicious systems of military and coercive governments; vast
empires resting upon bayonets and semi-bureaucracy, an anachronism and
an incubus upon the true development of national life. All these great
powers are monstrous outgrowths of warlike ambition and imperial pride
in different degrees and under different conditions. On nearly every
battle-field great questions of dynastic and national reconstruction
have hung in the balance; military operations have been the decisive
factors. Huge military systems are abnormal, the morbid results of the
spirit of war and domination, of national selfishness and revolutionary
violence. The game of kings has become the impact of armed peoples.
The Congress of Vienna settled the affairs of Europe upon a basis
which endured with but few changes for almost fifty years; the great
treaty of Berlin of 1878, in form an act of restitution as well as of
peace, has become as dead a letter as the treaty of Paris of 1856.
Principles of older date and less questionable validity than treaties
patched up with premature jubilation obtain; and the solemn irony of
Prince Talleyrand, that “non-intervention is a diplomatic term, which
signifies much the same as intervention,” has become axiomatic. It is
no exaggeration to speak of Europe as an armed camp, with the dogs
of war pulling heavily on their chains. Armies of men stand scowling
into one another’s eyes across a fanciful frontier, marked by a few
parti-colored posts. In spite of all European assurances of “cloudless
political horizons” and “luxuriant international olive-branches,”
the perfection of armaments and the augmentation of already enormous
armies go faithfully on. Every one who visits Europe must be amazed
at the military influence that everywhere dominates, especially on
the continent. “Above the roar of the city street sounds the sharp
drum-beat of the passing regiment; in the sweet rural districts the
village church-bell cannot drown the bugle peal from the fortress on
the hill. France sinks millions in frontier strongholds, Russia masses
troops in Poland and on the Pruth, Austria strengthens her fortresses
in Galicia, and Germany builds railways to the Rhine and bridges
to span its yellow flood.” There is no European peace, except that
peace described by Hosea Biglow, which was “druv in with bag’nets.”
Montesquieu, the upright magistrate, who, living under despotic rule,
nevertheless insisted that by the Constitution of France its king was
not absolute, sought in the records of history to discern the tendency
of each great form of government, and has left his testimony that
“_L’esprit de la monarchie est la guerre et l’agrandissement; l’esprit
de la république est la paix et la modération_” (“the spirit of
monarchy is war and aggrandizement; the spirit of a republic is peace
and moderation”).

An armed truce is preserved out of mutual terror; if tranquillity
exists, it is not the repose of reasonable, kindly powers, but the
crouching attitude of relentless rivals dreading the enemy whom they
hate, and afraid of the destructive weapons which support modern
warfare, making the “mowing down” no longer figurative, but horribly
literal. Sheer force holds a larger place than it has held in modern
times since the fall of Napoleon; and the will to take, without better
reason than the power to hold, is naked and undisguised. One of the
most melancholy forms which this aggression has taken, and seems
destined to occupy so much of the future energies of imperialism,
is the partition and exploitation of the vast African continent and
the defenceless islands of the Pacific. It is done in the name of
“civilization,” and called _l’occupation des territoires sans maître_.
In the Pacific Ocean the work has been nearly completed, Samoa and
Hawaii remaining as almost the last abodes of aboriginal sovereignty.
Colonial extension and annexation is a veritable European Pandora’s
box; war is constantly threatened for the sake of localities whose
very names were previously unknown, and whose possession would seem
of no practical importance. Since Dido tricked the Numidian king in
her survey and purchase of a site for Carthage,[119] the world has
been in constant trouble upon the subject of boundaries, and a very
large proportion of the wars between nations, like lawsuits between
individuals, have arisen over disputed boundary lines. The cry of
“fifty-four forty or fight,” the national watchword of the United
States in 1846, has found an echo in every age. Between England and
Russia smoulders the Central Asia and Turkish empire question; between
England and France the matter of Egyptian occupation; Italy and France
have their quarrel over Tunis and Tripoli, and the Mediterranean
generally. Then there is the crux of the Balkan peninsula, where
Austria and Russia glower at each other across the Carpathians; this
Eastern question is opened as often as the temple of Janus, and, like
that temple, its opening means war. So it goes; when pushed under
at St. Petersburg, alarm makes its appearance in Paris; and when
silenced on the Rhine, it causes itself to be heard among the Balkans.
Russia lowers across Europe from the east, patiently waiting, and not
fearing central European alliance, confident some day, by natural
expansion, of overshadowing all eastern Europe, and gathering at will
and in its own good time all the Slavonic people under its suzerain
guardianship. France casts a dark shadow from the west, while the
“_furor Teutonicus_” and the “_furie Française_” flourish perennially
in the blood-feud which has Alsace-Lorraine for its bitter badge.[120]
France looks with natural uneasiness at the iron circle in which
the unity of Germany and Italy is circumscribing her influence and
expansion. The tremendous struggle with Germany, with its crushing
defeat and the provinces torn away, left a wound that will not heal,
but with its gloomy memories and poignant regrets, with its latent but
unfailing suggestion of revenge, too frequently guides her policy.
While a united Germany made short work with the French emperor, it left
France exasperated, and probably in a less unsound condition than at
any previous moment since 1789.

Germany, with the huge mass of Russia on one side and the lithe
strength of France on the other, must sleep in armor; during any
respite from the partisans of _la revanche_ on the one frontier or a
murmur of Panslavism from Moscow, Germany confronts serious problems
with her congeries of states. It remains to be seen how Germany will
get on without the large, comprehensive, incomparable skill and the
mettle of unyielding determination with which the Iron Chancellor
laid all international questions under tribute to the _Vaterland_.
This continental entanglement points to England as holding the
balance of power; jealous of Russia’s encroachments in the east,
jealous of Austria, jealous of the power of Germany, worried with a
certain uneasiness that “the circles of the morning drum-beat” may be
broken, England finds in this situation much food for contemplation
and conjecture. All European movements, especially on the part of the
Great Powers,[121] profess to have no other object than to preserve
their “political equilibrium” or the “balance of power.” Excepting the
wars of religion, most European wars of the last three centuries have
sought justification in this pretext, which is but another phase of the
boundary question. Up to a very recent date the English Parliamentary
grants for supplies needed to support the army were expressly recited
to be made for the purpose “of preserving the balance of power in
Europe.” The “European Concert,” with its brood of auxiliaries, in the
_modus vivendi_, _status quo_, and _entente cordiale_, interlarded with
numerous _pourparlers_, separating _re infecta_, is not the harmonious
institution its musical title would indicate; but disagreements are
constantly arising as to who shall be _chef de musique_ and who shall
play second fiddle. It is a mere decorous synonyme for “European
discord.” When not having in view a general scheme of spoliation,
it is looking to the carving out the shape, the conditions, and the
destinies of the remaining small states, with a cynical indifference
as to the weal or wish of the populations. European powers are simply
racing in the absurd and ruinous rivalry for the mightiest battalions
and the heaviest budgets. Under the plea of _si vis pacem para bellum_
each one is striving to steal a march upon its neighbors, absolutely
blind to the obvious fact that with each fraction of accelerated speed
in one all the rest perforce quicken their pace. The danger of this
much misused axiom, which advises the securing of peace by preparing
for war, brings a crushing burden of apprehension; it involves conduct
that betrays designs of future hostility, and if it does not excite
violence, always generates malignity with a sly reciprocation of
indirect injuries without the bravery of war or the security of peace.
From such a condition some chance tide rather than any chosen course
may any day cause a rupture. Nations drift into war, and peace is
rarely disturbed by serious matters. The commercial necessities of
Europe cannot much longer bear the severe strain of this unnaturally
swollen and crushing militarism, a conscription so ruthless which
demands one inhabitant out of every hundred and takes one producer
out of every twenty, transferring him from the ranks of tax-payers to
the ranks of tax-consumers. This strain must be lessened or it will
infallibly snap; the people are merely the soldiers of an army, they
are drilled rather than governed; the workman is getting tired of going
to his labors carrying a soldier upon his back; the masses are coming
to regard appeals to their patriotism as full of bitter mockery, being
mere appeals to kill their neighbors or distant races that they and
their children may be more permanently enslaved at home. A universal
revolt is inevitable against exactions so intolerable, idiotic, and
inhuman. If those alone who “sowed the wind did reap the whirlwind”
it would be well, but the mischief is that the madness of ambition
and the schemes of diplomacy find their victims principally among
the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for
every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp, like the torrent
which originates, indeed, in the mountain, but commits its devastation
in the vale. If there is no check on this increasing demand upon
the lives and property of the masses, “this devouring mischief of
militarism which is consuming the vitals of Europe,” the mightiest
potentate may find that he has to face a combination of the toiling
and suffering classes against which all his weapons will be futile.
“Great,” says Carlyle, “is the combined voice of men, the utterance
of their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts; it is the
greatest a man encounters among the sounds and shadows which make up
this world of time.” There is no constitution and no despotism which
could stand against it for a moment. The modern emperor is only an
apparition in comparison with the imperial muscle and bone of his
ancient prototype; no longer he is regarded as the “deputy elect of
the Lord,” whom the “breath of worldly men cannot depose.” A revolt,
political in its aims but economic in its origin, will take place; an
economic revolt tending to change the economical conditions of the
masses and a political revolt tending to modify the very essence of the
political organization, demanding that these vast armies be disbanded,
the swords turned into ploughshares, and the victory of the industrial
over the military type of civilization be established. A revolution
toward the final abolition of feudalism with its arbitrary privileges
for the few and its excessive burdens for the many, toward the fuller
participation of the people in the work of government and their more
efficient protection in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor.
Otherwise the dilemma is a sad one,--to remain a colossal arsenal or
become a wild field of devastation; war would mean destruction of human
life and of the elements of national prosperity beyond precedent.
Whether these immense armaments will be peacefully discontinued or war
ensue as the only solution, and if so, what will be its effect on the
map of Europe, are all momentous questions beyond the ken of man. The
powers leagued together in the Triple Alliance may, if favored by the
wealth and maritime power of England, serve as a potent guarantee for
the maintenance of peace. This European drama is unfolding its actions
slowly, so that no one can tell what it will bring forth; constantly
new novelties are being introduced upon the stage with an increasing
number of hints of stranger things to come. The prominent persons
in the play, though preserving a romantic air of mystery, manage
constantly to throw off a multiform mass of suggestions, speculations,
and visions. What is developing astonishes the mind while it fascinates
the imagination, for it seems to be nothing less vast and portentous
than the passing away of the whole existing order of things almost
without notice, certainly without comprehension. What proportions this
gigantic, this politico-social movement will assume, how much of what
is old it will leave standing, what the new order will be like, these
are questions which Europe’s brain has not yet fairly grasped, much
less tried to answer.

There is a strong continental opinion that in the event of war
Switzerland can hardly hope to successfully maintain the position
assumed by it in 1870; that it occupies too small a space in the great
chart of European political and military calculations to have much
weight attached to its views. With less confidence in treaty guarantees
than in the maxim of Cromwell, whose Ironsides were taught to “put
their trust in God and keep their powder dry,” Switzerland will heed
the advice given in the reply of the German chancellor, when asked
in 1870 to what extent Swiss neutrality would be observed, said, “to
the extent to which you yourselves respect the device of the Scottish
Order of the Thistle, ‘_nemo me impune lacessit_.’” Switzerland can no
longer rely upon its mountain wall, which for so many ages, combined
with other geographical advantages, formed a safe breastwork against
the invader. Nature herself seemed to have thrown her arms around
Helvetia to protect her from the invader; and by encompassing her
with inaccessible mountains, tremendous precipices, and stupendous
masses of eternal ice, to make her, as Frederick the Great of Prussia
described the lords of Savoy, “kings by virtue of their locality.” The
craggy escarpments, bastioned with horrid precipices, parapeted and
battlemented with eternal snow, were the ramparts of the cradle of her
liberty; they played a great part:

  “That like giants stand
  To sentinel enchanted land.”

Then Switzerland was self-contained, and enemies could not get at it.
It could say with the Psalmist, “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills,
from whence cometh my help.” “We did not fear,” said the shepherds
of Uri, “the armies of France; we are _four hundred_ strong, and if
that is not sufficient, _four hundred_ more in our valley are ready
to march to the defence of the country.” In the same spirit wrote the
Council of Bern, “A handful of Swiss is a match for an army; on our
own soil, with our mountains behind us, we can defy the world.” The
Helvetic Confederacy made the greatest and most powerful nations of
Europe tremble in the fifteenth century; but Switzerland is no longer
defended by natural frontiers; its two great cities, that of Geneva on
the one side, and Basel upon the other, lie open to the invader, and
the occupation of two or three points upon its railway system (which
but for its army could be easily reached) would paralyze its defence;
the strength with which nature had endowed Switzerland under the old
condition of things has been wellnigh cancelled by the grand appliances
of modern science, wealth, and organization. Modern Switzerland is
now no stronger than any other part of Europe. Defence no longer can
be intrusted to natural ramparts, the Alps, and mountaineers, led by
the sound of the horn, and armed with the bow of Tell. The strength
of Switzerland is exactly proportioned to its armed force; numerical
strength preponderates in military fields, and victory attends the
largest army. This implies no impeachment of Swiss courage and
patriotism; that love of country, wrought into a great and noble
sentiment, which summons to its aid every better portion of human
excellence; that exalted power which gives vigor and efficacy to our
exertions as citizens, which strengthens our constancy and animates
our valor, which heightens our contempt of danger and inflames our
impatience of oppression. There is no safer criterion of the virtue and
happiness of a people than the height to which their attachment for
their country is raised, and the difficulties which they are prepared
to encounter in rescuing it from danger or exalting it to glory. As
patriotism is always more intense in small states, where union for the
purposes of self-preservation is more indispensably necessary, so the
same institutions which have engaged the affections of the Swiss will
likely inspire them with the courage and wisdom requisite for their
defence. Switzerland will be prepared in event of a rearrangement of
the map of Europe, by which it is likely to be effected, to demand a
voice in the general summing up. Even to the diplomatist, who, wanting
to reach an understanding, must have something behind it to command
attention and respect, and exclaims, “Don’t trouble me with your
arguments, tell me with what force you will back them,” Switzerland
is not without an answer. The republic is not unprepared for war, as
already shown in the chapter on the army; every man in shop and field
would start into a soldier at the bugle’s call; a soldier armed,
equipped, and ready for the march. Great sacrifices are willingly made
in order to keep on foot an admirable democratic army. All the adjuncts
for making this army a mobile factor in the field are under the Swiss
system complete and in thorough working order. It could put into the
field and maintain effectively 200,000 men, to prove that Switzerland
was not a “mere geographical expression,” but a very formidable entity.
The Swiss General Dufour, in a letter addressed to the French minister
of war, just before the war broke out in 1870, after giving the size
of the Swiss army, added: “Beyond all these defences we can count upon
the national spirit in the heart of every citizen; a resolution to
protect our independence and neutrality, let the storm break on us from
whatever side it may.” What 200,000 brave Swiss sharpshooters might do
defending their liberty in those mountain fastnesses no European army
would care to learn by close experience. Their stout hearts and hardy
arms will be ever ready, as in preceding ages, to vindicate against
countless hosts their personal liberty and the independence of their
country.

The Swiss government is not unaware that its neutrality may at any
time be endangered; that a small state is always in danger when it
stands in the way of the arms or the ambition or the greed of the
great ones, that if its territory offers a convenient route for the
rival armies, they would not hesitate to brush away its neutrality, in
spite of all guarantees, as the Allies did in 1814. Accordingly for
years past the government has been quietly but steadily preparing to
defend the country in such an event. The plan, so far, consists in the
fortifications of the summit of St. Gothard; the plateau of Andermatt
commands not only the base of the St. Gothard, but the valleys, and
whoever is able to hold it can prevent any passage across Switzerland
from south to north. Since 1885 nearly 10,000,000 francs have been
spent on the strengthening of this commanding position; forts have
been placed so as to confront each of the four roads by which alone
the stronghold can be passed, and it is thought that a large force
of troops make it convenient to be cantoned in the vicinity, ready
to make the most of the facilities for repelling intrusion when the
occasion requires. They certainly could offer stubborn resistance to
any junction being effected between portions of the German and Italian
armies. The military Alpine roads, Furka, Ober-Alp, and Axenstrasse,
are all kept in good condition by liberal appropriations.

Ever since 1830, when the religious refugees from France, England,
and Flanders sought shelter there, and who, Sismondi relates, were
wont to fall down on their knees and bless God when they came in sight
of the Swiss mountains, the _right of asylum_ has been a difficult
question for Switzerland, occasioning constant diplomatic collision.
In 1838 the demand of the French government for the expulsion of Louis
Napoleon, which was declined by Switzerland, almost led to war, and
it was probably only avoided by his voluntary departure. Switzerland
has never flinched from this sacred and most embarrassing duty of
hospitality to the oppressed. The influx of political fugitives from
the despotic countries of Europe, seeking shelter from their pursuers,
has involved it in many a bitter discussion with powerful neighbors,
but it has stood firm in maintaining the sanctity of its principles and
soil, in the face of their overwhelming force and domineering spirit.
A determined rejection of foreign interference in its domestic affairs
has been maintained, and when in 1847 the blockade or cordon was
established, all access to the rebel district was forbidden to foreign
agents. Under the constitution the federal authorities have the right
to expel from Swiss territory any foreigners whose presence endangers
the internal or external security of the Confederation. An asylum is
offered to the members of all parties suffering political persecution,
as long as they show themselves worthy of such consideration by
peaceful conduct. The republic, however, grants them no asylum, if,
while on its territory, they continue their intrigues and attacks on
the existence and security of other states. It preserves a faithful
regard for its international obligations, and, as an evidence of its
firm determination to fulfil them, keeps a federal official, known as
the _Procurator General_, whose duty it is to prosecute any foreigners,
socialists, nihilists, and _agents provocateurs_, and other dangerous
types, who abuse the hospitality of the country for the shelter and
promotion of schemes endangering either its international peace or
internal security. In July, 1890, Germany gave notice to Switzerland
that the treaty between the two countries, regulating the “settlement
of foreigners,” would not be renewed at its expiration, which occurs
at the end of 1891. This question of asylum involves in its handling
the utmost skill and judgment; anything like bravado or anything
like servility would be equally out of place. A dignified and wise
discretion is necessary to enable Switzerland to continue to offer
a safe refuge to the proscribed victims of the endless political
revolutions and counter-revolutions of the surrounding nations, but
it is believed, complicated as it is with delicate entanglements of
diplomatic relations, and suspicions of countenancing schemes of
anarchy, it will continue to meet every exigency of the question with
an honest and fearless policy.

If the acquisition of power has a certain tendency to weaken the ties
of federal union, we should expect that a Confederacy, deprived by
natural as well as adventitious circumstances of all pretension to
political power, would for that reason possess in a superior degree the
merit of stability. Everything that sets in motion the springs of the
human heart, engages the Swiss to the protection of their inestimable
privileges. Bold and intrepid; a frame fitted to endure toil; a soul
capable of despising danger; an enthusiastic love of freedom; an
abhorrence of the very name or emblem of royalty illustrated in ages of
heroic and martial exploits, that with steadfast and daring enterprise
built up a nation and a state; with these qualities they will, if the
necessity comes, bear in mind the warning of their own Rousseau, “Ye
free nations, remember this maxim, freedom may be acquired, but it
cannot be recovered.” In the moment of peril the Swiss will be moved
by the spirit of their brave old Landammann, who answered the Duke of
Burgundy: “Know that you may, if it be God’s will, gain our barren and
rugged mountains; but, like our ancestors of old, we will seek refuge
in wilder and more distant solitudes, and when we have resisted to the
last, we will starve in the icy wastes of the glaciers; men, women, and
children, we will be frozen into annihilation together, ere our free
Switzer will acknowledge a foreign master.”

There may be a deeper danger awaiting Switzerland, to which no
spirit, however vigorous and resolute, can be commensurate--a danger
from within and not from without. The nation which, by the adverse
circumstances of numerical inferiority, poverty of means, or failure
of enterprise, cannot sustain its own citizens in the acquisition of a
just renown and material welfare, is deficient in one of the first and
most indispensable elements of strength. A small state is apt to waste
its strength in acts too insignificant for general interest, frittering
away its mental riches, no less than its treasure and blood, in
supporting interests that fail to enlist the sympathies of any beyond
the pale of its own borders; glory and strength, like riches, finding
themselves, and being most apt to be found, where their fruits have
already accumulated. If from any source evil should come to this little
republic, in the patriotic words of its latest historian, “Generations
will point to the spot where it arose and flourished, and will say,
Here once lived a free, self-governing people, a small but active
republic, with remarkable institutions, with a famous and memorable
history.”


POPULATION AND SOIL, CENSUS, 1888.

  +------+--------------+----------+---------+-----------+-------------+
  |Order |   CANTONS    |Population| Total   |           |             |
  |      |              |          |   area  | Productive| Unproductive|
  +------+--------------+----------+---------+-----------+-------------+
  |      |              |          |   [*]   |    [*]    |      [*]    |
  |   1  |Zurich        |  339,014 | 1,724.7 |   1,616   |      108.7  |
  |   2  |Bern          |  539,305 | 6,889   |   5,385.7 |    1,503.3  |
  |   3  |Luzern        |  135,780 | 1,500.8 |   1,369   |      131.8  |
  |   4  |Uri           |   17,284 | 1,076   |     477.7 |      598.3  |
  |   5  |Schwyz        |   50,396 |   908.5 |     660.2 |      248.3  |
  |   6  |Unterwalden   |          |         |           |             |
  |      | Obwald       |   15,032 |   474.8 |     399.4 |       75.4  |
  |      | Nidwald      |   12,524 |   290.5 |     217.9 |       72.6  |
  |   7  |Glarus        |   33,800 |   691.2 |     448.6 |      242.6  |
  |   8  |Zug           |   23,120 |   239.2 |     194.3 |       44.9  |
  |   9  |Freiburg      |  119,562 | 1,669   |   1,469.6 |      199.4  |
  |  10  |Solothurn     |   85,720 |   783.6 |     717.8 |       65.8  |
  |  11  |Basel         |          |         |           |             |
  |      | Stadt        |   74,247 |    35.8 |      30.4 |        5.4  |
  |      | Landschaft   |   62,133 |   421.6 |     405.6 |       16    |
  |  12  |Schaffhausen  |   37,876 |   294.2 |     281   |       13.2  |
  |  13  |Appenzell     |          |         |           |             |
  |      | Ausser-Rhoden|   54,200 |   260.6 |     253.6 |        7    |
  |      | Inner-Rhoden |   12,906 |   159   |     144.4 |       14.6  |
  |  14  |St. Gallen    |  229,441 | 2,019   |   1,713.5 |      305.5  |
  |  15  |Grisons       |   96,291 | 7,184.8 |   3,851.6 |    3,333.2  |
  |  16  |Aargau        |  193,834 | 1,404   |   1,341.7 |       62.3  |
  |  17  |Thurgau       |  105,091 |   988   |     835.6 |      152.4  |
  |  18  |Ticino        |  127,148 | 2,818.4 |   1,880   |      938.4  |
  |  19  |Vaud          |  251,296 | 3,222.8 |   2,728.8 |      494    |
  |  20  |Valais        |  101,837 | 5,247.1 |   2,409.9 |    2,837.2  |
  |  21  |Neuchâtel     |  109,037 |   807.8 |     572.3 |      235.5  |
  |  22  |Genève        |  106,738 |   279.4 |     232.9 |       46.5  |
  +------+--------------+----------+---------+-----------+-------------+
  |      |  Total       |2,933,612 |41,389.8 |  29,637.5 |   11,752.3  |
  +------+--------------+----------+---------+-----------+-------------+

[*] Square kilometres.




MONEY, WEIGHTS, MEASURES.

  Franc                         Cents, 19.3.
  One hundred centimes          One franc.
  Metre, equal to               1.094 yards.
  Kilometre, equal to           .621 mile.
  Metric quintal, or metre
     centner, equal to          100 kilogrammes, or 2
                                  cwt. nearly (1 cwt.
                                  3 qrs. 24½ ƚbs.).
  Square kilometre, equal to    .386 square mile.
  Hectare, equal to             2½ acres nearly (2 acres,
                                  1 rood, 35½ poles).
  Centner, equal to about       110¼ ƚbs.
  Cubic metre, equal to         1.308 cubic yards.
  Litre, equal to               .88 quart.
  Hectolitre, equal to          22 gallons.


CENSUS OF 1888.

AREA--PRODUCTIVE AND UNPRODUCTIVE LAND.

_Productive Land._

  Forest                                     7,714.2 square kilometres.
  Vineyards                                    305     ”       ”
  Cultivated                                21,618.3   ”       ”
                                            --------
      Total                                 29,637.5   ”       ”

_Unproductive Land._

  Glaciers                                   1,838.8 square kilometres.
  Lakes                                      1,386.1    ”       ”
  Cities, villages, and outer buildings        161.8    ”       ”
  Area of railroads, turnpikes, etc.,   }
    rivers and rocky wastes             }    8,365.6    ”       ”
                                            --------
      Total                                 11,752.3    ”       ”

_Population as to Confessions._

  Protestants         1,724,869
  Catholics           1,189,662
  Jews                    8,384
  Others                 10,697

_As to Languages._

  German              2,092,479
  French                637,710
  Italian               156,482
  Others                  8,565


ORDER AND DATES OF THE ENTRY OF THE TWENTY-TWO CANTONS INTO THE
CONFEDERATION.

  Order of
   entry.  French name.           German name.           Year.
   1       Zurich                 Zürich                 1351.
   2       Berne                  Bern                   1353.
   3       Lucerne                Luzern                 1332.
   4       Uri                    Uri                    1291.
   5       Schwytz                Schwyz                 1291.
   6       Unterwalden            Unterwalden            1291.
             Le haut                Obwald
             Le bas                 Nidwald
   7       Glaris                 Glarus                 1352.
   8       Zoug                   Zug                    1352.
   9       Fribourg               Freiburg               1481.
  10       Soleure                Solothurn              1481.
  11       Bâle                   Basel                  1501.
             Ville                  Stadt.
             Campagne               Landschaft.
  12       Schaffhouse            Schaffhausen           1501.
  13       Appenzell              Appenzell              1573.
             Rhodes-Extérieures     Ausser-Rhoden.
             Rhodes-Intérieures     Inner-Rhoden.
  14       St. Gall               St. Gallen             1803.
  15       Grisons                Graubünden             1803.
  16       Argovie                Aargau                 1803.
  17       Thurgovie              Thurgau                1803.
  18       Tessin (It. Ticino)    Tessin                 1803.
  19       Vaud                   Waadt                  1803.
  20       Valais                 Wallis                 1814.
  21       Neuchâtel              Neuenburg              1814.
  22       Genève                 Genf                   1814.




APPENDIX.

COPY OF THE LATIN “PACT OF 1291” IN THE ARCHIVES OF SCHWYZ.


In nomine domini Amen. Honestati consulitur, et vtilitati publice
prouidetur, dum pacta, quietis et pacis statu debito solidantur.
Novereint igitur vniversi, quod homines vallis Vranie, vniversitasque
/ vallis de Switz, ac conmunitas hominum intramontanorum vallis
inferioris, maliciam temporis attendentes, ut se, et sua magis
defendere valeant, et in statu debito melius consevare, fide / bona
promiserunt, inuicem sibi assistere, auxilio, consilio, quolibet ac
fauore personis et rebus, infra valles et extra, toto posse, toto
nisv, contra omnes ac singulos, qui eis vel alicui de ipsis, aliquam /
intulerint violenciam, molestiam, aut iniuriam, in personis et rebus
malum quodlibet machinando, ac in omnem eventum quelibet vniuersitas,
promisit alteri accurrere, cum neccesse fuerit ad succurrendum. / et
in expensis propriis, prout opus fuerit, contra inpetus malignorum
resistere, iniurias vindicare prestito super hiis corporaliter
inuramento, absque dolo servandis, antequam confederationis forman
iuramento vallatam, presentibus innovando, / Ita tamen quod quilibet
homo iuxta sui nominis conditionem domino suo conuenienter subesse
teneatur et seruire. Conmuni etiam consilio, et fauore vnamimi
promisimus, statuimus, ac ordinauimus, vt in vallibus prenotatis,
nullum / iudicem, qui ipsum officium aliquo precio, vel peccunia,
aliqualiter conparauerit, vel qui noster incola vel provincialis non
fuerit aliquatenus accipiamus, vel acceptemus.

Si uero dissensio suborta fuerit, inter aliquos conspiratos,
prudencio-- / res de conspiratis accedere debent, ad sopiendam
discordiam inter partes, prout ipsis videbitur expedire. et que pars
illam respuerit ordinationem, alii contrarii deberent fore conspirati.
Super omnia autem, inter ipsos extitit / statutum, ut qui alium
fraudulenter, et sine culpa tracidauerit, si deprehensus fuerit uitam
ammittat, nisi suam de dicto maleficio valeat ostendere innocenciam,
suis nefandis culpis exigentibus. et si / forsan discesserit nunquam
remeare debet. Receptatores et defensores prefati malefactoris, a
vallibus segregandi sunt, donec a coniuratis prouide reuocentur.
Si quis uero quemquam de conspiratis, die sev / nocte silentio,
fraudulenter per incendium uastauerit, is numquam haberi debet pro
conprouinciali. Et si quis dictum malefactorem fovet et defendit,
infra valles, satisfactionem prestare debet dampnificato. Ad / hec
si quis de coniuratis alium rebus spoliauerit, vel dampnificauerit
qualitercumque, si res nocentis infra valles possunt reperiri, servari
debent, ad procurandum secundum iusticiam lesis satisfactionem. Insuper
nullus capere / debet pignus alterius nisi sit manifeste debitor, vel
fideiussor, et hoc tantum fieri debet de licencia iudicis speciali.
Preter hec quilibet obedire debet suo iudici, et ipsum si neccesse
fuerit iudicem ostendere infra / sub quo parere potius debeat iuri. Et
si quis iudicio rebellis extiterit, ac de ipsius pertinasia quis de
conspiratis dampnificatus fuerit, predictum contumacem ad prestandam
satisfactionem, iurati conpellere tenentur / uniuersi. Si uero guerra
vel discordia inter aliquos de conspiratis suborta fuerit, si pars
vna litigantium, iusticie vel satisfactionis non curat recipere
complementum, reliquam defendere tenentur coniurati. Supra / scriptis
statutis, pro conmuni vtilitate, salubriter ordinatis, concedente
domino, in perpetuum duratis. In cuius facti euidentiam presens
instrumentum, ad petionem predictorum confectum, Sigiliorum prefatarum
/ trium vniuersitatum et vallium est munimine roboratum. Actum Anno
domini. M.CC.LXXXX. primo. Incipiente mense Au-gu-sto.


TRANSLATION.

IN THE NAME OF THE LORD--AMEN!

Virtue is promoted and utility provided for by the state so long as
covenants are firmly established with a proper basis of quiet and
peace, therefore, let all men know that the valley of Uri and the
entire district of the valley of Schwyz and the community of the
intramontane people of the lower valley, while regarding the evil
character of the times, with the view of being able more efficiently
to protect themselves and their interests, and better to preserve them
in their proper condition, have promised in good faith mutually to
stand by one another with their help, advice, and undivided support,
in their persons and property, within and without the valleys, with
their entire force and united effort against all men and singular
who shall inflict upon them or upon any one of them any violence,
molestation or injury in plotting any evil against their persons and
property, and every district has promised to another in every event to
make haste whenever it shall be necessary to render it help. They also
(have promised) at their individual expense to resist, as it shall be
necessary, the attacks of the evil-intending, to avenge wrongs, having
taken their oath corporal touching the faithful preservation of these
presents from change before the ratification by oath of the instrument
of Confederation. So, however, that any and every person is to be held
to be subject to and to serve his Lord exactly according to the terms
of his obligation. We also have promised, decided, _and more_, ordained
by common resolve and unanimous assent that we will not, to any extent,
accept or acknowledge any judge who shall secure the office itself at
some price, or by money, by any other device, or who shall not be one
of our inhabitants or a provincial.

But if a disagreement shall arise among any of the Confederates, the
more discreet of them ought to come forward to allay the variance among
the parties just as it shall appear to them to be expedient, and the
party which shall reject the settlement _decided upon_, it were proper
for the other Confederates to be their adversaries.

Moreover, above all things, it has been ordained among them that he who
shall wrongfully and without provocation murder another, if he shall
be arrested, shall lose his life, as his heinous wrong-doing demands,
unless he shall be able to show his innocence touching the alleged
crime, and if perchance he shall leave the country, he must never
return, the harborers and defenders of the aforesaid malefactor are to
be cut off from the valleys until they be recalled with due foresight
by the Confederates. But if any one shall in the daytime or in the
silence of night maliciously injure any one of the Confederates by
burning, he ought never to be regarded as a fellow-provincial. And if
any one harbors and defends the alleged evil-doer within the valleys,
he ought to render satisfaction to the person who has sustained the
loss. In addition, if any one of the Confederates shall rob another of
his property or otherwise inflict loss upon him, if the property of the
offending party can be found within the valleys, it ought to be held
for procuring satisfaction for the injured according to justice.

Moreover no one ought to take the pledge of a second unless this one
be clearly a debtor or security, and this ought to be done only in
accordance with a special license of a judge. Furthermore, any and
every one ought to obey his judge, and to indicate the very judge, if
it shall be necessary, under whom he by choice assumes the obligation
to obey the law. And if any one shall show himself defiant of the
decision of a judge, and in consequence of his perverseness any of the
Confederates shall be damaged, all who are under oath are held to force
the aforesaid obstinate one to render satisfaction. But in case war
or violent division shall arise among any of the Confederates, if one
party of the disputants is not disposed to receive the award of justice
or satisfaction, the Confederates are held to defend the remaining
party.

The statutes above written are wholesomely ordained in behalf of the
public advantage with an unlimited duration, the Lord consenting
thereto. As an evidence of this act the present instrument, made
according to the petition of the aforesaid persons, is confirmed by the
authority of the seals of the aforementioned districts and valleys.
Done in the year of the Lord 1291, in the beginning of the month of
August.

       *       *       *       *       *

The above translation was kindly made by Professor W. E. Peters, of the
University of Virginia, and in transmitting it he says: “I send you a
literal rendering of the Pact, the original is exceedingly rough and
incorrect according to classical standards. I think, however, the sense
is given. I render _vniversitas_ as district, and Commune might be
embraced in brackets; I would render it _Canton_, but the Swiss Cantons
were not then formed, and the term Commune hardly expresses the sense,
as it is French. I have had in some cases to force translation where
the Latin is absolutely corrupt and wrong. I have aimed to make the
translation, as you desired, strictly according to the Latin, and not
according to what was permissible with the Latin and its collocation.”

The Honorable John D. Washburn, United States Minister at Bern, in an
article contributed to the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester,
Mass., April, 1890, on the “Foundation of the Swiss Republic,”
referring to the Pact of 1291, says: “The foundation stone on which
it is generally understood that the whole superstructure [of the
Swiss Republic] rests is known as the Pact--Letter of Alliance,
_Bundesbrief_--of 1291. This is not a myth, but, apart, perhaps, from
absolute exactness of date and some extraneous circumstances alleged
to attend it, a well-established record of history. This instrument
well repays a careful study, not only as a wonderfully bold declaration
of modified independence at a very early day, but as especially
interesting to the American student for the remarkable parallels of
thought in the minds of these ancient men, and in the minds of those
who nearly five hundred years later made the preliminary declarations
of American Independence.”




INDEX.


  A.

  Aar, water system of the, 415.

  Aarau, peace of, 14.

  Aargau admitted, 16.
    conquest of, 13.

  Academy, military, 238.

  Act of mediation, 39.

  Administrative law, 90.

  Agricultural schools, 289.

  Agriculture, 290, 306.

  Alliance, Holy, Switzerland in the, 18.
    Letter of, 473, 477.

  Allmend, 181.
    future of, 183.

  Alpenglühen, 426.

  Alpenstocks, 375.

  Alphorn, 340.

  Alpine flowers, 371.
    hay-making, 326.

  Alps, 354.

  Alsace-Lorraine, 458.

  Altdorf, folkmote in, 155.

  Amendments, constitutional, 50, 51.

  American and Swiss constitutions compared, 54, 56, 59, 63.

  American elections compared with Swiss, 82.

  Appeals to federal tribunal, 109.

  Appellate courts, 136.
    criminal, 112.

  Appendix, 473.

  Appenzell admitted, 14.
    division of, 141.
    Inner, councils in, 159.
    Outer, folkmote in, 151.

  Arbitration, intercantonal, 104.
    international, 445.

  Armaments, European, 456.

  Army, active, 237.
    federal, 233.
    strength of, 239.

  Assembly, federal, 42, 65.
    local, 158.
    powers of, 71.

  Asylum, right of, 466.

  Ausser-Rhoden folkmote, 151.

  Authorities, federal, 49.

  Autonomy, cantonal, 146.
    communal, 176, 186.

  Avalanches, 366.


  B.

  Banquet, communal, 183.

  Basel admitted, 14.
    division of, 141.
    inheritance of property in, 218.

  Battle of Marignano, 14.
    of Morat, 13.
    of Morgarten, 11.
    of Sempach, 13.

  Beef, dried, 345.

  Bern, 411.
    aristocracy of, 423.
    codes in, 216.
    joins the league, 13.
    life in, 423.
    name of, 413.
    places of interest in, 420.
    surroundings of, 425.

  Bills of rights, 57.

  Bise, 23.

  Boundaries, 20.

  Breeds of cattle, 311.

  Brunnen, league of, 11.

  Bundesbrief, 473, 477.

  Bundesgericht, 104.
    See _Federal Tribunal_.

  Bundespräsident, 88, 97.

  Bundesrath, 85.
    See _Federal Council_.

  Bundesstaat defined, 36.
    established, 42.

  Bundesversammlung, 42, 65.

  Bürgergemeinde, 180.


  C.

  Cæsar and the Helvetians, 9.

  Calvin, character of, 30.

  Calvinism in Geneva, 29.

  Cantonal affairs, federal intervention in, 129.
    citizenship, 199.
    coinage, 123.
    conservatism, 160, 164.
    constitutions, 134, 146.
    courts, 136.
    customs, 160, 164.
    differences, 104.
    individuality, 144.
    institutions, 146.
    judges, 136.
    land laws, 215.
    officials, 141.
    revenues, 141.
    rights, 60, 146.
    sovereignty, 45, 130, 147.
    standards, 143.

  Cantons and half-cantons, 141.
    area and population of, 469.
    Catholic, 18, 29.
    chief magistracy of, 133.
    coercion of, 90.
    eight old, 13.
    elections in, 131.
    entry of, into confederation, 471.
    forest, 12, 13.
    history of, 123.
    legislation in, 131.
    present status of, 125.
    Protestant, 29.
    relations of, to the communes, 188.
    representation in, 131.
    sovereignty of, 45, 130, 147.
    status of, 38.

  Capital punishment, 48, 51, 139.

  Cassation, courts of, 136.
    tribunal of, 112.

  Cataracts, 370.

  Catholic cantons, 18, 29.

  Celtic ancestry, 9.

  Census of 1888, 24, 466.

  Cereals, 306.

  Chalets, 329, 332.

  Chamber, criminal, 112.
    of accusation, 112.

  Chamois, 337.

  Chancellery, federal, 49.

  Character of the peasants, 351.

  Chaux-de-Fonds, altitude of, 25.

  Cheese, 315.

  Citizenship, 47.
    acquirement of, 178, 200.
    American, 193.
    ancient Swiss, 191.
    cantonal, 199.
    communal, 177, 187, 193.
    defined, 192, 195.
    exit from, 203.
    history of, 191.
    instruction in its duties, 189.
    nature of, 202.
    renunciation of, 204.
    rights and duties of, 127, 134.
    state, defined, 196.
    Swiss, 198.

  Climate, 21.

  Codes, cantonal, 215.

  Coercion of cantons, 90.

  Coinage, old cantonal, 123.

  Colonial extension, 457.

  Commerce, 299.

  Commercial courts, 136.
    restrictions, 46.

  Common lands, 181.

  Communal assembly, 186.
    citizenship, 177, 187, 193.
    membership, 177.
      by purchase, 178.
    officers, 186.
    paupers, 188.
    relations to the cantons, 188.
    rights, 177.
    schools, 266.

  Commune defined, 174, 176.
    d’origine, 177.
    history of, 175.
    origin of, 189.
    powers of, 186.

  Communes and communities, 135.
    area of, 180.
    des bourgeois, 180.
    des habitants, 180.
    double, 180.
    local, 150.
    national, 150.
    population of, 180.
    property of, 181, 183.

  Composite state, 42.

  Concert, European, 456.

  Confederation and federation, 37.
    Helvetic, 40.
    powers of, 45.
    reform of, 43.

  Congress of Vienna, 40.

  Conservatism, cantonal, 160, 164.
    in government, 62.

  Conservative party, 83.

  Constitution, amendments of, 50, 51.
    compared with that of the United States, 54, 56, 59, 63.
    nature of, 61.
    of 1874, 43.
    Swiss, 34.
    text of, 44.

  Constitutions, cantonal, 131, 134, 146.

  Convention of 1848, 42.

  Convention of Geneva, 433.

  Copyright, international, 439.

  Corruption, absence of, 81.

  Costumes, 349.

  Council, blood, 159.
    communal, 186.
    federal, 76, 85. See _Federal Council_.
    great, 158, 159.
    in Appenzell-interior, 159.
    in Unterwald-lower, 159.
    national, 65, 66, 68.
    of states, 65, 69.
    triple, 158.

  Councils, greater, 132.
    lesser, 133.

  Courts, cantonal, 136.
    commercial, 136.
    district, 136, 137.
    federal, 111.
    of cassation, 136.
    supreme, 137.
    See also _Federal Tribunal_.

  Courtship, primitive, 347.

  Covenant, original, 12, 473.

  Cows, Swiss, 310, 336.

  Cretinism, 429.

  Criminal courts, 112.

  Criminals, extradition of, 130.

  Curriculum in schools, 267, 268.

  Custom in cantonal business, 160, 164.


  D.

  Dairy products, 309.

  Decapitation, 141.

  Defensive preparations, 465.

  Democracy, early, 12, 148, 151.

  Department, political, 100.

  Departments, executive, 97.
    governmental, 49.

  Dependent classes, 188.

  Dialects, Swiss, 24.

  Diet, general, 39.

  Differences among cantons, 104.

  District courts, 136, 137.

  Dogs, St. Bernard, 27.
    Swiss, 422.

  Dried beef, 345.

  Duties on imports and exports, 46.


  E.

  Écoles des recrues, 236.

  Edelweiss, 371.

  Education, 253. See _Schools_.
    military, 236, 238.
    religious, 260.
    scope of, 278.

  Eidgenossen, 14.

  Eight old cantons, 13.

  Einsiedeln, 27.

  Einwohnergemeinde, 180.

  Elections, 67, 70, 81.
    in Ausser-Rhoden, 153.

  Engineering feats, 320.

  Estate in lands, 210, 211.

  European concert, 459.
    situation, 450.

  Executive department, 49, 85.
    departments, 97.

  Expatriation, right of, 207.

  Exports and imports, 304.


  F.

  Farms of peasants, 307, 325.

  Federal army, 233.
    assembly, 42, 49, 65.
      powers of, 71.
    authorities, 49.
    chancellery, 49.
    council, 49, 76, 85.
      appeals from, to the assembly, 114.
      authority of, 91.
      business of, 97.
      departments of, 97.
      duties of, 88, 90, 96.
      election of, 71, 93, 101.
      eligibility to, 92, 94.
      history of, 94.
      judicial powers of, 90.
      meetings of, 97.
      membership of, 87.
      _personnel_ of, 102.
      powers of, 91.
      salaries of, 96.
      tenure of members of, 94, 95.
      triennial renewal of, 95.
      workings of, 101, 103.
    pact, 17.
    tribunal, 49, 104.
      appeals to, 109.
      compared with the Supreme Court of the United States, 115.
      defects of, in practice, 120.
      election to, 106, 114.
      history of, 104.
      limited powers of, 114, 115.
      membership of, 106, 109.
      origin of, 104.
      powers of, 106, 114, 115.
      seat of, 114.

  Federalism, growth of, 145.
    tendency of, 62.

  Federation and Confederation, 37.

  Feudal Helvetia, 10.

  Feudalism, end of, 211.

  Firn, 365.

  First inhabitants, 9.

  Flora, native, 372.

  Föhn, 23.

  Folkmote, 149.
    of Ausser-Rhoden, 151.

  Foreign affairs, 100.
    policy, 452.

  Forest cantons, 12.

  Forestry, 291.

  Forests, 372.

  Fountains, 417.

  France and Germany, 458.

  Frankish supremacy, 10.

  Freedom of conscience, 47, 54, 56.
    of trade, 46.

  Freiburg admitted, 13.

  Fremden-industrie, 323.

  French-speaking Swiss, 24.
    supremacy, 15.

  Friendly remonstrances, intercantonal, 104.

  Funeral customs, 349.


  G.

  Gauls, early, 9.

  Gemeinde-trinket, 183.

  General diet, 39.

  Geneva admitted, 17.
    and its lake, 378.
    Calvin in, 29.
    code Napoleon in, 220.
    convention, 433.

  Geography of Switzerland, 19.

  German cantons, testamentary powers in, 220.
    empire, relations to, 14.
    -speaking Swiss, 24.

  Germany and France, 458.

  Glaciers, 359.

  Glarus and Uri, boundary between, 143.
    constitution of, 157.
    joins the league, 13.
    landsgemeinde in, 157.

  Goitre, 428.

  Government, coördinate branches of, 122.
    principles of, 61.

  Grass crops, 315.

  Great council, 158.
    powers, the, 455, 459.

  Grisons admitted, 16.

  Guides, 374.

  Guilds, history of, 178.

  Gymnasia, 267.


  H.

  Half-cantons, 141.

  Handelsgerichte, 136.

  Hapsburg protection, 11.

  Hay-making in the Alps, 326.

  Health resorts, 375.

  Helvetians, ancient, 9, 10.

  Helvetic confederation, 40.
    republic, 15.
    union, origin of, 12.

  Herdsman’s life, 337.

  History of constitutions, 38.

  Holy Alliance, Switzerland in the, 18.

  Homeless persons, 49.

  Hospice of St. Bernard, 26.

  Houses, legislative, 65, 69, 73.


  I.

  Ideals, national, 410.

  Independence of cantons, 38.

  Individual rights, 57.

  Individuality, cantonal, 144.

  Industrial schools, 277.

  Industry, 299.

  Influence on European affairs, 453.

  Inheritance of property, 209.

  Initiative, popular, 171, 173.

  Inquest, judges of, 112.

  Intercantonal affairs, 125.
    judicial relations, 138.

  International arbitration, 445.
    copyright, 437.
    labor congress, 448.
    law, 448.
    unions, 430.

  Introduction, 9.

  Isotherms, 22.

  Italian element, 25.


  J.

  Jesuits expelled, 31, 48.

  Judges, cantonal, 136.
    federal, 109.
    of inquest, 112.
    their relations to juries, 138.

  Judicial department, 49. See _Federal Tribunal_.
    powers, limitations of, 121.
    torture, 140.

  Judiciary, cantonal, 136.

  Juf, altitude of, 25.

  Juries in cantonal courts, 138.

  Jury, functions of, 138.
    in federal assizes, 112.

  Justice, 136. See _Courts_.


  K.

  Kuhreihen, 340.


  L.

  Labor congress, international, 448.

  Ladin, 345.

  Lake-dwellers, prehistoric, 315.

  Lakes, 378.

  Land laws, 209, 212.
    cantonal, 215.

  Land, ownership of, 209.
      by peasants, 222.
      communal, 181.
    subdivision of, 222.

  Landammann, re-election of, 160.

  Landammann’s oath, 154.

  Landrath, 157.

  Lands in common, 181.

  Landsgemeinde, 70, 148, 149, 152.
    at Altdorf, in Uri, 155.
    at Trogen, 151.
    functions of, 157.
    history of, 148.
    in Glarus, 157.

  Landsturm and Landwehr, 237, 239.

  Languages, census of, 470.
    spoken, 24.

  Lausanne, the seat of the federal tribunal, 114.

  Law, administrative, 90.
    international, 448.

  Laws, cantonal, 130.
    summarized, 135.

  Leases of land, 213, 216.

  Legislation, federal, 48, 52.
    harmonization of, 131.
    initiation of, 73, 76, 89.

  Legislative bodies, _personnel_ of, 79.
      sessions of, 78.
    department, 49.
    houses, 65, 69, 73.
    tyranny, 58.

  Legislators, oath of, 79.

  Legislatures, cantonal, 131, 132.

  Legitima portio, 221.

  Letter of alliance, 473, 477.

  Lion of Luzern, 230.

  Liquor traffic, regulation of, 52.

  Literary property, protection of, 437.

  Local assembly, 158.

  Localism and nationalism, 60.

  Love of country, 33.

  Lunéville, treaty of, 16.

  Luzern, becomes a canton, 12.
    lake of, 381.


  M.

  Manufactures, 302.

  Marignano, battle of, 14.

  Marriage customs in Ticino, 346.
    laws, 53.

  Material progress, 387.

  Mediæval nobles, 10.

  Mediation, act of, 39.

  Mediatorsbip of Napoleon, 16.

  Meinrad, St., 27, 28.

  Mer de Glace, 364.

  Metric standards, 470.

  Militarism, dangers of, 460.

  Military education, 236, 238.
    service, 226, 233, 236.
    status, Swiss, 464.
    tax, 243.
    topography, 451.

  Militia, 237, 239, 249.

  Mineral springs, 375.

  Money, 469.
    old cantonal, 123.

  Monks of St. Bernard, 26.

  Moraines, 365.

  Morat, battle of, 13.

  Morgarten, battle of, 11.

  Mountaineering, 373.

  Mountains, 20, 354.
    their effect on character, 32.

  Mythenstein, 398.


  N.

  Name of Switzerland, 19.

  Napoleon’s influence in Switzerland, 16, 39.

  Napoleon’s mediatorship, 16.

  National communes, 150.
    Council, 65, 66, 68.
    languages, 49.

  Nationalism and localism, 60.
    growth of, 145.

  Nationalities of Switzerland, 24.

  Natural beauties, 353.
    features of the country, 20.

  Naturalization, 200.
    defined, 207.
    in the United States, 204, 208.

  Neuchâtel admitted, 17.
    history of, 17.

  Névé, 364.

  Nobles, mediæval, 10.

  Normal schools, 265.


  O.

  Oath of landammann, Appenzell, 154.
    nature of, 154.

  Obergericht, 136.

  Office, tenure of, 80.

  Officers, military, 241.

  Officials, cantonal, 141.

  Old cantons, 12, 13.
    Catholic party, 31.

  Original inhabitants, 9.
    pact, 12, 473, 477.

  Orography of the country, 20, 21, 354.

  Ownership of common lands, 181.


  P.

  Pact, federal, 17.
    original, 12, 473.

  Parliaments, peasant, 151.

  Parties, political, 83.

  Pastoral life, 335.

  Pastures, Alpine, 313.

  Patois, 345.

  Patriotism, 32, 33.

  Pauperism, 188.

  Pay of soldiers, 241.

  Peace of Aarau, 14.

  Peasant home and life, 324, 344.

  Peasant parliaments, 151.
    proprietorship, 222.

  Pensions, 242.

  People, character of, 31.
    patriotism of, 32, 33.

  Personal rights, 57.

  Pestalozzi, educational work of, 255.

  Petite culture, 325.

  Physical geography, 20.

  Policy, foreign, 452.

  Political department, 100.
    parties, 83.

  Polytechnic school, 270.

  Popular initiative, 171, 173.
    sovereignty, 168, 174.
    vote. See _Referendum_.

  Population, 469.

  Postal union, 435.

  Powers, the great, 455, 459.

  Prehistoric remains, 383.

  Presidency, American, compared with the Swiss executive, 86.

  President of confederation, 88, 97.

  Presidents of legislative bodies, 66, 67, 69, 71, 73.

  Principles of government, 61.

  Procureur-général, 112.

  Progressive spirit, 387.

  Property, communal, 181, 183.

  Propitiator, 137.

  Proprietorship in lands, 211.

  Protection of literary property, 437.

  Protestant and Catholic parties, 18.
    cantons, 29.
    Reformation, 28.

  Provisions, temporary constitutional, 50.

  Prussian supremacy in Neuchâtel, 17.

  Public life, training for, 95.

  Punishment in schools, 262.

  Punishments, 48.
    unusual, 170.


  R.

  Rack for prisoners, 139.

  Radical party, 83.

  Railways, 317.

  Ranz des Vaches, 340.

  Rath, 157.

  Realschulen, 293, 295.

  Red cross flag, 433.

  Referendum, 74, 77.
    benefits of, 169.
    cantonal, 172.
    compulsory, 172.
    defined, 164.
    functions of, 165.
    history of, 171.
    nature of, 50, 56.
    optional, 172.
    principle of, 171.
    veto by, 167, 169.

  Reform, federal, 19.

  Reformation, 28.

  Religion in schools, 260.

  Religious controversies, 18.
    differences, 25.
    freedom, 47, 54, 56.
    statistics, 470.

  Remonstrances, friendly, 104.

  Representation, 68.
    in cantons, 131.

  Republic, Helvetic, 15.

  Rhetians, 9.

  Rhone, the, 379.

  Right of asylum, 466.

  Rights, cantonal, 146.
    communal, 177.

  Rigi, 382.

  Rivers of Switzerland, 20.

  Roads, 323.

  Romansch language, 345.

  Rütli, story of, 393.


  S.

  St. Bernard, monks of, 26.

  St. Gallen admitted, 16.
    inheritance of property in, 218.

  St. Gothard tunnel, 318.

  Salvation army, 55.

  Scenery, 353, 384.

  Schaffhausen admitted, 14.

  School-houses, 262.

  Schools, 253.
    agricultural, 289.
    communal, 266.
    grades in, 267.
    industrial, 277.
      art, 286.
    manual training in, 282, 296.
    military, 238.
    normal, 265.
    punishment in, 262.
    religion in, 260.
    straw-platting, 287.
    technical, 277.
    trade, 285, 288.

  Schützenfest, 249.

  Schwyz, an original canton, 12.

  Scrutin de liste, 68.
    des arrondissements, 68.

  Sempach, battle of, 13.

  Shepherd’s life, 337.

  Silk industry, 302.

  Situation, the European, 450.

  Small nationalities, character of, 453.

  Soldiers, pay of, 241.

  Solothurn admitted, 13.

  Sonderbund, 18.

  Sorcery, execution for, 139.

  Sovereignty, cantonal, 45, 147.
    popular, 168, 174.

  Staatenbund defined, 36.

  Standards, cantonal, 143.

  Ständerath, 65, 69.

  Stantz, treaty of, 13.

  State, the composite, 42.

  States, council of, 65, 69.
    -attorney, 112.

  Statistics, 469.

  Statutory enactments, 52.

  Staubbach, 370.

  Suabian war, 14.

  Supreme Court of the United States compared with
    the Swiss federal tribunal, 115-122.

  Swineherds, 339.

  Swiss foreign influence, 452.
    mercenaries, 257.
    valor, 230, 251.


  T.

  Tagsatzung, 40.

  Tagwen in Glarus, 158.

  Tax, military, 243.

  Technical schools, 277.

  Telegraph union, international, 435.

  Tell, William, 391.
    the national hero, 407.

  Tell’s story, legends parallel to, 401.

  Temporary constitutional provisions, 50.

  Tenant, rights and responsibilities of, 213.

  Testamentary powers, 209.

  Thirty Years’ War, 14.

  Thurgau admitted, 16.

  Ticino admitted, 16.
    marriage customs in, 346.

  Topography, military, 451.

  Torture, judicial, 140.

  Tourmentes, 385.

  Tours de scrutin, 68.

  Training of officials, 95.

  Treaty of Lunéville, 16.
    of Stantz, 13.

  Trial by jury, 138. See also _Jury_.

  Tribunal, federal, 104. See _Federal Tribunal_.

  Triple council, 158.

  Trogen, folkmote at, 151.

  Troops, cantonal, 234.
    federal, 233.

  Tyranny of legislatures, 58.


  U.

  Union, postal, 435.
    telegraph, 435.

  Unions, international, 430.

  Universities, 269.

  Unterwalden, division of, 141.

  Uri, an original canton, 12.
    and Glarus boundary, 143.
    folkmote in, 155.


  V.

  Valais admitted, 17.
    peasantry, 350.

  Vaud admitted, 16.
    land laws in, 217.

  Veto, popular, 167, 169.

  Vice-President, 66.
    succession of, to the Presidency, 100.

  Vienna, Congress of, 40.

  Vierwaldstätten, 13.

  Vineyards, 307.

  Vorort, 37, 41.

  Vote, popular. See _Referendum_.


  W.

  Waldstätten, 12.

  War, Suabian, 14.
    Thirty Years’, 14.

  Watchmaking, 303.

  Waterfalls, 370.

  Wedding customs, 370.

  Weights, 469.

  Winds, 23.

  Winkelried, story of, 404.

  Witch-burning, 139.

  Witenagemote, 149.

  Woman’s lot, 343.

  Women, courage of, 251.


  Y.

  Yodel, 341.


  Z.

  Zug joins the league, 13.

  Zurich joins the league, 13.
    testamentary powers in, 219.

  Zwingli, 28.


THE END.




FOOTNOTES:

[1] Müller, “Histoire des Suisses.”

[2] “History of the Helvetic Confederation,” Lausanne, 1650.

[3] See Appendix for original Pact and translation.

[4] A federal executive officer resembling the French consul.

[5] The history of Switzerland affords frequent instances of mutual
succors for these purposes.

[6] After this battle Francis stamped on his medals, “_Vici ab uno
Cæsare victos_” (“I vanquished those whom Cæsar alone had before
vanquished”).

[7] It was only in 1857 that the anomalous condition of Neuchâtel
ceased. The rights of the kings of Prussia as sovereigns date back
to the cession made of it in 1707 by William of Orange to his cousin
Frederick, first King of Prussia. In 1806 it was granted as a
principality to Marshal Berthier, and so recognized by all the powers
of Continental Europe. The Congress of Vienna restored it to the King
of Prussia, making it, however, a Canton of the Helvetian Republic.
In 1848 a revolution forcibly overturned the authority of the King of
Prussia, and it so remained, in apparent conflict to what had been
formally recognized by all the Great Powers, until 1857, when a treaty
was signed between Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, and
Switzerland, by which it was made independent, to continue to form a
part of the Swiss Confederation, by the same title as the other Cantons.

[8] Rufus Choate.

[9] Book xxi., ch. 31.

[10] The dog Barry, one day, found a little child in a half-frozen
state; he began directly to lick him, and having succeeded first in
restoring animation, and next in the complete resuscitation of the boy,
he induced the child by his caresses to tie himself on his back. When
this was effected, he carried the poor child, as if in triumph, to the
hospice. The body of Barry was stuffed and placed in the museum at
Bern, and may be seen there, with the little vial still hanging to his
neck in which he carried a reviving drink for the perishing traveller.

[11] Zwingli lost his life in 1531 in the battle of Cappel; though he
fell under another banner than that of the Prince of Peace, he was
acting in obedience to the law of the republic, and accompanied the
army by the express command of the magistrates. He is represented as a
man of great meekness and moderation and charity, and, amidst all the
disputes, was a constant advocate for peace and reconciliation.

[12] A hair-dresser of Geneva was imprisoned for arranging a bride’s
hair with too much attention to vanity; and a woman was beaten for
singing secular words to a psalm-tune; men were imprisoned for reading
what were considered profane books, and children beheaded for striking
a parent.

[13] The old curator of the Bern Museum would say to the visitors,
pointing to the portrait of Voltaire, “There is the portrait of the
famous M. de Voltaire, who dared to write AGAINST THE REPUBLIC and
against God.”

[14] Professor Fiske.

[15] These words, it may be remarked, are from the same root, _ligo_,
to bind.

[16] Agreements to furnish soldiers to foreign countries.

[17] There are many provisions regulating the rights of citizens and
electors, Cantonal and Communal, which are given in Chapters 6 and 9,
and “Chapter on Citizenship.”

[18] It reads in the French text, “From his natural judge,” the natural
or constitutional judge being the one provided by the terms of the
judicial Constitution, and as contradistinguished from an exceptional
Court created after the appearance of the case to be adjudged.

[19] See amendment of December, 1887.

[20] See amendment of June, 1879.

[21] Homeless persons, _Heimathlosen_. These comprise not only
foreigners who have lost their nationality of origin without having
obtained another, but also natives who are not members of any Swiss
Commune.

[22] The Constitutional provisions relating to these are fully given in
chapters severally devoted to these Departments.

[23] The Constitution is officially published in _Romansch_ and
_Ladin_, in addition to the three “national languages.”

[24] That the Constitution-making and amending power should be vested
in a bare majority of the voting citizens, coupled with a majority
of the Cantons, is considered by some as wanting in that solidity
and security which are the most vital attributes of a fundamental
law. But none of the enactments contained in the Swiss Constitution
can be legally abolished or modified without the employment of the
_Referendum_. And no law which revises the Constitution, either
wholly or in part, can come into force until it has been regularly
submitted by means of the _Referendum_ to the vote of the people, and
has been approved by a majority of the citizens who on the particular
occasion gave their votes, and also by a majority of the Cantons.
It is also provided, that under certain circumstances a vote of the
people shall be taken not only on the question, whether a particular
amendment or revision approved by the Federal Assembly shall or shall
not come into force, but also on the preliminary question whether any
revision or reform of the Constitution shall take place at all. And the
_Referendum_ in all such cases, in the language of the Constitution, is
“obligatory.” The self-imposed checks of the Constitution of the United
States, in this respect of amendment, have been described as “obstacles
in the way of the people’s whims, not of their wills.” The system
of the Initiative for the Swiss constitutional revision (by 50,000
citizens), though modelled upon one of the alternative methods by which
amendments to the United States Constitution may be proposed, contains
one significant modification of it; the people in the former appear in
their national character and independent of state lines; the same holds
true of the ratification of amendments.

[25] In 1480 fifteen hundred executions took place in Switzerland.

[26] By a Federal law to carry out this amendment, the distilled
liquors are sold for cash by the Confederation in _minimum_ quantity
of a hundred and fifty _litres_ (0.88 quart), and the price to be
fixed from time to time by the Federal Council; but it shall never be
less than one hundred and twenty francs nor more than one hundred and
fifty francs per _hectolitre_ (twenty-two gallons) of pure alcohol.
Denaturalized spirits to be sold at cost price for technical and
household use.

[27] The Swiss Constitution contains 7700 words and 127 articles
(including temporary provisions); that of the United States, 5300
words, divided into 37 sections.

[28] “American Historical Association,” vol. i., p. 37. Professor Scott.

[29] It was the original purpose of the writer to include, as an
appendix to this volume, a translation of the Swiss Constitution;
a faithful search having failed to discover any publication of it
in English. But having ascertained that during the current year two
such translations had appeared, one by Professor Edmund J. James,
University of Pennsylvania, the other by Professor Albert Bushnell
Hart, of Harvard, copies were obtained, and found to meet, in a most
satisfactory and excellent manner, every possible demand for such a
work. However, every important provision, and, in fact, almost the
complete text of the Constitution, appears in the copious citations
from it in the chapters on the Federal Departments, Cantons, Communes,
and the Army.

[30] John Adams, Works, iv., p. 186.

[31] Previous to 1874 the members received only twelve francs a day.

[32] Woodrow Wilson, “The State.”

[33] Federal legislation may confer upon the Assembly the election or
confirmation of other federal officials.

[34] This power was exercised in connection with the Neuchâtel
revolution of 1856, the Royalist prisoners and deserters being
amnestied in 1857.

[35] In 1874 it was fixed by a federal law that the Assembly should
convene on the first Monday in June for the first, and on the first
Monday in December for the second portion of the regular annual session.

[36] The remuneration of these officials in 1848, when the system was
inaugurated, was much smaller; the President receiving only 6000 francs
a year and each of the other members 5000 francs.

[37] This election occurs during December of each year on a day agreed
upon by the Assembly.

[38] Although the Assembly cannot exactly turn out the members of the
federal executive during their term of office, it enjoys such extensive
power of supervision and control over their acts, and, in fact,
exercises so large a part of what is called executive discretion, that
it can practically have very little reason for desiring to remove them.

[39] “All such laws are adopted by the people, either tacitly or
through the _referendum_; and the judiciary must submit their judgment
on constitutional questions to the will of the people.”--Dubs, “Das
Oeffentliche Recht der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft.”

[40] Marbury vs. Madison, 1 Cranch, 137. Mr. Madison disregarded the
_obiter_ opinion of the court, and Mr. Jefferson treated it with
contempt. “The federal judges,” he said, “declared that commissions
signed and sealed by the President were valid, though not delivered.
I deemed delivery essential to complete a deed, which as long as it
remains in the hands of the party is as yet no deed. It is _in posse_
only but not _in esse_, and I withheld delivery of the commissions.”
(Letter to Judge Roane, September 6, 1819. Works, vol. vii. p. 135.)

[41] “Political Science Quarterly,” June, 1890. C. B. Elliott.

[42] See also Professor Bryce, “American Commonwealth,” i. p. 237.

[43] Kent’s Commentaries, i. p. 453.

[44] Burke.

[45] A common standard of weights and measures was adopted in 1835, but
the question of the coinage remained unsettled until 1848.

[46] It was customary, formerly, to deduct from five to ten per cent.
from all property going out of the Canton by inheritance or marriage.
It was also usual, when a person wished to sell land, to recognize a
right in his relatives, or even neighbors, or fellow-citizens of the
Canton, to take the property at an arbitrated value.

[47] Communities include school, church, and political territorial
divisions, and only the latter are designated as Communes.

[48] Repealed in 1879, relegating it to the discretion of the Cantons
except as to “political offences.” Since then eight of the Cantons have
re-established capital punishment in their codes. They are the small
Cantons, and represent only twenty per cent. of the Swiss population.
No execution, however, has taken place in any of these Cantons since
1879; two sentences of death have been passed, but in both cases they
were commuted to imprisonment for life.

[49] Professor Dicey, “Law of the Constitution.”

[50] These horns are made to imitate the human voice, and have a most
mournful bellow.

[51] This is done to secure religious equality and to provide for the
representation of the Catholic population in the Communes in which they
are in the minority.

[52] _Et in corruptissima republica plurimæ leges._--Tacitus.

[53] Professor Dicey.

[54] Numa Droz.

[55] See chapter on citizenship.

[56] Thomas Jefferson.

[57] See chapters on “Constitution” and “Cantons.”

[58] This includes, also, birth abroad of children of American citizens
temporarily residing or travelling in other countries (Rev. Stat. U.
S., Sec. 1993).

[59] “Citizenship of the United States,” Richman,--“Political Science
Quarterly,” March, 1890.

[60] “A citizen of a State is now only a citizen of the United States
residing in that State; citizenship of the United States is the primary
citizenship; State citizenship is secondary and derivative, depending
upon citizenship of the United States.” (Slaughter-House cases, 16
Wallace.)

[61] The difficulty of obtaining citizenship, at one time, in the
pastoral Cantons, is shown by the fact that no one had done so in lower
Unterwald from 1664 to 1815.

[62] The successful issue of this suit was due to the vigorous and
determined efforts of the United States consul at Zurich, George L.
Catlin.

[63] These peasant proprietors do not live scattered amid the fields
which they till, but are disposed to gather in the centre of the
Commune, forming numerous small hamlets.

[64] Called in the Roman law _legitima portio_, legitimate portion; but
the German law has a better designation for it,--_Pflichttheil_, duty
part.

[65] In the district of Saffelare, a part of East Flanders, which
nature has endowed with an unproductive but easily cultivated sandy
soil, the territory is composed of 37,000 acres and has to nourish
30,000 inhabitants, all living by agriculture; and yet these peasants
not only grow their own food, but they also export agricultural
produce, and pay rents to the amount of from fifteen to twenty-five
dollars per acre. (Krapotkin, “The Forum,” August, 1890.)

[66] In the matter of these capitulations the Cantons claimed that,
first, they never granted troops to any prince or state but by virtue
of some preceding alliance; second, they granted troops only for the
defence of the state they were given to, and not to act offensively;
third, that the sovereign never received any subsidy or other
advantages from it. The Cantons contented themselves with giving such
auxiliary troops as were stipulated by their alliance and procuring
a beneficial service for their subjects, without reserving profit to
themselves. But in spite of the contention that these mercenaries
espoused only a just quarrel, such service was a source of social no
less than of political ills, and seriously impaired, for the time, the
dignity and standing of the country.

[67] _Primi in omnibus prœliis oculi vincuntur._--Tacitus.

[68] Even the Cantons, from the first institution of their governments
and up to the time the Confederation assumed control of the military
service, never kept in pay any standing troops. During the wars with
the House of Austria the service was performed by militia, who were
paid by the respective Cantons while kept in the field, and dismissed
as soon as the campaign was ended.

[69] The minimum height for a recruit in the United States army is five
feet four inches, weight one hundred and twenty-five pounds, and chest
measure thirty-two inches.

[70] United States Revised Statutes, Sec. 1625, makes subject to
enrolment in the militia “every able-bodied male citizen of the
respective States, resident therein,” etc.

[71] “When the citizens of Geneva were alarmed in the night [the
_Escalade_ of December 12, 1602], in the depth of winter, by the enemy,
they found their muskets sooner than their shoes.”--Rousseau.

[72] The report of 1887 for the Canton of Bern gives 1,925,580 francs
expended on the cantonal and communal schools, not including the
university.

[73] In July of this year (1890) a statue of Pestalozzi was dedicated
at Yverdon, on the Lake of Neuchâtel, for it was there that, after
many struggles with adversity, he founded, at the beginning of this
century, the school which was perhaps more deeply and lastingly useful
than any school that ever existed, by spreading the educational tenets
and methods of its famous master throughout Europe, and later across
to America, with contagious force. The unveiling of the monument was
accompanied with a _Cantate patriotique_ by a choir of a thousand
children. The statue represents Pestalozzi with a boy and girl whom he
is instructing by his side, and bears the simple inscription, “Henry
Pestalozzi, 1746-1827. Monument erected by general subscription 1890.”

[74] The University of Geneva, at the close of the last century,
known as the College of Geneva, and which exerted a wide influence in
Europe, being temporarily suppressed during the revolution which had
taken place, proposed, through its faculty, the transplanting of the
college in a body to the United States. To Washington, who had in view
the devoting of a quite large amount of money to the founding, or to
the support, of institutions of learning, Jefferson wrote a letter
on February 23, 1795, in which he laid before him the plan for the
transferring of this institution to the national capital; and in the
letter Jefferson characterized the College of Geneva as one of the eyes
of Europe in matters of science, the University of Edinburgh being the
other.

[75] Zurich has made its city forest, the _Sihl-Wald_, a great public
pleasure-ground that pays large sums annually into the city treasury,
besides yielding inestimable dividends in the shape of health and
happiness to the citizens. This forest has been owned by Zurich ever
since 1309, and has been carefully administered for centuries, and is
now managed on the most approved scientific principles by corps of
trained foresters. Last year the net profits were something over eight
dollars an acre, or a total of about twenty thousand dollars, for the
city treasury. Half the annual yield of wood is from thinnings alone.
In the economic treatment of the forest, its value as a pleasure-ground
is not forgotten; the landscape is preserved unharmed, and the place
made thoroughly and pleasantly accessible.

[76] Early in the seventeenth century a king of Spain came to see a
clock which had been made by Jacques Droz, who resided at Locle, and
whose automatons were much noted. Upon the clock there were seated
a shepherd, a negro, and a dog. As the hour was struck the shepherd
played upon his flute, and the dog fondled gently at his feet. But when
the king reached forth to touch an apple that hung from a tree under
which the shepherd rested, the dog flew at him and barked so furiously
that a live dog in the street answered him. One of the courtiers of the
king ventured to ask the negro, in Spanish, what time it was. There was
no reply, but when the question was repeated in French, an answer was
given. All of them at once voted that the clock was the work of an evil
one.

[77] It is estimated that 200 francs’ worth of steel will make 525,000
francs’ worth of common watch-springs.

[78] On the new federal palace at Bern, in progress of construction in
1890, men were employed to act as turnspits, in immense wheels, for
elevating the large blocks of stone.

[79] Adams and Cunningham, “The Swiss Confederation.”

[80] The _Fête des Vignerons_, which occurs once in fifteen years
at one of the villages on the Lake of Geneva, is the most brilliant
festival held in Switzerland, and is accompanied with all the light,
joyous mirth of the ancient Bacchanalian festivals. It is graphically
described in Cooper’s “Headsman.”

[81] The word _Alp_ is a provincialism, and means an elevated pasture,
and hence the name of the mountains on which the pastures exist.

[82] Liquid manure fills an important part in the economy of Swiss
husbandry, under the name of _Jouche_ or _Mist-Wasser_ in the German
Cantons, and of _Lisier_ in the French Cantons. They collect in large
casks the drainage of their manure-piles, stables, and hog-pens, and
bring it in carts to the fields, where it is drawn off into wooden tubs
fitted to the shoulders of men, and sometimes of women, who, walking
along the furrows, distribute it in due proportion to each plant, by
stooping to the right and left, the coffee-colored nectar pouring over
their heads. It would be impossible to perform an uncleanly task in a
more delicate manner.

[83] The great projector did not live to see the accomplishment of his
grand work.

[84] The construction of the St. Gothard railway stopped this indemnity.

[85] A report, made in connection with the Swiss National Exhibition
of 1883, calculated that up to 1880, 1002 inns had been built for the
special use of travellers, and that they contained 58,137 beds, an
average of 58 apiece. The capital value of the land, buildings, and
furniture belonging to these was estimated at 320,000,000 francs; the
gross profits on which were 53,000,000 francs, or seventeen per cent.;
this was reduced by deduction of working expenses to 16,000,000 francs,
or five per cent. Of these 1002 inns no fewer than 283 are situated in
positions above three thousand four hundred feet, and 14 are actually
above six thousand five hundred and sixty-two feet in elevation.

Switzerland only became a “play-ground” within the last century. The
first English guide-book appeared in 1818, by Daniel Wall, of London.
The first of any kind was published in 1684, by Wagner, a Zurich
naturalist, and called “_Index Memorabilium Helvetiæ_.”

[86] Ruskin.

[87] When these storms break upon the mountain, be it night or day, the
bells of the village churches are vigorously rung to exorcise the evil
one, and bring the pious villagers on their knees in prayer.

[88] These are made of maple, linden, and pine by the shepherds
themselves, who bestow much time on their manufacture. The ladles are
made in the shape of shells. The milk-strainer, the measures, and the
milk-hods are all elegantly shaped and very clean.

[89] The chamois is a small species of antelope, somewhat resembling a
goat. Its hoofs are remarkably cloven, with a protruding border, which
enables it to climb almost perpendicular declivities. Its muscular
power is great: it can leap chasms twenty feet wide, and jump down
rocks the same distance to platforms with only just room enough for its
four hoofs. In the autumn, when strongest and fattest, it is black, in
the early spring gray, and in the summer red.

[90] It measures four and one-half feet in length and nine to ten feet
from wing to wing extended, weighs as much as twenty pounds, and is of
a rusty brown color. It is a fierce enemy of sheep, goats, dogs, hares,
etc., and has been known to carry off young children.

[91] The Swiss infant is bandaged into a large piece of cloth,--to
be kept straight, it is explained,--and resembles a pappoose. In the
country churches can be seen old paintings of the Virgin holding the
infant Christ swathed in just the same manner.

[92] A French writer, Picot, went so far as to say of the peasants of
Valais: “The Valaisans, far from desiring to attract attention from the
world, are jealous of their obscurity, of their ignorance, and even of
their poverty, which they believe essential to their happiness.” Many
localities have their written existence in song or story. The words of
the Vaudois poet, Juste Olivier, “_Vivons de notre vie_,” have sunk
into the hearts of a number of writers who, under their own public
alone, are cherishing and seeking to reproduce the life about them,
dwelling especially upon those local and traditional phases which they
feel daily to be giving way before the march of progress.

[93] The winds, refrigerated in their passage over fields of ice and
snow, meet there a warm aerial current coming from the plains of Italy.

[94] Longfellow’s “Hyperion.”

[95] Virgil.

[96] The Rhone is made to serve useful as well as æsthetic purposes;
the great water-power of this river has been utilized by diverting that
part passing on the left of the island into a canal, which conducts the
water into a building containing twenty turbines, with four thousand
four hundred net horse-power; this power is utilized in a variety of
ways, from running sewing-machines to supplying power for an electric
light plant; it is an enterprise very profitable to the municipality of
Geneva.

[97] See Chapter on “Constitution.”

[98] In the Canton of Vaud, a short distance back from the lake is
_Avanche_ or _Avanches_, the ancient capital of Helvetia; near this
place the Helvetians were defeated by one of Vitellius’s lieutenants,
and “many thousand were slain and many sold as slaves, and after
committing great ravages the army marched in order of battle to
_Aventicum_, the capital of the country.” (Tacitus.)

[99] The first steamer on a Swiss lake was the “Guillaume Tell,” in
1823, on the Lake of Geneva.

[100] Whirlwinds of snow, or _tourmentes_ (known in the Grisons), are
tossed aloft by the gale, like the sandy vortices of Africa formed by
the simoom; they are dangerous by blinding the traveller and effacing
the track.

[101] On this passage of Helvetian history, there is a poem of
exquisite beauty, by Mrs. Hemans, the “Record of Woman:”

  “Werner sat beneath the linden tree,
    That sent its lulling whispers through his door,
  Even as man sits, whose heart alone would be
    With some deep care, and thus can find no more
  The accustomed joy in all which evening brings,
  Gathering a household with her quiet wings.”


[102] This place is evidently a fragment, some seventy-five or one
hundred acres, that has fallen from the mountain, and, lying between
the lake and the rocks, it offered a good point of rendezvous.

[103] It is a curious fact that Schiller made Franz, the hero of his
“Robbers,” say, “In order to become a finished rascal one must have a
certain national bent; he must live in a certain climate and breathe a
certain rascally atmosphere; so I advise you to go into the Grisons,
for that is, in these days, the Athens of pickpockets.” Schiller
was obliged to apologize, the Council of the Leagues threatening to
withhold the money they had promised to lend the Duke of Wurtemberg if
the offending poet was not punished; he also received an order “never
to write more of the same.”

[104] In 1796 there appeared in New York an opera in three acts,
adapted by William Dunlap from a dramatic performance published in
London in 1794, called “Helvetic Liberty.”

[105] A rude weapon much used by the early Swiss, consisting of a club
ending in a massive knob, with spikes protruding in every direction so
as to suggest the name of “morning star.”

[106] Although it is alleged that five similar feats to Winkelried’s
are on record in Swiss history, only one is recognized and commemorated
by the Swiss. In the village square of Stantz is a marble group
representing Arnold Winkelried in the act of pressing the Austrian
spears into his heart and holding them down, while a second figure
pushes forward to take advantage of the gap.

[107] The Æneid, vi. 660.

[108] At the art exhibition held in Bern this year (1890) there were
forty plaster models of statues of William Tell competing for the
one it is proposed to erect at Altdorf, 150,000 francs having been
appropriated for that purpose.

[109] Lamartine.

[110] The Aar is perhaps the most interesting water system in
Switzerland, especially if we include its great tributaries, the
Reuss and the Limmat. Rising among the metamorphic wilds of the
Finsteraarhorn, thundering through the granitic dikes of the Grimsel,
breaking its way to the Handeck, and plunging in mad career over the
falls, it dashes on to the clear profound of Brienz, to the softer
beauties of Interlaken and Thun, and, after watering the fertile
table-lands of Bern, receives the sister waters of the Reuss and
Limmat, which it carries, in one dark-green flood, into the main artery
of the Rhine.

[111] The market for fowls has one feature worthy of imitation
everywhere. In the centre of it stands a man with a miniature
guillotine, who for one centime (a fifth of a cent) will behead the
fowl, and it is done deftly and free of all bloody exposures; the
fowl is firmly held and muffled to prevent outcry, the decapitation
instantaneous, the falling of the head and bleeding concealed, and when
life is extinct and flow of blood ceases, the fowl is nicely wrapped
in paper by the executioner and replaced in the market-basket; it is
certainly a humane substitute for wringing off the neck.

[112] Means weather-peak, and it is an established barometer in its
neighborhood.

[113] The western wing of the Bernese Alps presents broad pyramidal
masses of a flattened character. The eastern wing exhibits a complete
contrast in its tapering obelisks and rocky minarets, in its serrated
crests and numerous horns.

[114] _Alpenglühen_, or sunset-glow, is an exception to the general
laws governing the disappearance of the sunlight by the gradual rise
of the earth’s shadow; it is a kind of second or after-coloring in the
snowy masses, making them stand out from the dark background, though
the general light is constantly diminishing. The peaks are illuminated
till the sun is from 20° to 30° below the horizon; then the general
clearness diminishes, but on the western horizon is a clear segment
of 8° to 10°; but as the air has much less reflecting power than the
snowy mountains, the latter begin to be lighted up again. This second
lighting may be so great that the mountains appear to be actually
illuminated by the sun.

[115] Since this was written and placed in the hands of the publishers
Congress has passed and the President approved a copyright bill,
aimed at securing reciprocal protection to American and foreign
authors in the respective countries which may comply with its
provisions. While the measure which has become a law is not entirely
satisfactory to the friends of international copyright, and must be
regarded as experimental as to its ultimate results or workings, all
of its advocates feel that it is a huge instalment of justice, and
a gratifying victory gained for the indorsement of the principle of
international copyright. In answer to an inquiry addressed to Mr. A.
R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress, as to the effect of the law on the
relation of the United States to the Bern Convention, he has kindly
made the following statement: “Under the rather uncertain (not to say
ambiguous) meaning of Sec. 13 of the Act of March 3, 1891, two things
seem to be necessary before a foreigner can be entitled to copyright
in the United States: (1) His government must be one that already
grants copyright to Americans (by law or international agreement) on
the same terms as to its own people; (2) the President must certify by
proclamation the fact just cited.

“Whether the new law was intended to be at once applicable to the
authors of all nations who were parties to the Berne Convention of
1885-86; whether the Executive of the United States has authority now
to accede to this convention, and join the International Union under
the provisions of Article XVIII.; whether this would require the
concurrent action of the President and Senate; or, finally, whether
an act of Congress would be required (as Great Britain had to pass
an act through Parliament to make that country a party to the Berne
International Union), all these appear to me to be open questions,
owing to lack of precision in the Act of March 3, which was passed in
a crowded state of the public business, and not fully digested by a
committee, especially with regard to the Berne Convention.”

[116] An international arbitration agreement has been drafted by the
nations of North, South, and Central America, and a copy has been sent
to each European government, extending an invitation to signify their
adherence to its provisions. The President of the Swiss Confederation
has submitted to the Federal Assembly this pan-American treaty, with a
recommendation that Switzerland accept the invitation given by the late
International American Conference.

[117] Adams and Cunningham, “Swiss Confederation.”

[118] Though without a sea-coast or a ship, Switzerland has recognized
rights even on the sea as a neutral nation; the treaty of Paris of 1856
respecting neutral flags, neutral goods on vessels of belligerents, and
blockades, was also entered into by the Swiss government in the same
year.

[119] A hide cut into shoe strings was made to surround a principality
under a bargain to buy,--_Taurino quantum possent circumdare tergo._

[120] The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine was really a violation of what
is the sound basis of the principle of the sacredness of nationalities;
a violation of the sacredness of self-government.

[121] This term is employed to denote the seven nations which were
parties to the Treaty of Berlin,--viz., England, France, Germany,
Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy, and Turkey.




Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.



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