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 SEVEN LETTERS 
 
 CONCERNING THE 
 
 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND, 
 
 * 
 
 PENDING THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR 
 
 In 1847. 
 
 By GEORG-E GROTE, Esq., 
 
 AUTHOR OF A " IITSTORY OF GREECE." 
 
 WITH THE ADDITION OF AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER WRITTEN BY THE 
 
 AUTHOR TO M. DE TOCQUEVILLE SHORTLY AFTER 
 
 THE TERMINATION OF THE WAR. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1876. 
 

 c4 
 
 .^ 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, 
 
 STAMFORD STKBKT AND CHARING CKOSS. 
 
 HfcK 
 
 :rV MGHSE STEPHEIiW 
 
 A 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 A REPRINT of the Swiss Letters, originally pub- 
 lished in the " Spectator," has been found desirable 
 on more than one ground. For thirty years this 
 passage of domestic strife has only been casually 
 reverted to by attentive observers of political 
 events, and the subject had almost dropped out 
 of the circle of topics possessing a modern in- 
 terest when the recent Q-erman difficulties with 
 the Catholic Church awakened the recollection of 
 the Sonderbund quarrel. 
 
 These difficulties have their origin in the very 
 causes which engendered the disturbances of 1847 
 among the Cantons of Switzerland. On the one 
 hand there is the influence of . the Vatican, sus- 
 tained by the free application of its vast revenues ; 
 on the other, an able and resolute representative 
 of the secular power, backed by the authority of a 
 puissant temporal sovereign. It is the same piece 
 
 a 2 
 
 509929 
 
iv INTKODUCTION. 
 
 playing over again, only that the theatre on which 
 the drama is enacted occupies a more extensive 
 area of territory. The actual dispute excites 
 memories in connection with Swiss affairs, which 
 memories prompt numerous enquiries for the little 
 work of Mr. Grote — a work clearly setting forth 
 the causes of the struggle of 1847, and explaining 
 the complex nature of the political relations ex- 
 isting among the members of that interesting 
 Republic. 
 
 But the original edition had long been out of 
 print, and it has not been without difficulty that 
 a copy has been found to meet the demands of 
 those who now desire to re-peruse the " Letters." 
 When it was determined to reprint them, it was 
 deemed a fitting occasion to produce a letter 
 addressed by the Author to M. Alexis de Tocque- 
 ville, wherein he takes a retrospective view of the 
 closing incidents of this internecine conflict. It 
 finishes the story, as it were ; and the reader will 
 have the leading points more clearly fixed in his 
 mind than they would have been left at the end of 
 Letter VIL 
 
 The letter itself was included among a packet 
 
INTRODUCTION. v 
 
 of correspondence restored to the writers, in 1860, 
 by the heirs of M. de Tocqueville. , 
 
 This contest between the clerical element and 
 the lay element — personfied in the Priest and 
 the Civil Magistrate — is one that will in all pro- 
 bability be maintained, in one quarter of Europe 
 or another, for all time. The actors change, the 
 conditions of the quarrel fluctuate, but the sources 
 of the discord never dry up, and may, in fact, be 
 characterised as sempiternal. 
 
 * H. G. 
 
 London, March 1876. 
 
 a 3 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Letter I. 
 
 Character of Swiss politics — The- Sonderbund — The Diet 
 and its Representatives — M. Guizot's speeches and arti- 
 cles — The Federal Pact — Cantonal selfishness. 
 
 Letter II. 
 
 Unpopularity of the Federal Pact — Ultramontanism in the 
 Catholic Cantons^ Dr. Strauss' appointment resisted — 
 Disturbances in Zurich — The , New Constitution for 
 Lucerne. 
 
 Letter III. 
 
 Eevision of the Constitutions of Argau and Soleure — Ultra- 
 montane tendencies — Politico-religious agitation — The 
 monasteries instigators and promoters of the insurgents — 
 Suppression of four monasteries. 
 
 Letter IV. 
 
 Presidential years of the Canton of Lucerne — Contests be- 
 tween the Upper and Lower Valais — The brothers Barman — 
 Young Switzerland — Activity of the Jesuits — Indignation 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 against Lucerne and M. Meyer at the shooting-meeting at 
 Basle — Proposition for the expulsion of the Jesuits brought 
 before the Diet. 
 
 Letter V. 
 
 The Jesuits introduced into Lucerne — Protest of the Great 
 Council of Zurich — The Corps Francs — Extraordinary Diet 
 at Zurich — Anti-Jesuit feeling — Kevolution in the Canton 
 de Vaud. 
 
 Letter VI. 
 
 Formation of tfie Sonderbund — Eevolution of Berne — Colonel 
 Ochsenbein — Kevolution of Geneva — Revision of the Con- 
 stitution of Bale-Ville — St. Gallen and its population. 
 
 Letter VII. 
 
 Unitary Government — Lucerne the head of the Catholic 
 , Clerocracy of Switzerland — The Federal Pact and the 
 
 Sonderbund — Ameliorated management of the Communes 
 
 — Education — Pauperism. 
 
 Letter to M. de Tocqueville. 
 
 Termination of the war in Switzerland — Want of resolution 
 in the Sonderbund — Lord Palmerston's influence in Italy 
 and Switzerland — Dismissal of the Jesuits. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following letters embody the results of read- 
 ing and enquiry during the course of a recent 
 excursion in Switzerland. I thought at first that 
 what I had to say would have been comprised 
 in three letters at farthest ; but the matter has 
 insensibly grown under my hands into the bulk of 
 a small volume. 
 
 The inhabitants of the twenty-two Cantons of 
 Switzerland are interesting, on every ground, to 
 the general intelligent public of Europe. But 
 to one whose studies lie in the contemplation 
 and interpretation of historical phenomena, they 
 are especially instructive — partly from the many 
 specialities and differences of race, language, 
 religion, civilization, wealth, habits, &c., which 
 distinguish one part of the population from an- 
 other, comprising between the Rhine and the 
 Alps a miniature of all Europe, and exhibiting 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 the fifteenth century in immediate juxtaposition 
 with the nineteenth — partly from the free and 
 unrepressed action of the people, which brings 
 out such distinctive attributes in full relief and 
 contrast. To myself in particular, they present 
 an additional ground of interest, from a certain 
 political analogy (nowhere else to be found in 
 Europe) with those who prominently occupy my 
 thoughts, and on the history of whom I am still 
 engaged — the ancient Greeks. 
 
 In listening not only to the debates in the Diet, 
 but also to the violent expressions of opposite 
 sentiment manifested throughout the country dur- 
 ing the present summer, I felt a strong impulse 
 to understand how such dispositions had arisen ; 
 to construe the present in its just aspect as a 
 sequel to the past — and to comprehend that past 
 itself in conjunction with the feelings which 
 properly belong to it, not under the influence 
 of feelings belonging to the present. The actual 
 condition, and reasonable promise, of Swiss Federal 
 politics, were different in 1841 and 1844, and 
 have become again materially different in 1847: 
 we have to study each period partly in itself, 
 
PEEFACE. xi 
 
 partly with reference to that which preceded it, 
 and out of which it grew. 
 
 A man must have little experience of historical 
 phenomena to suppose that in any violent poli- 
 tical contention, all the right is likely to lie on 
 one side and all the wrong on the other. I have 
 not disguised my conviction that both the Swiss 
 parties have committed wrong, nor is my state- 
 ment likely to give satisfaction to either of them : 
 to shew the prolific power of wrong deeds in 
 generating their like, is in my judgment one of 
 the most important lessons of history. Whether 
 I have distributed praise and blame in right, pro- 
 portion, is a matter on which there is room for 
 difference of opinion ; but I shall at least help 
 my readers to conceive the main points of Swiss 
 political dispute in historical sequence, and along 
 with their concomitant circumstances. The Eng- 
 lish or French criticisms which I have as yet 
 seen, rarely attempt to do this ; yet without it no 
 criticism can be either equitable or instructive. 
 
 Tn regard to the future, I am sparing of pre- 
 dictions. Amidst phenomena so complicated, so 
 full of reciprocal excitement, and so little amenable 
 
xii PEEFACE. 
 
 to precedent as those which Switzerland now 
 exhibits, a foreigner can do nothing more than 
 put together the past in order to interpret the 
 present. The business of prediction, as well as 
 that of counsel and guidance, he must leave to 
 natives ; and deeply indeed is it to be wished 
 that the Swiss leaders may shew themselves at 
 the actual crisis not incompetent to these lofty 
 functions. 
 
 G. G. 
 
 London, Odoher 14, 1847. 
 
POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND, 
 
 Letter I. 
 
 f^ept 4, 1847. 
 
 Of the numerous travellers who during the course 
 of every summer visit the magnificent scenery of 
 Switzerland, there are not many who interest 
 themselves in the political or social condition of 
 the people. But in the present year, this latter 
 topic has stood to an unusual degree in the fore- 
 ground ; and the proceedings of the Diet, which 
 has been sitting at Berne for the last two months, 
 have attracted more notice than ever that assem- 
 bly received before, not merely from visitors, but 
 from the general public of Europe. Such in- 
 creased notice is indeed abundantly justified by 
 the serious character which Swiss politics have 
 now assumed, and by the open collision, seemingly 
 but one degree removed from actual hostilities, 
 of a majority and minority of the Diet. On the 
 
 B 
 
2 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Lbttee I. 
 
 20th of last July, a majority, including twelve 
 Cantons and two Half-Cantons, came to the im- 
 portant vote, that the separate league of seven 
 Cantons, called the Sonderbund, was a contra- 
 vention of the Federal Pact ; directed its dissolu- 
 tion; and threw upon the Cantons composing it 
 the responsibility of all the consequences of dis- 
 obedience. Those Cantons — Lucerne, Friburg, 
 Schwytz, Unterwalden, Uri, Zug, and Yalais — 
 have not only protested against this decision, and 
 refused to obey it, but have even persisted, and 
 are still persisting, in military preparations, for 
 the purpose of repelling any attempt on the part 
 of the majority of the Diet to enforce its decision 
 by arms. As yet, no proposition for forcibly 
 executing the sentence has been submitted to the 
 Diet, whose sentence of condemnation against the 
 Sonderbund has been formally proclaimed, but 
 remains unexecuted. It has been followed up only 
 by one or two other resolutions against the Son- 
 derbund, adopted by the same majority*. A supply 
 of arms and ammunition, sent by the Austrians 
 from Lombardy to the Cantons of the Sonderbund, 
 but detained by the inhabitants of Tessin in its 
 
Letter I.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 3 
 
 passage through that Canton, has been placed 
 under sequestration by order of the Diet, in the 
 hands of the Grovernment of Tessin : the Cantons 
 of the Sonderbund have been formally admonished 
 to discontinue their military preparations : more- 
 over, a Commission has been nominated to examine 
 and communicate with such officers of the Federal 
 military force as hold commissions under the re- 
 fractory Cantons ; and a resolution has been passed 
 by the Diet, to dismiss them from the former 
 unless they voluntarily renounce the latter. Still, 
 no real progress is made towards the dissolution 
 of the Sonderbund ; which continues inflexible — 
 obstinate, and even insolent in the language of its 
 Deputies — and unremitting in its warlike pre- 
 parations. Presently the Diet will also pass a 
 resolution, by the same majority, directing or 
 inviting the expulsion of the Jesuits from Switzer- 
 land : but this resolution will meet with the same 
 angry opposition, and the same proclaimed dis- 
 obedience, as the others. 
 
 How long such open dissension can continue, or 
 by what steps it will be brought to a close, no 
 reasonable man will venture to pronounce. But 
 
 B 2 
 
4 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letteb I. 
 
 it is most certainly grave and menacing : it is 
 pregnant with the possibih'ty, not to say more, of 
 civil war in Switzerland, and with the further 
 possibility of foreign interference in that country. 
 Assuming even that such interference does not 
 take place, the sympathies of Europe are of no 
 mean account in reference to every individual 
 country; and it is therefore worth while to form 
 some rational estimate of the direction which those 
 sympathies ought to take. The causes of what 
 happens in a Swiss Diet are not a little compli- 
 cated : for that assembly represents the result of 
 what has been done and felt in each of the twenty- 
 two Cantons — each a little political world, distinct 
 from, though sympathising with, the rest. Swit- 
 zerland consists of twenty-two Cantons, each 
 having one vote in the Diet, though there is the 
 greatest inequality between them in wealth and 
 population; Berne containing about 430,000 in- 
 habitants, and Zurich about 230,000, while Uri 
 comprises only 15,000. Each Canton is inde- 
 pendent and sovereign, except in so far as it is 
 bound by the provisions of the Federal Pact, or 
 by resolutions of the Diet in fulfilment of and in 
 
Letter I.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 5 
 
 conformity with the Pact. Indeed, even this mul- 
 tiplicity of elements does not represent the full 
 complexity of Swiss political affairs : for three out 
 of the twenty-two Cantons — Bale, Appenzell, and 
 Unterwalden — are divided each into two Half- 
 Cantons, each Half-Canton sovereign and indepen- 
 dent, subject to the restriction above mentioned. 
 The two sections of Bale (town and country), and 
 of Appenzell (Inner-Rhoden and Ausser-Rhoden), 
 not only differ from each other on the most ma- 
 terial points, but are almost always politically 
 opposed ; and whenever they are so opposed, their 
 votes are of course neutralized in the Diet. So 
 multiform are the elements — not to mention the 
 many and important differences of race, religion, 
 language, wealthy civilization, habits, residence in 
 mountain, plain, town, or country, &c. — which go 
 to form political society among the 2,400,000 inha- 
 bitants of Switzerland: of whom about 900,000 
 are Catholics, the remainder Protestants. 
 
 To trace the working of these various causes, 
 which have co operated more or less to form the 
 majority called Radical, and the minority called 
 Conservative, in the present Diet, is no very easy 
 
6 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter I. 
 
 problem even for a native : a foreigner can only 
 seize the principal and prominent circumstances. 
 There is, however, one source of error which espe- 
 cially deserves to be pointed out, and of which 
 more will be said presently — that of estimating 
 the character and tendencies of Swiss parties by 
 the names which they bear of Radical and Conser- 
 vative, These names have now got a footing in 
 every language of Europe, and have very strong 
 feelings of esteem or hatred associated with them ; 
 they are nowise correct as designations of the two 
 Federal parties prominently opposed in Switzer- 
 land, and of. the points at issue between them : 
 yet foreigners easily transfer to that country the 
 established sentiments or established interests 
 which they have contracted towards the parties so 
 called at home. This is especially necessary to be 
 borne in mind when we read the speeches delivered 
 by M. Guizot in the French Chamber, or the 
 articles in the Journal des Debats, which have so 
 wide a circulation in Europe. Whoever judges of 
 Switzerland from these sources, will carry away an 
 impression not merely partial and inaccurate, but 
 in many respects the direct reverse of real truth. 
 
Letter I.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 7 
 
 M. Guizot speaks from the French tribune the 
 language of an exaggerated Swiss party politician : 
 omit the name and translate his speech into G-er- 
 man, it might pass for one of the bitter invectives 
 of M. Meyer, the Deputy of Lucerne in the Swiss 
 Diet, against Eadical spirit and aggressions. The 
 Journal des Dehats and other French journals are 
 written in the same vein : to them, as well as to 
 M. Guizot, it is sufficient if they find an opportunity 
 of inflaming their readers against Radical prin- 
 ciples, and of impressing upon them the dignity 
 of Conservative politics sanctified by religious zeal. 
 With M. Guizot^ probably, such discourses are 
 more than an ebullition of feeling : they are also 
 a useful manoeuvre in reference to his own posi- 
 tion in France. For he owes that position not to 
 any esteem or confidence entertained towards him 
 by the French people — still less to any hopes 
 which they feel of progress or improvement under 
 his Ministry; but chiefly to the fears which the 
 French electoral body have been taught to enter- 
 tain of Radicalism. And the menaces, so offensive 
 and indecent in the mouth of any foreign Power, 
 which he addresses to the Swiss Diet, are intended 
 
8 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter I. 
 
 to tell quite as much upon French Conservatives 
 and French Eadicals as upon Lucerne and 
 Berne. 
 
 Two points deserve particular notice in the 
 bitter animadversions which M. Gruizot and the 
 French Conservative journals pour forth against 
 the recent course of Swiss politics. 
 
 1. They dwell continually, and almost exclu- 
 sively, upon two facts in the recent history of that 
 country — the invasion of the Canton of Lucerne, 
 in the end of 1844, as well as in the beginning of 
 1845_, by bands of volunteers from the other Can- 
 tons, called the Corps Francs — and the separate 
 league of seven Cantons, called the Sonderbund, 
 which is represented as a consequence of this 
 unjust invasion, and resorted to only as a means 
 of defence. 
 
 2. They depict the present majority of twelve 
 Cantons and two Half-Cantons, which has just 
 pronounced the Sonderbund to be unconstitutional 
 and directed its dissolution, as a majority bent 
 upon complete subversion of the Cantonal inde- 
 pendent action throughout Switzerland, and upon 
 the transfer of the twenty-two separate Govern- 
 
Letter I.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 9 
 
 ments now existing, to one central and united 
 republic at Berne. To add to the terrors of this 
 impending republic, it is described as likely to 
 become aggressive and formidable to all its neigh- 
 bours ; since the 2,400,000 souls which the whole 
 country contains would be so immensely strength- 
 ened (we are told) by this concentration, that they 
 would forthwith overstep their own rights and 
 limits, for the purpose and with the power of 
 imposing unjust conditions on others. 
 
 Such are the two points principally insisted upon 
 by M. Guizot, and many of the leading critics on 
 Swiss affairs. In regard to the first of the two, 
 they mislead by isolating one single event and pre- 
 senting it apart from its preceding and accom- 
 panying circumstances : in regard to the second, 
 they mislead yet more, by imputing to a great 
 party in Switzerland, designs which none of those 
 who really represent that party have given the 
 least ground for suspecting, and by holding forth 
 as likely to be accomplished a centralization to 
 which all present tendencies stand irrevocably 
 opposed. 
 
 That there may be persons in Switzerland, and 
 
10 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letteb I. 
 
 those too not among the least patriotic of her 
 citizens, who wish that such a centralization or 
 something approaching to it could be established, 
 is probable - enough : and it is not easy to see 
 why any impartial foreigner, who desires nothing 
 but the tranquillity, happiness, and improvement 
 of the country, should denounce them for it; 
 although it may suit the purpose of a French 
 Minister, who wishes to see Switzerland at all 
 times open to attack, to foment the maximum of 
 disunion. Among the 2,400_,000 people who dwell 
 between the Lakes of Constance and Greneva, there 
 are now twenty-five independent establishments, 
 each fitted up (better or worse) for the complete 
 execution of all the purposes of government. 
 In the time of Aristotle, and with his political 
 experience, such minute subdivision would have 
 appeared an indispensable condition of freedom 
 and responsibility : but in the present state of 
 political knowledge, it is surely neither crime 
 nor folly to conceive that all the great purposes 
 of society might be better fulfilled by locally- 
 chosen governing bodies subordinate to one com- 
 mon centre. And this is the ground actually 
 
Letteb I.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. H 
 
 taken by some of the French Opposition journals 
 against M. Gruizot: they seem to admit that the 
 Swiss poUtical leaders do contemplate an entire 
 subordination of the Cantonal to the Central 
 Government, and defend them in this supposed 
 project. Both the attack and the defence are 
 here founded on the same mistaken supposition : 
 still the defence is perfectly well grounded to 
 this extent — that if the Swiss leaders really did 
 entertain the project imputed to them by the 
 French Minister, and were striving to bring 
 their own people to the same view, they would 
 in nowise deserve those bitter denunciations which 
 he has poured forth against them, though the 
 particular circumstances of the case might render 
 it inadmissible and impracticable. 
 
 Wise or foolish as the conception of a single 
 or unitary Grovernment, embracing all Switzer- 
 land, may be in itself, it is not the conception 
 entertained either by the leading politicians or 
 by any one of the leading Cantons in that country. 
 Revision of the Federal Pact is indeed what they 
 strongly insist upon : but to revise the Pact is 
 one thing — to constitute an unitary or single 
 
12 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter I. 
 
 Government for the administration of all Switzer- 
 land is another. It may safely be pronounced 
 that a revision of the Pact, in such manner as 
 to give too much power to the Central Govern- 
 ment and to weaken the Cantonal Governments 
 too much, is of all contingencies the most im- 
 probable ; though there are so many French and 
 English critics who represent this as a plan 
 already organized by an oppressive majority in 
 Switzerland, and only to be arrested by foreign 
 interference. Of the two extreme and opposite 
 political changes conceivable — first, complete 
 fusion of the Cantonal Governments into one 
 common and unitary Government, or secondly, 
 complete disruption of the Pact and formation of 
 several Governments out of it, altogether distinct 
 from each other — the latter is decidedly the least 
 improbable : nay, if we look at the present unyield- 
 ing temper and excitement of the Swiss parties it 
 might almost appear the least improbable solution 
 of all, in a problem so essentially embroiled. 
 
 The tendencies of the present time, indeed, are 
 not to strengthen the authority of the Diet over 
 the Cantons, but to reduce it still lower — from 
 
Letter I.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 13 
 
 extreme weakness down to absolute nullity. The 
 conduct of the recusant minority in this present 
 affair of the Sonderbund, and still more the argu- 
 ments by which they defend that conduct, amount 
 to nothing less than a complete nullification of all 
 imperative authority in the Pact, even as to its 
 most positive and specific provisions. Assuredly, 
 if there is to be any federation at all, one of its 
 most essential provisions must be, that the mem- 
 bers shall contract no separate alliances among 
 themselves injurious or dangerous to the entire 
 confederacy. The sixth Article of the Federal 
 Pact distinctly says — " No alliance shall be formed 
 among the several Cantons, detrimental either 
 to the general confederacy or to the rights of 
 other Cantons :" so that, under the terms of this 
 Article, the competence of the Diet to entertain 
 and pronounce upon the legality of the Sonder- 
 bund cannot be impugned except by arguments 
 which go to deny its competence universally. 
 Now a majority of the Diet has pronounced the 
 Sonderbund to be illegal and an infringement 
 of the Pact : to which the members of the Sondei*- 
 bund reply by a protest and a peremptory refusal 
 
14 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter I. 
 
 to obey. Such proclaimed resistance, by so many 
 Cantons at once, is of 'itself the most fatal blow 
 which has yet been aimed at the authority of the 
 Diet : and the dissolving effect of this practical 
 measure is still further enlarged by the arguments 
 upon which it is made to rest. " We maintain," 
 say the Cantons of this separate league or Sonder- 
 bund, " that our league is not at variance with 
 the provisions of the Pact ; it is purely defensive, 
 and has been rendered necessary by aggressions 
 on the part of other Cantons or their citizens 
 against the Grovernment of Lucerne : we intend 
 no evil to others, if they do not attack us ; and 
 we shall maintain our league as long as our own 
 security seems to us to require." To employ such 
 arguments as these while the question was under 
 discussion in the Diet, and for the chance of 
 influencing the decision of that body, was their 
 incontestable right: but they still continue to 
 hold the same language, and act upon the same 
 principle, even after the Diet has decided against 
 them. When it is urged that to apply the general 
 provisions of the Pact to a particular case, and 
 to decide judicially whether the case does or does 
 
Letter I.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. . 15 
 
 not fall under a rule there laid down, is among 
 the most indispensable attributes of the Diet — the 
 Sonderbund meet this proposition by an unqua- 
 lified negative. " We are sovereign Cantons," 
 they say, "and recognise no authority in the 
 majority of the Diet to apply or interpret the 
 Pact against a recusant minority ; we admit no 
 right to interpret the Pact except by the unani- 
 mous decision of the twenty-two sovereign Can- 
 tons ; we construe the sixth Article of the Pact 
 in a manner perfectly consistent with our separate 
 league, and we shall therefore, as sovereign 
 Cantons, continue to act upon our own construc- 
 tion of it, though a majority of the Cantons may 
 decide otherwise." Here we find an act of avowed 
 and unqualified resistance, sustained by arguments 
 which amount to a complete negation of the 
 authority of the Diet over individual Cantons in 
 any case whatever — to a complete nullification 
 of the Diet as a body acting by its majority. 
 For if the decision of the majority is not to 
 hold good against that of one or a few Cantons, 
 as to the judicial application of an express article 
 of the Pact to a given particular case, it is plainly 
 
16 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter I. 
 
 of no binding authority on any question which 
 may be conceived. The Federal Pact, in this 
 reading, becomes a mere alliance of independent 
 and sovereign States, each of them at liberty to 
 put their own construction upon it and break 
 it whenever they choose — of course at the hazard 
 of war, if contradiction or provocation assume 
 a character sufficiently grave. 
 
 Such is the state of public law in Switzerland, 
 as proclaimed and now acted upon by one-third 
 of the twenty-two Cantons^ and tacitly sanctioned 
 by a minority, more or less considerable, in the 
 others ; and it is strange, in the face of this 
 obvious fact, to hear the French Minister pro- 
 claim, that the power to be feared in Switzerland 
 is, an overruling and oppressive interference on 
 the part of the Diet, with an extinction of Can- 
 tonal independence ! Never before has the judicial 
 competence of the Diet been so glaringly defied 
 in practice, and so explicitly denied in theory, 
 as in the present year ; and this too by a very 
 powerful minority. That minority, in the excite- 
 ment of party contest, may perhaps in part really 
 believe themselves to be the defenders of Cantonal 
 
Letter I.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 17 
 
 rights unjustly assailed by their opponents ; but 
 among them are those who, knowing the case 
 too well to believe in the reality of such danger, 
 also know that the pretence of such belief is 
 the most popular of all topics in reference to 
 Swiss feeling. 
 
 It is in fact impossible to study attentively 
 the march of Swiss affairs without seeing, that 
 what really lies next to the hearts of the people 
 is, their Cantonal and communal system ; and 
 that, although on some particular questions con- 
 nected with Swiss Federal politics, there may 
 be rare and temporary moments of excitement — 
 although there is a growing desire, and a very 
 rational desire, for better-assured nationality in 
 the event of foreign danger — nevertheless, the 
 idea of interference on the part of the Diet in 
 Cantonal affairs is habitually unfamiliar and re- 
 pulsive. This is not less true of the Cantons 
 called Radical than of the Cantons called Con- 
 servative — in both of them alike, the citizens 
 look for protection, as well as for command, to 
 their p^vn Cantonal authority. Nothing can be 
 more memorable, throughout the history of the 
 
 c 
 
18 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter I. 
 
 past years, than the uniform indecision and im- 
 potence of the Diet; indeed, one reason why so 
 much has been said about terrible projects of 
 over-centralization at the present moment, is, that 
 now, almost for the first time, a majority of the 
 Diet has been found to take a decisive resolution 
 on an important subject. Throughout the past 
 history of the Diet, we find discussion after dis- 
 cussion without determination ; no majority at 
 all being found to agree in any — sometimes not 
 even in a negative or vote of rejection. To 
 prevail upon twelve Cantons to agree in any 
 positive vote, has been generally found a difficulty 
 all but insurmountable. Among the many dif- 
 ferent questions put to the vote, those which 
 are the most trying and important do not often 
 obtain a majority ; because several Deputies abstain 
 altogether from voting, some reserving to them- 
 selves the liberty of voting, subsequently, when 
 they shall have asked and received instructions 
 from their Canton. It is to be remarked that 
 every Deputy present votes, not agreeably to 
 any opinion of his own, but to instructions 
 received from the G-reat Council, or supreme 
 
Letter I.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 19 
 
 legislative authority, in his own Canton — which 
 may sometimes, though this does not often happen, 
 confer upon him plenary powers of self-decision 
 upon some given subject ; but, excepting in these 
 cases, the instructions, prepared in each separate 
 Canton, include conditions or adopt modifications 
 different from each other, which usually prevent 
 any number of Deputies from concurring in one 
 substantive proposition. Speaking from his in- 
 structions, as a counsel speaks from a brief, a 
 Deputy may sustain his opinion by powerful 
 arguments — and the speeches of some of them 
 are eloquent and creditable; but his conclusion 
 is prescribed to him before the meeting of the 
 Diet. And in fact, the forms and language of 
 the Diet consider each Deputy as an ambassador 
 from his Canton : he is always styled " Der 
 
 Gresandte des Standes ," by the President, 
 
 when inviting the opinions of every one at the 
 table seriatim^ and most frequently so styled 
 throughout the course of discussion. The rela- 
 tions of the Deputy to his Canton are doubtless 
 those of a delegate bound by instructions ; yet 
 the relations of the Cantons towards each other 
 
 c 2 
 
20 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Lettee I. 
 
 are not those of independent States, but of States 
 which have bound themselves in confederacy to 
 obey the provisions of a solemn and common 
 Pact, and have formally constituted the body 
 called the Diet to uphold and enforce the Pact. 
 
 What the Cantons mostly stand chargeable with 
 is, the feeling of Cantonal selfishness — each being 
 careless of the interests of other Cantons as com- 
 pared with its own : at least, the tendency to error 
 is almost uniformly in this direction. Thus, when 
 we follow the discussions of the Diet, not upon the 
 present embittered questions of Federal politics, 
 but upon internal taxes, tolls, or commercial regu- 
 lations in the various Cantons, which fall to a 
 certain extent within its competence — we find this 
 feeling of Cantonal egoism not less prevalent in 
 the Radical Canton of Vaud than in the Sonder- 
 bund Cantons of Lucerne and Valais. During the 
 past winter and spring, the suffering from dearth 
 and high prices of provisions being very severe in 
 all parts of Switzerland, each of these three Can- 
 tons made regulations either prohibiting or imped- 
 ing the export of provisions to other Cantons, — a 
 proceeding contrary to the Federal Pact. This 
 
Letter T.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 21 
 
 subject being broiigbt on for discussion in the Diet 
 shortly after the passing of the vote to dissolve 
 the Sonderbund, the Eadical Deputy of Yaud 
 (M. Druey, a coarse but animated and emphatic 
 speaker, not very unlike the late Mr. O'Connell) 
 was found in the same line of defence as the 
 Ultra-Catholic M. de Oourten, Deputy of the 
 Yalais — the most outspoken and even insolent 
 among all the persons assembled. Whoever 
 imagines that the Eadical Cantons are disposed to 
 be liberal in the sacrifice of Cantonal independence 
 to Federal supremacy, would have been unde- 
 ceived if he had listened to the speech of M. Druey 
 — seasoned, moreover, with many sneers against 
 free trade : he employed one familiar comparison 
 which illustrates the relation of the Cantonal to 
 the Federal feelings throughout Switzerland — 
 " My shirt is nearer to me than my coat." In the 
 course of another discussion, in which the Conser- 
 vative Canton of Valais was proved to be uphold- 
 ing a scheme of tolls not only at variance with the 
 Pact, but also without that formal communication, 
 in respect to tolls imposed, which every Canton 
 is bound to furnish to the Federal authority, the 
 
22 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter I 
 
 Deputy of Yalais, M. de Courten, went so far as to 
 tell the Diet flatly — "Nous n'y renoncerons ja- 
 mais." So jealous and irritable is the sentiment 
 of Cantonal independence on both sides, even in 
 matters where the rights of conscience are noway 
 concerned, and where the matter in dispute is 
 nothing greater than the raising of revenue in one 
 way rather than in another. To show the diffe- 
 rent cross-divisions among the Cantons, I may add, 
 that Neufchatel, which is highly Conservative in 
 general politics, and makes almost common cause 
 with the Sonderbund, though not a member of it, 
 is at the same time extremely liberal and right- 
 minded on questions of trade and transit. 
 
 If we except the arrangements for the Federal 
 military force, — for the relations between Switzer- 
 land and foreign countries, and for some few ques- 
 tions of toll and transit — on all other points the 
 Cantonal Governments may be said to act without 
 any positive interference on the part of the Diet. 
 Doubtless the Pact, with its solemn recognition of 
 a common country and brotherly obligation be- 
 tween the Cantons, exercises a considerable moral 
 influence over their proceedings ; and the meet- 
 
Letter I.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 23 
 
 ings of the Diet, in spite of the feebleness of its 
 coercive sanction, are indispensably necessary to 
 keep alive and strengthen this moral influence. 
 Hence arises a partial disposition, feebler than 
 might be desired, yet still precious, to adapt their 
 legislation to the interests of each other — and a 
 facility for special agreements between them hav- 
 ing this object in view. Yet that the Pact itself 
 ought also to be modified, so as to enlarge the 
 attributions of the Diet and impart to the country 
 a more efficient and better protected nationality, 
 has long been a widespread conviction in Switzer- 
 land, and seems as a general position not denied 
 even by the Government of Lucerne ; though that 
 Canton, as well as the other Cantons of the Sonder- 
 bund, protests against attempting to alter it at the 
 present time and under present feelings. And the 
 Diet itself has on several occasions entertained the 
 general idea of revising the Pact, though no speci- 
 fic plan has ever found approval : it has again in 
 its present session, by the same majority which 
 pronounced the Sonderbund to be illegal, decided 
 that the Pact required alteration, and that a Com- 
 mittee should be appointed to make a report on 
 
24 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter I. 
 
 the best means of attaining this end. It is re- 
 markable, that every one of the Deputies who 
 formed this majority, disclaimed in the most em- 
 phatic manner the idea imputed to them, of sur- 
 rendering Cantonal independence and aiming at 
 an unitary Government in Switzerland. This 
 Committee, composed of all the Deputies of the 
 majority — it could hardly be otherwise composed, 
 since the Deputies of the Sonderbund refused to 
 take part in the proceeding — are now assembled ; 
 and it will remain to be seen whether they can 
 agree in recommending any positive scheme of 
 real importance and efiSciency. One effect can 
 hardly fail to ensue from their report — a complete 
 refutation of that charge of anti-Cantonal tendency 
 which is so loudly urged against them by the 
 Sonderbund and its foreign partisans. But whether 
 these Deputies will all be able to concur in any 
 specific plan of reform, with due respect to this 
 limit — still more, whether their respective Cantons 
 (in each of which there is a Conservative minority 
 ready to raise opposition on any plausible ground, 
 and in many of which there are Catholics more or 
 less open to the intrigues of Lucerne) will all 
 
Letter I.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 25 
 
 concur in adopting their recommendation — must 
 remain for the future to decide : should mattei 
 proceed even so far as this, there will still remain 
 the Sonderbund, a large minority who will oppose 
 anything and everything. Yet, assuming such 
 unqualified repugnance on the part of the Sonder- 
 bund for the present to continue, still, if the exist- 
 ing majority of Cantons, comprising four-fifths of 
 the population, and more than four-fifths of the 
 intelligence and wealth of Switzerland, should 
 agree in sanctioning any definite reform of the 
 Federal Pact — above all, if a sentiment should 
 grow up among them of deeper attachment and 
 more willing submission to the Pact so improved, 
 than that which is felt towards the Pact as it now 
 stands — a great point will be gained for the future 
 march, organization, and tranquillity of Switzer- 
 land. Berne and Zurich, the first and second 
 among the Cantons in respect of population and 
 power, are on this occasion in cordial co-operation, 
 — a rare conjunction, since jealousy between these 
 two powerful Cantons is among the standing phe- 
 nomena of Swnss politics. And this increases 
 materially the chance both of arriving at some 
 
26 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letteb I. 
 
 definite result in respect to Federal reform, and of 
 repressing disorderly ebullitions amidst the con- 
 flicting elements with which Switzerland is now 
 disturbed. 
 
 In touching upon Swiss affairs, the first impulse 
 of an impartial observer is to repel those false 
 charges which M. Guizot — with a looseness of 
 speech altogether unbecoming in a statesman of his 
 position — has advanced against the majority of 
 the Diet. I shall in a future letter say something 
 respecting that series of preliminary events, one 
 growing out of another, which has brought about 
 the present serious conflict of parties in Switzer- 
 land. Though it cannot for a moment be con- 
 tended that all the right is on one side and all the 
 wrong on the other, yet, if we look for the great 
 cause both of mischief in the past and of danger 
 for the future, we shall find it in the statesmen, 
 miscalled Conservative, who are now at the head 
 of the Government of Lucerne. 
 
Letter IT.] POLTTTCS OF SWITZEKLAND. 27 
 
 Letter II. 
 
 Sept. 11, 1847. 
 
 The Federal Pact under which the Swiss Cantons 
 now live has become unpopular not merely from 
 its own intrinsic defects and ambiguities, but also 
 from the time and circumstances of its origin. 
 It was framed in 1815, in place of the constitu- 
 tion called the Act of Mediation; which, having 
 been introduced and guaranteed by Napoleon_, had 
 fallen with the extinction of his power. It was 
 the product of a time when the patrician families 
 in politics and Ultramontane influences in religion 
 were in a state of triumphant reaction against the 
 restraints imposed upon them from 1798 down- 
 ward: both of them seconded by the Allied 
 Powers at the Congress of Vienna ; who, how- 
 ever, to their credit be it spoken, mitigated on 
 several points the exorbitant pretensions of the 
 revived native oligarchies. Since 1830, almost 
 all the Cantonal Governments have undergone 
 a capital change^ and have become thoroughly 
 
28 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter II. 
 
 popular : so that the Federal Pact remains as the 
 only unaltered relic of an odious time. In 1832, 
 the majority of the Diet recognised the necessity 
 of modifying it, and named a Committee for the 
 purpose, of which M. Rossi of Geneva was the 
 reporter. Their scheme of Federal reform — 
 maintaining intact the Cantonal sovereignty and 
 equal representation in the Diet, but remodelling 
 the Federal authority, and introducing in every 
 way valuable improvements — was signed by the 
 Deputies of fourteen Cantons (including the three 
 directing Cantons of Berne^ Zurich, and Lucerne), 
 and recommended by them earnestly to the ac- 
 ceptance of Switzerland. Unhappily for the 
 country, it was rejected; chiefly from the reso- 
 lute opposition of the primitive and Conservative 
 Cantons, who would endure no change at all — 
 partly from the indifference, rather than the 
 opposition, of extreme politicians on the other side, 
 who wished for something more comprehensive 
 and symmetrical. 
 
 Prior to the year 1798, the condition of a Swiss 
 Canton was that of a great feudal lord, with an 
 aggregate of many separate seigneurial properties, 
 
Letter II.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 29 
 
 acquired partly by conquest, partly by purchase : 
 in the town Cantons — such as Berne, Solenre, 
 Basle, Zurich, &c. — the town was the lord, the 
 country districts were attached to it as dependent 
 properties : in the rural Cantons — such as Uri, 
 Schwytz, &c. — it was an aggregate of rural and 
 democratical communes which exercised lordship 
 over other dependent communes in their neigh- 
 bourhood. This system of profound political 
 inequality, broken up between 1798 and 1815, 
 was revived to a great degree in the latter year : 
 in the town Cantons, the Government again fell 
 into the hands of the citizens of the town, and 
 was even confined to a small number of persons 
 among those citizens ; while the country districts 
 were either essentially subject, or had a share in 
 it little more than nominal. Most of the Cantons 
 had their two Councils — Great and Small Council ; 
 the former legislative, the latter executive : but 
 the real powers of government were all exercised 
 by the Small or Executive Council, while the Great 
 Council had neither initiative, nor independent 
 play of its own, nor publicity of debate ; but was 
 in practice a mere acquiescent adjunct of the 
 
30 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter IL 
 
 Executive, rather than a check upon it. In the 
 Catholic Cantons, the reaction of 1815 took the 
 form of a devoted Ultramontanism ; the governing 
 few surrendering themselves to the inspirations of 
 the Papal Nuncio with a compliance not paralleled 
 in any part of Europe, and forming a strong 
 contrast with the resolute independence of the 
 old Catholic Cantons before 1798 in maintaining 
 their civil authority against the Court of Rome. 
 In the Canton of Yalais, this Ultramontanism 
 reached its maximum ; the priests being subject 
 to a special jurisdiction for their persons, and 
 enjoying immunity from taxation as to their pro- 
 perties, in a manner more suitable to the fifteenth 
 century than to the nineteenth. The primitive 
 Cantons of Uri, Unterwalden, and Schwytz (the 
 latter with modifications in consequence of the 
 unequal relation of what were called the outer 
 districts), retained their old primitive constitution 
 unchanged : the Landesgemeinde, or general 
 assembly of all the adult citizens, meets once in 
 the year, has the exclusive power of making laws 
 when needed, and elects the administrators re- 
 quired, who are very seldom changed. Such form 
 
Letter II.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 31 
 
 of Democracy is universally acceptable to the 
 people of these Cantons : though, when taken in 
 conjunction with their dull and stationary intelli- 
 gence, their bigotry, and their pride in bygone 
 power and exploits, it works in practice as a mere 
 routine of power, practically secret and irre- 
 sponsible, in the hands of a small number of old 
 families ; very different from the Canton of Ap- 
 penzell Ausser Rhoden, where substantially the 
 same form of government prevails among a popu- 
 lation industrious, orderly, intelligent, and public- 
 spirited, far beyond the average of Switzerland. 
 
 These Swiss Grovernments, all springing out of 
 the reaction of 1815, acted in harmony with each 
 other as to general politics ; though even then, in 
 questions of fiscal and internal administration, the 
 spirit of Cantonal egoism was not less rife than it 
 is at present. Moreover, they were all, in the 
 proper sense of the word. Conservative Grovern- 
 ments — founded upon privilege and exclusion of 
 the mass of the people from political power — 
 satisfied to remain stationary in this system, doing 
 nothing in the way of correction or amelioration, 
 and leaving the separate communes in the Cantons 
 
32 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter II. 
 
 to their own management or mismanagement ; but 
 prudent in respect to their finances, and true to 
 the old Swiss idea of keeping a public fund in 
 hand bearing interest. During the last years be- 
 fore" 1830, however, a public feeling was gradually 
 growing up against these oligarchies ; so that even 
 before the French Revolution of July, the people 
 of some Cantons had begun to demand, and that 
 of Tessin had actually obtained, a measure of 
 popular reform. But the Revolution of July 
 roused the public mind throughout nearly all 
 Switzerland : during the few years following, the 
 Governments of Berne, Zurich, Argau, Soleure, 
 Lucerne, Friburg, Schaffhausen, Thurgau, St. 
 G-allen, and Griarus, became all popularized ; the 
 changes being carried without bloodshed, but by 
 the same sort of intimidation which, in 1832, 
 pushed the English Reform Bill through the 
 House of Lords — meetings and demonstrations of 
 sentiment such as the actual Governments were 
 unable to resist. These movements — directed to 
 obtain recognition of the sovereignty of the people, 
 with an elective franchise exercised by the people 
 alike in town and country — were properly Radical 
 
Letter II.] POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 33 
 
 movements, just as the party in power to which 
 they were opposed was Conservative ; it was then 
 that the denominations Radical and Conservative 
 became current in reference to the two opposing 
 parties ; and they have continued to be so appli'ed 
 after their fitness and appropriate meaning had to 
 a great degree ceased. 
 
 During the years immediately after 1830, the 
 Governments of most of the Cantons became thus 
 thoroughly popularized. The privilege of town 
 over country which had been the characteristic 
 mark of the previous oligarchies, was first dimi- 
 nished and has been subsequently effaced ; for 
 though in the first changes an artificial preponder- 
 ance was still left to the town in the number of 
 its representatives compared with those of the 
 country, such preponderance has since been an- 
 nulled, and the suffrage has become practically 
 equal and universal. Moreover, the Great or 
 Legislative Council was exalted to be the control- 
 ling superior of the Executive ; it debated publicly, 
 under the stimulus of an active press, with meet- 
 ings, and all the exaggerated movement of a 
 vigorous political life. The preceding Conserva- 
 
34 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter II. 
 
 tive functionaries were replaced by men of the 
 movement and either retired from pubhc life or 
 were thrown into opposition. To regain power as 
 avowed Conservatives, or champions of the old 
 privileges, was impracticable; they were obliged 
 to accept and work under the popular forms, by ap- 
 pealing to some feeling in the public mind ; and it 
 was in this manner that religion came to be invoked 
 as a weapon of excitement for political purposes. 
 
 The first memorable manifestation of this new 
 phase of Swiss political life took place on the 6th 
 of September, 1839, at Zurich ; where the Eadical 
 Government was violently overthrown, in conse- 
 quence of their nomination of Dr. Strauss to a 
 chair of theology. Not only did the political 
 opposition in the Council, the public, and the 
 press, raise the most vehement outcry against this 
 appointment, but the clergy (most of whom had 
 received their appointments from, and sympa- 
 thized with, the prior Government before 1830) 
 employed their pulpits in the most direct and 
 exciting manner against the Government ; which 
 was obliged to give way, and cancel the nomina- 
 tion. Had the matter stopped here, no one 
 
Letter IL] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 35 
 
 (whether assenting with their opinions or not) 
 would have had any right to blame them. But 
 having gained this point, they found the path too 
 promising not to push on farther. They organised 
 what were called Committees of Faith, composed 
 of clergymen as well as laymen ; preached insur- 
 rection throughout the villages adjoining Zurich ; 
 prevailed upon a large number of the rural popu- 
 lation to take up arms under the cry of " Eeligion 
 in danger," and marched into the town to put 
 down the Government by force. A clergyman 
 named Hirzel was actually at the head of these 
 armed assailants ; who overpowered the resistance 
 opposed to them, and drove the Executive Council 
 out of the city. One of the members of that 
 Council, Dr. Hegetschwyler, in endeavouring to 
 restore peace, was among those slain in the streets. 
 This violent revolution — in consequence of which 
 the Grovernment of Zurich passed entirely into the 
 hands of the politico-religious party (still called 
 Conservative) who had made it — took place at the 
 time when not only Zurich was presiding Canton 
 of the Confederation, but when the Diet was 
 actually assembled in the town. 
 
 D 2 
 
I 
 
 36 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter IL 
 
 If the religious feelings of the population ad- 
 mitted of being turned so profitably to party 
 account in a Protestant Canton like Zurich, much 
 more could they be so employed by Catholic 
 leaders and priests amidst a Catholic population. 
 And this was the movement which really took 
 place in those Catholic Cantons which had been 
 liberalized after 1830. In Lucerne and Soleure — 
 and even in Friburg, though to a less decided 
 extent — new and popular constitutions had been 
 promulgated in 1831, and the Government had 
 come into the hands of the leading Liberal politi- 
 cians in the Cantons. The old Conservative party 
 and the Ultramontane priests joined to form an 
 opposition against them : and though the Lucerne 
 Government had given no such plausible ground 
 to that opposition as the nomination of Dr. Strauss 
 furnished at Zurich, nevertheless the ascendency 
 of the Catholic hierarchy and clergy was suffici- 
 ently cramped by the constitution of 1831 to in- 
 duce them to raise the cry of danger to religion. 
 The year 1840 was the year predetermined for 
 submitting the constitutions of Lucerne, Soleure, 
 and Argau, to decennial revision. In the elections 
 
Letter II.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 37 
 
 whicli took place in the first half of that year 
 throughout the Canton of Lucerne, for choosing a 
 constituent body empowered to review and propose 
 amendments in the constitution of 1831, the party 
 called Conservative, with the Ultramontane clergy, 
 were completely successful, and a majority of the 
 constituent body were chosen in a sense hostile 
 both to the existing constitution and to the exist- 
 ing Grovernment. This change was effected in a 
 manner constitutional and pacific, very different 
 from the revolution at Zurich in the preceding 
 year ; but it was effected under a similar rallying 
 cry, and gave a triumph to reactionary influences 
 in both Cantons, which were at first in hearty 
 sympathy with each other. 
 
 The new constitution framed by these so-called 
 Conservatives, and accepted by the people of Lu- 
 cerne in 1841, was, however, no return to Con- 
 servatism as it had stood between 1815 and 1830. 
 On the contrary, it was a great deal more Eadical 
 (measuring Radicalism by the extent of direct 
 power given to the people) than that which the 
 Radicals themselves had framed in 183 L The 
 grand object was to enlarge the power of the 
 
38 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter IL 
 
 Catholic ecclesiastics, and to render them as com- 
 pletely independent of lay authority as the people 
 could be persuaded to tolerate. The constitution 
 of 1831 had been a representative Democracy : 
 that of 1841 (called by some Swiss writers a 
 Theocratic Ochlocracy) introduced, among other 
 changes, the popular veto, or power of submitting 
 to the vote of the people throughout the. Canton, 
 all laws passed by the Legislative Council. On 
 the supposition that this Council should pass any 
 law unacceptable to the priests, the priests had 
 thus a good chance of procuring its rejection by 
 the people. By enfeebling the lay ascendency, 
 more room was made for the ecclesiastical. To 
 illustrate the interest of the Catholic ecclesiastics 
 in this arrangement, we may mention, that in the 
 Canton of Yalais, where their power is greater 
 than in any other part of Europe, and where (as 
 has already been observed) they even enjoy com- 
 plete immunity from taxation for their large pro- 
 perty, as well as a special jurisdiction for their 
 persons — in the Yalais there subsists not merely 
 the popular veto, but even what is called the 
 referendum ; that is, every law passed by the Re- 
 
Letter II.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 39 
 
 presentative Council not only may, if required, be 
 submitted to the vote of the primary assemblies, 
 but it must in every case be so submitted, before 
 it acquires validity. 
 
 In the Canton of Zurich, the party which ac- 
 quired power by the revolution of 1839, lost it in 
 1845 by the quiet change of electoral majority — 
 partly from causes which will presently be ex- 
 plained, but partly also from the shame now felt 
 for the means whereby that revolution was accom- 
 plished. In the Canton of Lucerne, the case is 
 otherwise : the party who acquired power in 1841 
 have retained it ever since ; and to them, more 
 than to any other cause whatever, the subsequent 
 bitter dissensions of Switzerland, as well as the 
 present almost inextricable embarrassments in the 
 way of future union, are to be traced. They are 
 animated with an indefatigable Ultramontane zeal, 
 and have constituted themselves the central point 
 of Catholic Switzerland, for the protection and 
 extension of the political interests of that church. 
 Of the way in which this disposition has been 
 manifested more will be said in a future letter : 
 but it is impossible to comprehend the present 
 
40 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letteb II. 
 
 condition of Swiss politics unless we go back to 
 that alliance of clerical aggressiveness and ambi- 
 tion witb the employment of religion as a party 
 engine, by Conservative or Anti-Eadical politi- 
 cians, which first manifested itself in Zurich and 
 Lucerne in 1839 and 1840. 
 
Letter III.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 41 
 
 Letter III. 
 
 Sept. 18, 1847. 
 
 It has already been stated, in the preceding letter, 
 that the Cantons of Soleure and Argau were des- 
 tined to a revision of their political constitutions 
 (both established in 1831) during the course of 
 1840, in like manner with Lucerne. Soleure is 
 entirely Catholic : Argau is a Canton of parity, 
 divided between Protestants and Catholics in the 
 proportion of about three-fifths to two-fifths, but 
 recognising equality of political rights between the 
 two confessions. In both these Cantons Ultramon- 
 tane tendencies, the same as in Lucerne, had been 
 active since 1831 i "Catholic unions," formed 
 throughout most of the villages in these Cantons, 
 as well as in the Catholic portion of Berne, were 
 worked through public meetings and the press, as 
 well as by the pulpit and the confessional, to in- 
 culcate the religious duty incumbent on Catholics 
 of liberating the hierarchy from civil control, and 
 aggrandizing them at the expense of the civil 
 power ; and so impatient did this feeling become, 
 
42 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter m. 
 
 that the Cathohcs near Porentru in Berne, as well 
 as those in the neighbourhood of the convent of 
 Muri in Argau, actually rose in armed insurrec- 
 tion against their Governments in the course of 
 1835. Both movements were put down by mili- 
 tary force, and in both cases the parties concerned 
 were treated with remarkable mildness. Proceed- 
 ings by violence were thus repressed ; but the Ul- 
 tramontane agitation still continued, and reached 
 its height during the year 1840, appointed for 
 revision. On that occasion, the party might well 
 hope to obtain their purpose by pacific means ; 
 and as they had been completely successful in the 
 elections in Lucerne during the first half of that 
 year, so they were encouraged to anticipate the 
 same result in Soleure and Argau during the last 
 half. At that time there were eight monasteries 
 in the Canton of Argau — four of nuns and four of 
 monks; two of the latter, Muri and Wettengen, 
 both rich. These convents were, throughout 1840, 
 the great seats of the politico-religious agitation 
 then going forward. While the leaders from the 
 three Cantons held meetings and concerted their 
 measures there, the ample funds of the convents 
 
Letter III.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 43 
 
 were not spared for the movement ; which was 
 impressed upon the neighbouring population as a 
 religious cause in the strictest sense, and enforced 
 as well by the strongest appeals which the Catholic 
 faith and the authority of priests and monks could 
 furnish, as by unmeasured cries of irreligion against 
 opponents. 
 
 Notwithstanding these strenuous efforts, how- 
 ever, the movement was not successful either in 
 Soleure or in Argau. In both of them, the revising 
 assemblies proposed projects of amended constitu- 
 tions, containing neither that extension of Catholic 
 privilege as compared with Protestant, and Ca- 
 tholic church-power as compared with lay-power 
 — nor that introduction of direct appeal to the 
 people in veto or referendum — which the leaders 
 in this triple Cantonal agitation demanded : their 
 projects were submitted to the votes of the general 
 body of citizens, and sanctioned by large majori- 
 ties. Eespecting the Canton of Argau, two circum- 
 stances deserve notice — First, that the constitution 
 of 1831 (then under revision) not only placed the 
 Catholics under no political disadvantages as com- 
 pared with the Protestants, but even gave them 
 
44 ' POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Lbtteb III. 
 
 more than reasonable privileges ; for in spite of 
 their inferior numbers, and their still greater infe- 
 riority in wealth, industry, and intelligence, it 
 secured to them a numerical half of the members 
 of the Great Council. Secondly, although there 
 were thus no real political grievances of Catholics 
 to be removed, nevertheless the revising Council 
 was at first so influenced by the powerful agitation 
 going forward, that they proposed a scheme of 
 constitution in which a portion of the Catholic 
 claims were conceded ; and this scheme, on being 
 submitted to vote, was rejected, not merely by 
 Protestants, who thought the concessions unrea- 
 sonable, but also by the Catholics themselves, who 
 despised them as insufScient, and thought that a 
 second trial with persevering efforts would extort 
 more. But they were disappointed : the attempt 
 at conciliation having failed, the second scheme 
 which was proposed made no unreasonable conces- 
 sions to Catholic demands — proceeded upon reason 
 and justice — and was accepted by a large majority 
 of the citizens on the oth January, 1841. Even 
 this constitution, however (the one still subsisting), 
 though it did not grant the Catholic demands, is 
 
Letter III.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 45 
 
 still politically such as to favour Catholics at the 
 expense of Protestants. For the Argovian Exe- 
 cutive Council consists of nine members, of whom 
 four must be Catholics and four Protestants ; the 
 ninth may belong to either confession. The Su- 
 preme Judicial College is divided in the same 
 manner. Considering the inferiority of the Ca- 
 tholics in number (not to mention other points of 
 inferiority), the constitution, even as it now stands, 
 thus gives them justice and something more. It is 
 right to add that these revisions were, on almost 
 all points, material improvements on the constitu- 
 tions as they had stood before, both in Argau and 
 Soleure. 
 
 These two votes, both in Soleure and Argau, 
 took place nearly at the same time ; and the dis- 
 appointment as well as exasperation of those who 
 guided the systematic agitation which pervaded 
 both Lucerne and these two Cantons was extreme. 
 Not choosing to acquiesce in the pacific solution 
 which had gone against them, they had recourse 
 to arms : simultaneous risings took place both in 
 Soleure and Argau, with the instigation and con- 
 currence of the brother agitators in Lucerne. In 
 
46 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter III. 
 
 Argau, that rising took place among the CathoHc 
 population of the Southern districts, or Freien 
 Aemter, near to the borders of Lucerne : it was 
 in the immediate neighbourhood of the convents, 
 whose inmates fomented it in every way — their 
 buildings having been made places for the conceal- 
 ment of arms and munitions, their funds employed 
 to distribute money, wine, and brandy, among the 
 insurgents — and their armed servants and de- 
 pendents in the foremost ranks of the latter. The 
 purpose of the insurgents was to march directly 
 upon Aarau, the chief town of the Canton, to 
 overpower the Grovernment, and to erect their 
 own portion of Argau into a separate Canton 
 apart from the rest — a little Catholic neighbour 
 and appendage of Lucerne. They also did what 
 they could to provoke a simultaneous rising among 
 the Catholics of the Frickthal (on the northern 
 side of the Canton of Argau, near the left bank of 
 the Ehine, wherein are Laufenburg and Rhein- 
 felden). But these latter Catholics remained quiet, 
 and refused to take any part : they were not in 
 the neighbourhood or under the direct influence of 
 the convents. 
 
Letter III.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 47 
 
 It happened that both the G-overnment of 
 Soleure and that of Argau were strong enough 
 to suppress these dangerous risings: the latter, 
 however, only by the aid of troops from Berne. 
 The Catholic insurgents in the Freien Aemter 
 were put down and disarmed : the insurgent 
 leaders both from Soleure and Argau, as well as 
 the monks out of the implicated convents, fled to 
 Lucerne for refuge : some of the parties seized 
 were tried before the ordinary courts of justice, 
 but neither as to person nor property was any 
 extraordinary severity displayed towards them. 
 As a consequence of this insurrection the Argo- 
 vian Great Council was forthwith assembled, and 
 one of its first measures was to decree the sup- 
 pression of the convents. Provision for life was 
 made for the existing inmates : subject to this 
 deduction, all the remaining conventual properties 
 were consecrated to the religious worship, the 
 instruction, the charitable purposes, and general 
 welfare of the Catholic communes in the district 
 around — those very communes most of which had 
 just been engaged in actual insurrection. 
 
 That this suppression of convents sprang neither 
 
48 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter IIL 
 
 from rapacity nor from any feeling hostile to 
 Catholic citizens or the Catholic faith, is suifi- 
 ciently shown by the act of appropriation last 
 mentioned — the application made of the property : 
 moreover, the decree was proposed in Council by 
 one of the leading Catholics in Argau — Augustin 
 Keller, Director of the Catholic Seminary — and 
 received the support of many Catholic members. 
 There is, however, in the Federal Pact an Article 
 expressly relating to the convents, guaranteeing 
 their perpetuity as they were found in 1815, so 
 far as the Cantons in which they stand are con- 
 cerned : this twelfth Article is historically known 
 to have been inserted at the urgent instance of the 
 Papal Nuncio, contrary to the wish of most of the 
 Cantons even in their then reactionary spirit. 
 When the Diet assembled shortly after this trans- 
 action, the Canton of Lucerne preferred loud com- 
 plaints against the suppression of the Argovian 
 convents, as a robbery, an outrage on the Catholic 
 faith, and a direct violation of the twelfth Article 
 in the Pact ; the plenary application of which Lu- 
 cerne invoked at the hands of the Diet — total, un- 
 conditional, and compulsory restitution of all the 
 
Letter III.] POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 49 
 
 convents and their property. The Deputy of 
 Argau defended the act of his Canton by alleging 
 the flagrant rebellion of which the convents had 
 recently been accomplices and instigators : such 
 appeal to arms on their part had forfeited their 
 title to the Federal guarantee, and rendered their 
 continuance inconsistent with the security and 
 authority of the Cantonal Grovernment. Though 
 the sentiment of the majority of the Diet was 
 unfavourable to the recent proceeding of the 
 Canton of Argau, they nevertheless did not go 
 so far as to accede to the proposition of Lucerne : 
 the majority passed a resolution disapproving 
 generally what had been done by Argau, and 
 requiring that it should be modified, but without 
 expressly prescribing how. The Argovian Go- 
 vernment was constrained to conform to this sen- 
 timent, and offered to restore three out of the four 
 suppressed female convents : this compromise, 
 however, was not deemed sufficient to satisfy an 
 entire majority of the Diet, and the question 
 remained under long and angry debate during 
 the sittings both of 1841 and 1842 — no majority 
 being obtained for any positive conclusion. At 
 
50 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter III- 
 
 length, in the session of 1843, the Canton of 
 Argau enlarged its offer of compromise by pro- 
 posing to restore all the four suppressed female 
 convents. So enlarged, the offer was held to be 
 satisfactory by the majority of the Diet, and a 
 vote was passed in the session of 1843 to treat the 
 subject as settled : not without the strongest 
 protest, however, from a considerable minority, 
 including Lucerne. 
 
 The question of the Argovian convents was 
 thus closed, as far as the majority of the Diet 
 could close it ; but it has been revived in discussion 
 over and over again ; and even during the present 
 year M. Bernard Meyer, the Deputy of Lucerne, 
 pronounced it to have been the beginning of all 
 the present evils of Switzerland. He chose to call 
 it a beginning, and to forget the circumstances 
 which had preceded : and your correspondent, " A 
 G-enevese," in inquiring why the Diet did not 
 interfere to protect the property of the Argovian 
 convents, appears to treat the suppression as if it 
 were a simple question between a robber on one 
 side and a party robbed on the other ; though in 
 reality there is no incident with respect to which 
 
Letter III.] POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 51 
 
 it is more essential to observe his own admonition, 
 " not to state an affair as a mere question of law 
 without reference to antecedent circumstances." If 
 ever there was a proceeding which grew out of, 
 and was imperiously driven on by, antecedent 
 circumstances, it was the suppression of the con- 
 vents of Argau. In my judgment the Diet inter- 
 fered in enforcement of the Pact quite as far as 
 the case justified them, not to say farther : they 
 procured the restitution of four convents out of the 
 eight ; and if the " Genevese " thinks that they 
 ought to have taken up and executed the demand 
 of Lucerne for total and unconditional restitution, 
 I dissent from his view. To compel the restitution 
 of the convent of Muri — probably the instigator 
 of the insurrection among the Catholics around it 
 in 1835, and certainly the foremost among the 
 rebellious convents in 1841 — would have been a 
 blow not merely to Cantonal Government, but 
 also to all civil Government as compared with 
 ecclesiastical immunity, more worthy of the time 
 of Gregory the Seventh than of the nineteenth 
 century. In the Catholic kingdoms of Bavaria 
 and Austria, how many days' purchase would the 
 
 E 2 
 
52 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter III- 
 
 existence of a convent be worth if its monks were 
 strongly suspected of having raised a first insur- 
 rection, and certainly known to have raised a 
 second ? Estimate Cantonal rights as low as you 
 will, no reasonable man will believe that the Can- 
 tons who signed the Pact of 1815 intended to 
 guarantee the inviolability of convents caught in 
 flagrant rebellion. 
 
 As we descend from 1843 down to the present 
 time, we shall find that one party-wrong be- 
 gets another ; and if we are to look for what 
 M. Meyer calls the beginning , we must go back 
 farther than the suppression of the Argovian con- 
 vents. Such suppression, under the particular cir- 
 cumstances of the case, may well be contended to 
 have been no wrong at all, but a step justified by 
 the past, and essential as a protection and remedy 
 for the future : if we even admit that it was a 
 wrong, we must at the same time admit that it 
 grew out of a previous wrong — the rebelHon of 
 the convents. That rebellion, connected both in 
 time and in origin with the rising against the 
 Government of Soleure, was the last resort of 
 a widespread political rehgious agitation, and of a 
 
Letter III.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 53 
 
 string of active " Catholic unions " which pervaded 
 the Cantons of Lucerne^, Argau, Soleure, and Ca- 
 tholic Berne, during the years immediately pre- 
 ceding 1841. These Catholic unions had of course 
 the fullest right to enforce their views by public 
 discussion and appeal. Nay, let us even grant, 
 large as the concession is, that they had a right to 
 resort as they did to an unscrupulous employment 
 of religious hopes and fears, to promise the bless- 
 ing of the saints and to denounce opponents as 
 heretics beyond the pale of salvation, for the pur- 
 pose of procuring such changes as they desired in 
 the political constitution — still the votes of the 
 whole people were collected on the subject of this 
 constitution, the decision was against them, and 
 there their rights ended. To take arms against 
 that decision was a political wrong, not only clear 
 and decisive, but unprovoked, unbegotten by any 
 previous wrong. It was the cry of " Religion in 
 danger," employed to put arms into the hands of 
 Catholic insurgents, just as the same cry, sixteen 
 months before, had been successfully used by Pro- 
 testants to overthrow by force the Government of 
 Zurich : and the Capuchin friar who, in January 
 
54 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter III. 
 
 1841, headed the Argovian Catholic insurgents on 
 their march against Aarau, forms a parallel to the 
 Protestant clergyman M. Hirzel who, on the 6th 
 September, 1839, conducted the armed zealots of 
 the country round Zurich into that city. The 
 same phsenomenon appears in both — the intrusion 
 of direct and violent religious agency in politics ; 
 by the Conservative Protestants, as an antithesis 
 and diversion to political Radicalism; by the 
 Catholic leaders, as a nominal reinforcement of 
 popular control, but a real transfer of power from 
 the laity to the priesthood. This phsenomenon 
 manifests itself largely throughout the Swiss world 
 towards the period which we are now examining ; 
 and it requires to be understood if we would follow 
 the train of events down to the Jesuits and the 
 Sonderbund. For a certain time, these two move- 
 ments are in sympathy with one another : leaders 
 at Zurich opposed to Radicalism in their own 
 Canton, were not displeased to see it exaggerated 
 in name, but degraded into a secondary force and 
 becoming a mere implement of the altar, although 
 by a Catholic hierarchy, in the Catholic Cantons ; 
 and, in 1841, the Government of Zurich, then pre- 
 
Letteb in.] POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 55 
 
 siding Canton, friendly to Lucerne and hostile to 
 Argau, was even displeased with Berne for having 
 furnished those troops to the Argovian Grovern- 
 ment, which enabled it promptly to put down 
 the insurrection. This sympathy between the Go- 
 vernment, called Conservative, at Zurich, which 
 acquired power by the insurrection of the 6 th 
 September, 1839 — and the Ultramontane Govern- 
 ment of Lucerne, since 1840 — proved after a certain 
 time the cause of the overthrow of the former ; 
 the subsequent conduct of Lucerne, as will be 
 hereafter mentioned, having been such as to alien- 
 ate the population of the Canton of Zurich. 
 
 As to the question of Federal right involved in 
 the suppression of the convents, the majority of 
 the Diet must be held to be the only competent 
 judges, — unless, indeed, we are to admit the doc- 
 trine now laid down by the Sonderbund, that 
 every Canton has a right to interpret the Pact for 
 itself; in which case the Canton of Argau would 
 of course be as much in the right as its opponents. 
 According to the verdict of that majority, the 
 suppression of the convents of monks must be 
 held to have been justified by sufficient reasons ; 
 
56 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter III. 
 
 that of the other four not justified. The Govern- 
 ment of Argau, having at first partially done 
 wrong, made expiation, and put itself right with 
 the Diet. This is a matter to be recollected when 
 we come to discuss the recent conduct of the 
 Sonderbund. 
 
 But, apart from the question of right, how far 
 were the Catholics of Argau gainers or losers by 
 the suppression ? Whoever reads one of the most 
 interesting books published in modern times — 
 the Autobiography of the historian Zschokke, of 
 Aarau — will find an authentic account of three 
 out of the eight monasteries as they stood in 1833, 
 seven years before the suppression ; especially of 
 the convent of Muri. M. Zschokke, together with 
 two Catholic gentlemen, was named Inspecting 
 Visitor of the Monasteries by the Argovian Go- 
 vernment. He found the population around the 
 convent of Muri the idlest, poorest, most bar- 
 barous, and most ignorant, in the whole Canton : 
 a long train of able-bodied beggars of both sexes 
 to be seen at the doors of the monastery, dirty and 
 in rags, receiving distributions of soup from the 
 kitchen — but exhibiting the lowest average both 
 
Letter III.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 57 
 
 of physical and moral well-being throughout the 
 neighbouring villages. Unquestionably, the Ca- 
 tholic population around the monastery has been 
 the real gainer by its suppression : the Cantonal 
 Government has acquired nothing in a pecuniary 
 point of view, but it has gained unspeakably in 
 respect of assured position, by being relieved from 
 a rich establishment always ready to pay for an 
 insurrection among the neighbouring Catholics, 
 on the strength of its assured Federal inviola- 
 bility, whenever the priestly party in Lucerne 
 might be disposed to give the word. The present 
 sentiment of these Catholic parts of Argau has 
 now become much more favourable towards their 
 own Cantonal Government ; and it deserves to be 
 mentioned that they, as immediate neighbours of 
 Lucerne, were the great sufferers by the severe 
 measures which the Lucerne Government adopted 
 last winter to restrict the exportation of provi- 
 sions : they were obliged to throw themselves on 
 their own Government, which made unavailing 
 applications to Lucerne for relaxation. This trans- 
 action has tended not only to alienate their feel- 
 ings from Lucerne, but also to throw them into 
 
58 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter III. 
 
 connexion with tlie markets of Zurich ; a tendency 
 which will probably be farther facilitated by the 
 railway recently opened from Zurich to Baden, 
 the central point of Catholic Argau. 
 
 The compromise respecting the Argovian con- 
 vents was carried into effect in the spring of 
 1843 : an explanation of that event with its pre- 
 liminary circumstances has been unavoidably ne- 
 cessary, partly because it produced a great effect 
 on Federal proceedings, partly because it ushered 
 in the state of things in 1843, which will be 
 touched iipon in the next letter. The Presidency 
 of Lucerne occupies the years 1843 and 1844; and 
 the Presidential conduct of that Canton (especially 
 in regard to the revolution of Valais, to be here- 
 after noticed), constitutes the immediate preli- 
 minary to the Jesuits, the Corps Francs, and the 
 Sonderbund. 
 
Letter IV.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 59 
 
 Letter IY. 
 
 Sept. 25, 1847. 
 
 The years 1843 and 1844, as has been mentioned 
 in the last letter, were the presidential years of 
 the Canton of Lucerne. Such exercise of the 
 Federal executive authority, not by any special 
 magistrate or council, but by the Council of one or 
 other of the three directing Cantons, has 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. In the project of reform drawn 
 up by M. Rossi and the Commission of 1833, this in- 
 convenience was pointed out, and a special Federal 
 Executive, apart from all the Cantonal Govern- 
 ments but under the control of the Diet, was pro- 
 posed to be created. More or less partiality in 
 the management of the directing Canton is cer- 
 tain, and has been witnessed in Berne and Zurich 
 as well as in Lucerne. But in the conduct of the 
 latter during 1844, such partiality exceeded all 
 
60 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter IV. 
 
 pardonable limits, and all former parallel : it de- 
 generated into grave and manifest treason, and 
 contributed essentially to rouse against that Canton 
 the strong animosity which we shall find breaking 
 out in December 1844 and April 1845. 
 
 Though Lucerne in these last months of 1844 
 was thrown upon the defensive, and suflfered from 
 the wrongful assaults of others, the case was other- 
 wise during the time which preceded : that Canton 
 was then the forward and aggressive mover. I 
 have already noticed the politico-religious agitation 
 throughout the Catholic unions in Lucerne, Soleure, 
 and Argau, and Catholic Berne, down to 1841 : 
 the defeat of the insurrections in Soleure and 
 Argau disappointed without extinguishing the 
 Ultramontane spirit. Shortly after Lucerne came 
 to the presidency, the Grovernment of Argau found 
 itself exposed to farther agitation, and to fresh 
 attempts at insiirrection ; which, however, it was 
 strong enough to put down. Lucerne became 
 associated with the League of Sarnen_, to which 
 it had stood decidedly opposed previous to 1840. 
 That league was formed about 1832, for the pur- 
 pose of resisting the Liberal or Eadical tendencies 
 
Letter IV.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 61 
 
 then current throughout Switzerland : it consisted 
 originally of Uri, Schwytz, and Under walden, to 
 which subsequently Friburg, Zug, and Lucerne, 
 and lastly (after the counter-revolution of 1844) 
 the Valais, became added : it is in fact an earlier 
 stage of the present Sonderbund, only that the 
 Sonderbund has been drawn tighter and provided 
 with a formal military organisation. In the year 
 1843, the plan entertained, and much talked of 
 by the State Gazette of Catholic Switzerland (a 
 journal then published at Lucerne), was to form a 
 great separate league comprehending all the Ca- 
 tholic Cantons, for the protection of the Catholic 
 religion against the oppression and peril under 
 which it was alleged to labour: Soleure was to 
 be either gained over or counter-revolutionized. 
 M. Munzinger, the Deputy of Soleure, read in the 
 Diet during discussions of the present year 1847, 
 the plan of this great Catholic Sonderbund, which 
 Lucerne had circulated in his Canton during the 
 year 1843, but which found little favour among 
 the Solothurnian citizens : moreover, the same 
 scheme of a separate league was so distinctly an- 
 nounced in the resolution of the Grreat Council of 
 
62 POLITiaS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter IV. 
 
 Lucerne of 20th October, 1843, that both Berne 
 and Zurich protested against it as tending to the 
 breaking up of the Confederacy, and forwarded 
 their protest in circular to all the Cantons. In 
 point of fact the Catholic religion neither had 
 then, nor has now, any oppression to complain of 
 in Switzerland : if there were ground for com- 
 plaint on the side of either of the two confessions, 
 it would be with the Protestants, who are ex- 
 cluded from all political rights in Lucerne and 
 its confederate Cantons, while there is no ana- 
 logous exclusion of Catholics in the Cantons mostly 
 Protestant. 
 
 It was during the year 1843 that the political 
 state of the Canton of Yalais became disordered, 
 and that the foundation was laid for Federal inter- 
 ference in its affairs. That Canton is altogether 
 Catholic : but the two portions of which it con- 
 sists — the Upper and Lower Valaisans— are of 
 different race and language; and down to 1798 
 the latter, although more numerous, having been 
 originally conquered by the former, remained their 
 subjects. Suspended or abated between 1798 and 
 1815, the privileges of the Upper Yalaisans were 
 
Letter IV.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 63 
 
 partially revived in 1815, when an imperfect repre- 
 sentative constitution was established, with unjust 
 preponderance to the Upper Yalais, and with a 
 large fraction of the representation vested in the 
 Bishop of Sion. For several years after 1830, the 
 Lower Yalaisans attempted to obtain a political 
 reform, which was at length finally accomplished 
 in April 1840, after opposition both of fraud and 
 force on the part of the Upper Valaisans aided by 
 their clergy, and after much indirect discourage- 
 ment thrown in their way by the Conservative 
 Government of Zurich, then directing the Canton 
 of Yorort. 
 
 The fate of the Liberal Government in the 
 Yalais, at the head of which were the two brothers 
 Maurice and Joseph Barman, during its short-lived 
 career from April 1840 to May 1844, forms one of 
 the most melancholy pages of recent history. Its 
 leaders were among the most patriotic and most 
 instructed men in the Canton : they went straight 
 to practical, genuine, and serious reforms, but with 
 strict respect for legal means, and with as little 
 offence as possible towards the prejudices opposed 
 to them : they stand chargeable with various 
 
64 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letteb IV. 
 
 faults of weakness and misjudgment, but the 
 greatest of all their errors was that they could not 
 shake off their expectation of honourable dealing 
 from unscrupulous antagonists. They had to deal 
 with a system, fiscal, judicial, and administrative, 
 which included ancient abuses in all their luxu- 
 riance ; and with a people, ignorant and bigoted, 
 whose minds are much more obedient to their reli- 
 gious than to their political superiors. The state 
 of these religious superiors, the Catholic hierarchy 
 and clergy, is indeed enviable : their large pro- 
 perties are exempt from taxation, by a continuance 
 of the old privilege of the middle ages, while their 
 persons are subject only to the jurisdiction of their 
 own order. If a priest stands charged with grave 
 crime, such as infanticide, or highway robbery, he 
 is taken before the episcopal authority, and de- 
 tained for examination : by some unaccountable 
 negligence, he presently escapes, nor has any 
 example been known of a priest being actually 
 punished. Their education, and indeed the whole 
 education of the Yalais, such as it is, is and has 
 long been under the superintendence of the Jesuits. 
 The wonder seems rather to have been, how a 
 
Letter IV.] POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 65 
 
 good and liberal Grovernment ever became esta- 
 blished in the Valais at all : perhaps this might 
 never have come to pass, if the excitement of the 
 Lower Yalais prior to the revolution of 1840 had 
 not been permitted at least, if not favoured, bj the 
 clergy in that region. And while the disadvantages 
 of the position were thus serious, even the men 
 who had stood most ardent and forward in that 
 excitement did not afterwards act in such a manner 
 as to lend effective support to the Government 
 which they had themselves contributed to set up. 
 The most pronounced among them formed the 
 society called Young Switzerland; who, while 
 they found themselves unavoidably in collision 
 with the privileges of the clergy, and amidst a 
 controversy carried on with great exasperation on 
 both sides, took no account of the difficulties of 
 the Government, but were harsh in their re- 
 proaches because more was not done, and thus 
 weakened a weak Government still further. The 
 clergy defended the maintenance of their privileges 
 by the most emphatic enforcements and denuncia- 
 tions of the pulpit : and their mode of warring 
 with the political society called Young Switzerland 
 
66 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter IV. 
 
 deserves particular mention. The Bishop of Sion 
 issued a mandate forbidding the elegy to administer 
 the sacraments to any member of Young Switzer- 
 land, or to any of their relatives, or to any reader 
 of their journal called The Echo of the Alps : it 
 should be added, that the clergy had at the same 
 time a journal of their own, called The Simplon 
 Gazette y which employed in their cause the most 
 vehement partisanship. The scandals which arose 
 out of this excommunication were monstrous, and 
 furnish a further example of the abuse of religious 
 agencies for political purposes by the clergy of 
 various Cantons of Switzerland. Furthermore, in 
 order to defeat constitutionally those measures 
 which were especially odious to them, the clergy 
 made efficient use of their influence over the popular 
 referendum : thus among other laws, one for ame- 
 liorating the wretched system of public education, 
 and another for distributing military charges with 
 an equality which did not respect clerical immu- 
 nities, were rejected by the people after having 
 passed the legislature. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the Lower Valais 
 became more and more the scene of lawlessness 
 
Letter IV.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 67 
 
 and conflict between individuals of different poli- 
 tical parties. On the other hand, the Upper Yalais 
 partook less in this discord : its inhabitants were 
 .more nnanimons among themselves, unfriendly 
 to the Liberal Grovernment from the beginning, 
 and still more unfriendly to it in consequence of 
 the continued opposition of the clergy. In 1843, 
 the election in the Canton returned a small majority 
 hostile to the Liberals ; and an Executive Council 
 was constituted with a majority of the same senti- 
 ments, yet not strong enough to take any decisive 
 part. It was under these circumstances that the 
 leaders of the Upper Yalais, with the connivance 
 of the Executive or at least of some of its members, 
 carried on for months together a secret and illegal 
 military organisation of the inhabitants ; marched 
 to Sion in May 1844 ; were enabled by the trea- 
 chery of the Executive to forestal and break the 
 preparations of the disunited Bas-Yalaisans ; be- 
 came masters of the Government, proclaimed the 
 latter to be rebels, and then, being joined by their 
 own partisans in the Lower Yalais, vanquished 
 them in various encounters, especially on the river 
 Trient. In this defeat — with its consequence, the 
 
 F 2 
 
Q8 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter IV. 
 
 complete extinction of the Liberal party in Yalais 
 — there was more bloodshed, more cruelty, and 
 more brutality, than had ever before been seen in 
 the civil dissensions of Switzerland. And to crown 
 the whole, the Bishop of Sion issued an order to 
 his clergy forbidding them to administer the sacra- 
 ments of the Church to the dying combatants of 
 the Liberal party. When we consider that these 
 combatants were Catholics, as well as fellow-citizens, 
 on the point of death, and when we reflect besides 
 on the consequences which the Catholic Church 
 connects with the absence of the sacraments at such 
 a moment, it is difficult even to imagine the feelings 
 under which so monstrous a mandate was issued. 
 
 The Government of the Valais, after the elec- 
 tions of 1843 — if we are to call it by that name — 
 at least the majority of the Executive Council, ap- 
 pears throughout this transaction in the character 
 of a conspirator : privy to the illegal organisation 
 of the Upper Yalais — secretly conniving at it 
 until it was completed — issuing proclamations 
 against these Upper Yalaisans, when known to be 
 on their actual march to Sion — directing them to 
 disband as an unauthorised and illegal armament 
 
Letter IV.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 69 
 
 keeping at a distance, by perfidious assurances, the 
 Lower Valaisan volunteers under M. Barman, who 
 had armed, though unprepared, after and on the 
 news of the actual march of the Upper Yalaisans, 
 and who might have got into Sion first, if they 
 had not relied upon such false assurances of 
 the Grovernment — inviting the Upper Yalaisans 
 into Sion, then immediately converting them from 
 an illegal body of Corps Francs into authorised 
 troops of the state, and making use of them to 
 crush the Lower Yalaisans under M. Barman, these 
 latter being then proclaimed as the only rebels, and 
 delivered into the hands of men more properly 
 rebels than themselves. To play such a part, was 
 bad enough in the Government of the Yalais ; but 
 it was the climax of disgrace that the presiding 
 Canton Lucerne consented to play the part along 
 with them. It appears that the illegal organisation 
 of the Upper Yalais, known from the beginning to 
 a portion of the Executive Council of the Yalais, 
 was still better known to the leaders in Lucerne, 
 and concerted with them beforehand ; M. Bernard 
 Meyer, the Lucerne Secretary, making private 
 visits to the Canton during the previous months as 
 
70 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter IV. 
 
 an underhand auxiliary. On the 13th May, 1844, 
 when the Upper Yalaisan volunteers were actually 
 on their march to Sion, M. Meyer appeared in the 
 latter town, carrying a commission of Federal 
 envoy in his pocket, to be produced or not accord- 
 ing as it might suit his views: if the Lower 
 Yalaisans under M. Barman had been victorious, 
 he would have shown himself as commissioner, 
 and would have employed the Federal authority to 
 arrest their progress ; but so long as the Upper 
 Yalaisans were in full advance, he was a partisan, 
 attending the private meetings destined to facilitate 
 their entry into Sion. As soon as they had en- 
 tered that town and received the recognition of 
 the Government, M. Meyer lent his best aid not 
 only to the maintenance of the new Government, 
 but also to the denunciation of the opposite party 
 as rebels. His conduct was from the beginning 
 that of an unscrupulous party-man, infringing the 
 most sacred obligations incumbent on a Federal 
 superior, and unredeemed even by any sentiment 
 either of candour or of mercy towards the van- 
 quished : for his language, even at the subsequent 
 Diet, towards the Barmans and their fellow exiles. 
 
Letter IV.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 71 
 
 who were in this ease less of rebels than the victors, 
 was harsh and fierce in the extreme. Lucerne 
 received its reward by the passing of the Canton 
 of Yalais into the hands of the Ultramontane or 
 clerical party, and by its adjunction to the League 
 of Sarnen. 
 
 It may be proper to mention — though nothing 
 of importance turns upon it in reference to the 
 preceding narrative — that the Executive of the 
 Valais had, on the 4th May, on the ground of the 
 lawless state of the country, sent a secret message 
 to Lucerne invoking Federal intervention. This 
 proceeding first became known in the Valais itself 
 through the newspapers of Lucerne ; and strong 
 reproaches were addressed to the Government for 
 having done so ; upon which the Government dis- 
 avowed having made such an application. They 
 produced what they affirmed to be the copy of 
 their letter sent, which difiered from the letter 
 received at Lucerne ; there was some fraud or 
 mystery about this letter, which was not fully 
 explained. However the fact may stand as to 
 the letter of request, the presiding Canton, on 
 receiving it, issued a requisition for a Federal 
 
72 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter IV. 
 
 army : which, partly from unavoidable delays, 
 partly from mistrust in some of the Cantons in- 
 vited to furnish it, was not in a situation to enter 
 the Yalais until after the complete victory of the 
 Upper Valaisans. 
 
 The excitement which these events caused 
 throughout Switzerland was prodigious. The 
 combats at the river Trient and other places in 
 Valais, which had been disputed with great 
 bravery on both sides, and severe loss to the 
 vanquished — the harshness and cruelties exer- 
 cised by the victors — more than all, the numerous 
 body of exiles, many of them the most respectable 
 men in the Canton, who fled with their wives and 
 families into the neighbouring Cantons of Vaud 
 and Geneva, to the sacrifice of their property and 
 their prospects, — all this was more than suflScient 
 to rouse throughout a large proportion of the 
 country both profound sympathy and vehement 
 indignation. Upon whom did the public mind 
 fasten as the authors of the mischief? Upon 
 the Jesuits, and upon the Canton of Lucerne. 
 Upon the second with perfect truth, whatever 
 may be thought about the first. It was at this 
 
Letter IV.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 73 
 
 time, and in this way, that the anti-Jesuit move- 
 ment first began in Switzerland ; for we shall not 
 properly understand that movement unless we 
 take it (to use an expression of the late Lord 
 Eldon) ^' clothed in circumstances " — in connexion 
 with its antecedents and accompaniments. 
 
 It has been already mentioned that the Jesuits 
 had for a long time been established in the Yalais, 
 with control over the education both of clergy and 
 people. But during the years 1842 and 1843, 
 this order appeared in unusual activity. They 
 perambulated the Catholic Cantons publicly and 
 ostentatiously, as missionaries and special preach- 
 ers — especially Lucerne and the Yalais ; never 
 before had so many Jesuits been seen in motion. 
 In the latter Canton, they denounced the Liberal 
 Grovernment as impious and hostile to religion ; 
 and such was the effect of their exhortations, that 
 on various occasions the assembled people who 
 heard them swore to rise in insurrection on the 
 first summons. Such language, indeed, was no- 
 thing different from that which had been used 
 by the Catholic Clergy generally, as well in the 
 Valais recently, as in Soleure, Argau, and Lu- 
 
74 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letteb IV. 
 
 cerne in 1840, and by the Zurich Protestant 
 clergy in September 1839. But these Jesuit mis- 
 sions were of all religious agencies the most con- 
 spicuous to the public eye : they came immediately 
 previous to the misfortunes of 1844 ; they were 
 blazoned by the Catholic journals as having pro- 
 duced almost miraculous effects ; and opponents 
 were on this occasion quite ready to credit the 
 Catholic statement literally — to believe that the 
 Jesuits had really done all the good ascribed to 
 them, or all the harm, as it would appear from the 
 opposite point of view. It is therefore indisput- 
 able that the Jesuits had actually been employed 
 as instruments, in preaching down the Liberal 
 G-overnment of the Yalais, by the native clergy 
 and the politicians of Lucerne ; and what they had 
 really done was enough to cause persons who 
 already profoundly hated the Order to arraign 
 them as the master architects of the whole. 
 
 The 22nd May, 1844, saw the closing scene of 
 the melancholy tragedy in the Yalais ; during the 
 days immediately ensuing, the agitation arising 
 from it pervaded most of Switzerland, and meet- 
 ings were held in many of the Cantons to demand 
 
Letter IV.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 75 
 
 the convocation of an extraordinary Diet. Among 
 the rest, the Great Council of the Canton of Argan 
 was convoked for that purpose on the 28 th of May : 
 the purpose was, to urge the presiding Canton to 
 summon an extraordinary Diet in reference to the 
 recent events, and to instruct the Argovian Depu- 
 ties as to their votes and proceeding. It was in 
 this assembly that the name of the Jesuits was 
 first publicly denounced. Augustin Keller — a 
 distinguished Catholic, and the Director of the 
 Catholic Seminary in Argau, the same person 
 who three years before had proposed the sup- 
 pression of the Argovian convents — moved that 
 the Deputy of the Canton should be instructed 
 to demand from the Diet measures for the expul- 
 sion of the Jesuits from Switzerland ; that order 
 being (he urged) the great cause of the deplor- 
 able dissensions reigning throughout the country, 
 and especially of the recent calamities in the 
 Yalais. 
 
 In enforcing this point, he dwelt particularly on 
 the Jesuit missions which a few months before had 
 made so much noise in the Yalais ; whilst he en- 
 larged on the corrupt morals, slavish politics, and 
 
76 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter IV. 
 
 intrigues against civil authority as well as against 
 religious liberty, which marked the history of the 
 order. The motion of M. Keller was carried in 
 the Council of Argau by a large majority : the 
 Argovian Deputy was instructed to make the pro- 
 position in the Diet for expelling the Jesuits ; and 
 a circular was sent (according to custom) to the 
 other Cantons, to request that each would instruct 
 its Deputy in reference to the proposition. 
 
 Though the circular thus sent round for dis- 
 cussion among the Cantons met with no favour at 
 that time in the various G-reat Councils, it was 
 enthusiastically welcomed among the Liberal Swiss 
 public without, and had of course presented itself 
 to many of them as well as to M. Keller. It pre- 
 cisely harmonized with the existing state of their 
 minds, overflowing with sympathy for the suffering 
 Yalaisans, and with indignation for the treacher- 
 ous means whereby the late counter-revolution 
 had been consummated : it presented to them an 
 »old enemy as the author of a new mischief — an 
 enemy who certainly had sown some tares among 
 the wheat, and was not wanting in will to have 
 sown the whole field — an enemy, moreover, against 
 
Letter IV.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 77 
 
 whom some definite resolution admitted of being 
 taken. It was in this temper that the proposition 
 Was received at various meetings, especially at the 
 periodical meeting of Swiss rifle-shooters from all 
 parts of the Confederation, which took place on 
 the 30th June, 1844, at Basle. These shooting- 
 meetings are in many respects the parallel of the 
 ancient Greek festival games : they serve the same 
 purposes of keeping alive the national sympathies 
 and supplying the defects of a very loose political 
 union. Abundance of speeches on the political 
 topics of the day are usually delivered by various 
 orators at these meetings, which are largely fre- 
 quented by the more ardent Liberal politicians 
 from all the Cantons. The calamities of the Va- 
 laisan Liberals — expulsion of the Jesuits — indig- 
 nation against Lucerne as an accomplice in these 
 calamities — were among the prominent matters 
 which agitated the feelings of this numerous and 
 excitable assembly. The successful Upper Va- 
 laisans hardly appeared, and their flag could not 
 be kept up among those of the other Cantons ; 
 while the defeated exiles, Messrs. Barman, were 
 greeted with the warmest sympathy, and, sub- 
 
78 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter IV. 
 
 scriptions were raised for the general body of 
 Yalaisan sufferers. 
 
 If the indignation against Lucerne and M. 
 Meyer was vehement at the time of this shooting- 
 meeting, it became greatly heightened when the 
 Diet was assembled, and when the question of the 
 Yalais was discussed, on the 13th July, 1844. 
 M. Bernard Meyer on that occasion occupied the 
 chair of the Diet ; and, replying to various crimi- 
 nations from the Deputies of other Cantons, he 
 not only avowed, but actually boasted of, the share 
 ascribed to him in the counter-revolution of Yalais. 
 He admitted the deliberate conspiracy and long- 
 concerted military organisation in the Upper 
 Yalais to effect a counter-revolution, together with 
 his own previous knowledge as well as concern 
 in it; he justified all the previous measures by 
 what he called the happy termination of every- 
 thing ; and his fierce language against the Liberals 
 of the Bas- Yalais, at that time prostrate and in 
 exile, would have been hardly tolerable even had 
 their antecedent conduct been that of the most 
 guilty rebels. His speech excited indignant com- 
 ments from the Deputies of Yaud, Thurgau, and 
 
Letter IV.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 79 
 
 Soleure, and contributed much to swell the previous 
 animosity against Lucerne. On the voting of the 
 Diet, no majority was obtained, either to approve 
 or to disapprove the conduct of Lucerne : the 
 approvers were only the seven states constituting 
 the League of Sarnen, together with Appenzell 
 Inner-Rhoden ; while the majority declared against 
 all further interference of the Diet in the affairs 
 of Yalais. 
 
 The proposition of Argau for expelling the 
 Jesuits from Switzerland was brought before the 
 Diet ; but it obtained no votes except those of 
 Argau and Bale-Oampagne — one vote and a half. 
 None of the Great Councils in the other Cantons 
 instructed their Deputies to support it, though it 
 had become more and more popular among the 
 Liberal public without. And in this state pro- 
 bably the question would have rested, if the Jesuits 
 themselves had remained as they then stood — esta- 
 blished merely in Yalais, Friburg, and Schwytz. 
 But in the months immediately following, the im- 
 portant step was taken of introducing them also 
 into the presiding Canton Lucerne, and that too 
 under circumstances in themselves eminently 
 
80 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter IV. 
 
 aggravating. The two streams of feeling, eacb 
 arising out of the catastrophe in the Yalais, but 
 both at first separate -r-- the feeling against the 
 Jesuits, and that against Lucerne — became in this 
 manner confluent, each tending to exaggerate the 
 other. Their united force broke down all the obli- 
 gations of in tercan tonal morality, and led to the 
 flagrant political wrong committed by the Corps 
 Francs in invading Lucerne; at which point we 
 shall arrive in the next letter. 
 
Letter v.] POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 81 
 
 Letter Y. 
 
 Oct. 2, IU7. 
 1 RECOUNTED in mv last letter how the Anti- Jesuit 
 feeling in Switzerland first arose, as a direct con- 
 sequence of the catastrophe in the Yalais ; how it 
 rapidly got hold of the mind of the Liberal public ; 
 and how the expulsion of the Order was first sub- 
 mitted to the Diet in July 1844, on the proposi- 
 tion of Argau, but obtained no votes except those 
 of Argau and Bale-Campagne. That same cata- 
 strophe had also provoked a vehement animosity 
 against the presiding Canton, Lucerne, as a treach- 
 erous accomplice in the counter-revolution of the 
 Valais for the profit of Ultramontane politics and 
 of the Sarnen League. 
 
 It was at this period, and under this state of 
 Swiss feeling, that the Canton of Lucerne, hitherto 
 unconnected with the Jesuits, and before 1840 de- 
 cidedly adverse to them, determined for the first 
 time to introduce them, and to confide to them the 
 care of its Cantonal education. The leading men 
 
 Q 
 
82 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter V. 
 
 in the Canton knew perfectly well the storm which 
 it would excite among the larger half of the Con- 
 federacy, as well as the resistance which it would 
 call forth from a large minority of their own Can- 
 tonal citizens : lastly, they knew how much it 
 would offend the expressed feelings, and even 
 endanger the stability, of those Cantonal Grovern- 
 ments which had declined to support the proposi- 
 tion of Argau in the Diet. Of this latter fact, the 
 preceding debates in the Great Council, and the 
 instructions given to their Deputies in the Diet, 
 had presented sufficient warning. The G-reat 
 Council of Zurich had passed the following resolu- 
 tion : — " The Deputy of Zurich is instructed in the 
 name of his Canton to intimate the conviction that 
 the Order of Jesuits contributes by its doctrines 
 as well as by its missions to embitter the mutual 
 relation between the Protestant and Catholic con- 
 fessions in Switzerland ; and that it thus exercises 
 a disturbing influence on the political harmony of 
 the nation. The Canton of Zurich therefore ex- 
 presses its regret that some Cantons have received 
 this Order among them ; and intimates its wish, in 
 the spirit of confederate brotherhood (den freund- 
 
Letter V.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 83 
 
 eidgenossischen wunsch), that these Cantons may 
 withdraw from the influence of the Jesuits, and 
 that their fellow Catholic Cantons may of their 
 own accord resist the farther extension of the 
 Order." This was the voice of a Great Council 
 then in majority Conservative, and of a Grovern- 
 ment in which the Conservative Dr. Bliintschli 
 was the leading member ; it was rendered, more- 
 over, yet more significant by the antecedent cir- 
 cumstances. Ten thousand citizens of Zurich (the 
 total population of the Canton being about 230,000 
 souls) had signed a petition to the Great Council, 
 praying that the vote of the Canton might be 
 given in favour of the peremptory motion of 
 Argau at the Diet : it was known that these sig- 
 natures had been collected in a short time, and 
 that the sentiment which they represented was 
 much more widely spread. The Government of 
 Zurich resisted this petition, but resisted at much 
 disadvantage ; for they could not take the ground 
 (nor were they disposed to take it) that the ad- 
 mission of Jesuits into any one Canton, especially 
 into a presiding Canton, was a matter in which 
 the rest had no concern — they admitted that it 
 
 a 2 
 
84 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter V. 
 
 involved both mischief and danger to the whole 
 Confederation. " If you grant thus much," argued 
 the supporters of the petition, " does not the spirit 
 of the Pact, and the general obligation of ensuring 
 internal tranquillity which it expressly imposes 
 on the Diet, require the expulsion of the Jesuits, 
 though the letter may be silent ?" Dr. Bluntschli 
 and his colleagues were here unfavourably placed : 
 against a strong popular feeling supported by con- 
 siderable plausibility of reason, they had to main- 
 tain the danger of going beyond a strict construc- 
 tion of the Pact, except where extreme necessity 
 might compel an appeal to its spirit ; and to main- 
 tain this principle — of cardinal importance, yet 
 appealing only to a far-sighted reason — against 
 exciting allusions to the great Protestant name of 
 Zwingli, of which they had themselves made so 
 much use in rousing the people to arms in Sep- 
 tember 1839. It was evident that the resistance 
 was ruining their hold upon the Cantonal popula- 
 tion ; and in point of fact, the elections of the next 
 year put an end to their majority. Under such 
 circumstances, the friendly wish, addressed to the 
 Diet and to Lucerne by a Conservative Cantonal 
 
Lbttbe v.] politics OF SWITZEELAND. 85 
 
 Government, came with double emphasis, convey- 
 ing full warning of the consequences if it were not 
 wholly or partially complied with. That wish was 
 addressed not merely by Zurich, but by the many 
 other Cantonal Governments who thought the 
 Jesuits a public mischief to the Confederacy, with- 
 out deeming themselves authorised by the Pact to 
 support a vote of expulsion. Now, under such 
 circumstances, one may indeed assign sufficient 
 reason why those Cantons who already had Jesuits, 
 and who, moreover, were not presiding Cantons 
 — Friburg, Yalais, and Schwytz — might decline 
 to comply with the request for dismissing them ; 
 but it is not easy to imagine how the Canton of 
 Lucerne, not already having them, could bring 
 itself to introduce them immediately afterwards for 
 the first time — in direct contempt of the antipathy 
 manifested by a large portion of the Confederacy, 
 and of the "friendly wish" of another large por- 
 tion, expressed without the insulting appearance 
 of coercion. We must take this fact into consider- 
 ation when we look at the extraordinary excite- 
 ment which follows : immediately after the people 
 have put forth their deep and widespread convic- 
 
86 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter V. 
 
 tion that the existence of Jesuits even in non- 
 presiding Cantons is mischievous to the entire 
 Confederacy, the very next following incident in 
 Swiss history is, that the Order, besides maintain- 
 ing itself in Friburg, Yalais, and Schwytz, makes 
 the conquest of the presiding Canton also. 
 
 It has been often attempted to bar all such con- 
 siderations by simply saying — " This is a case 
 wherein the Federal Pact imposes no restriction, 
 and gives to no other Canton a right of interven- 
 tion : Lucerne chooses to exercise its right of 
 sovereignty, and there is an end of the matter." 
 So the question might be argued, indeed, simply 
 and nakedly, if there were a Federal Court about 
 to give judgment on it ; but in the conduct of life, 
 the right of others to step in and hinder is only 
 one portion of a wider argument, and cannot be 
 discussed apart. There are a thousand things 
 which you ought not to do, though other persons 
 may have no right to hinder you from doing 
 them : and if this be true of a private man, still 
 more is it true of a statesman — most of all will it 
 hold good for the presiding Canton of a dissentient 
 and imperfectly cemented confederacy. As pre- 
 
Letter V.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 87 
 
 siding Canton, you are under serious obligations 
 to the entire Confederacy : you are made aware 
 that a large fraction of it construes the Pact so as 
 to dispute your right altogether ; and that another 
 large fraction, admitting your right because they 
 determine to adhere to the strict letter of the Pact, 
 nevertheless pronounce the exercise of it to be 
 mischievous, and conjure you to abstain. Surely 
 this is a case in which it will not suffice simply to 
 assert and reassert that you have an incontestable 
 Federal right : the exercise of the right must 
 further be shown to be essential to some para- 
 mount individual interest or individual duty. 
 How far Lucerne took any pains to show this, 
 may be judged by the language of M. Siegwart- 
 Miiller, then President of the Diet in that town. 
 " The Radicals and Protestants," said he, " have 
 poured out their venom on the Jesuits every- 
 where: so much the more necessary is it for those 
 Governments who love order to introduce the 
 Jesuits." Here the extreme, though unmerited 
 odium, attached to the name of the Jesuits 
 throughout a large portion of the Confederacy 
 was admitted, and converted into a positive reason 
 
88 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter V. 
 
 for introducing them into Lucerne. What wonder 
 that the harmony of Switzerland has perished, 
 when the directing Canton adopts such maxims 
 for its rule of proceeding ? 
 
 Shortly after the Diet, the question of inviting 
 the Jesuits into Lucerne, and confiding to them 
 the Cantonal education, was brought into formal 
 discussion before the Cantonal G-reat Council. The 
 missions of the Order during the preceding year 
 had been made to work strongly on the public 
 mind ; and the majority of the Cantonal Education 
 Council had also pronounced in favour of intro- 
 ducing Jesuit superintendence — not without a 
 strong protest from the minority, and vehement 
 marks of repugnance from a considerable part of 
 the population, especially in the town of Lucerne. 
 The discussion in the Great Council was long and 
 turbulent ; but the proposition for admitting the 
 Jesuits was carried in the affirmative, by a large 
 majority, on the 24th October, 1844. It was sub- 
 sequently submitted to the general body of the 
 citizens throughout the Canton, for the exercise of 
 their veto. Though nearly all the citizens in the 
 town of Lucerne voted against it, a majority 
 
Letter V.] POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 89 
 
 throughout the rural districts declared in its 
 favour, and it became confirmed law. 
 
 During the discussion of the measure in the 
 Great Council, the opposing minority urged as 
 one of their many grounds of objection, that it 
 violated one of the articles of the constitution, and 
 therefore could not be entertained as an ordinary 
 project of law, but only under the forms and con- 
 ditions prescribed for revisions of the constitution. 
 This objection was overruled by the majority ; but 
 it was nevertheless made the ground of a formal 
 protest, drawn up, signed, and published, by five 
 of the leading members of the minority, including 
 among them Dr. Casimir Pfyfier, one of the ablest 
 jurists in Switzerland. It represented moreover 
 the full belief and conviction of the Liberal mi- 
 nority throughout the Canton, and aggravated 
 their discontent arising out of genuine hatred to 
 the Jesuits. So strongly did this discontent mani- 
 fest itself, at the moment when the law was 
 accepted by the majority of voting citizens, that 
 the Government was induced to arrest and im- 
 prison many of the most forward Anti-Jesuits in 
 the town of Lucerne. 
 
90 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Lbtteb V. 
 
 It was at this point, the beginning of December 
 1844, that the aggressions of the Corps Francs 
 commenced. 
 
 I have already described the different feelings 
 which had been roused in the Liberal and Radical 
 population of Switzerland by the catastrophe in 
 the Yalais : indignation against Lucerne, for 
 treachery in discharge of the presidential duties — 
 indignation against the Jesuits, whose missions 
 had been employed as instruments to bring about 
 the counter-revolution in Yalais — and both now 
 materially heightened during the preceding three 
 months, by the conduct of the Lucerne Grovern- 
 ment in adopting the Jesuits, precisely at a time 
 when the majority of the Cantons expressed their 
 friendly wish that the Order might be dismissed 
 even from those Cantons where it previously ex- 
 isted ; one of the actual reasons for such adoption 
 being (as Mr. Sieg war t-M tiller proclaimed in the 
 Diet), that the Jesuits were unjustly hated in 
 many parts of Switzerland. To these feelings 
 was now added a new cause of excitement — 
 sympathy for the minority in Lucerne; who be- 
 lieved, and made others believe, that their Can- 
 
Letter V.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 91 
 
 tonal constitution had been violated for the purpose 
 of introducing the Jesuits, and who were suffering 
 arrest and imprisonment for their resistance in a 
 cause eminently popular. All these feelings con- 
 spiring, created in the Liberal and Radical public 
 throughout Switzerland an animosity against the 
 Lucerne Government, so violent that they lost all 
 sense of political right and wrong, and resolved to 
 put it down by the most unwarrantable employ- 
 ment of force. 
 
 The first Corps Francs who invaded Lucerne 
 were not numerous, and were apparently alto- 
 gether unorganised: the invaders had been ap- 
 prised of the number of malcontents in the town 
 of Lucerne, and expected that an insurrection 
 would have broken out there as soon as they were 
 heard to have crossed the border ; but no insur- 
 rection took place. The Government easily re- 
 pelled the invaders, and proceeded to very severe 
 steps against the malcontents, real and presumed, 
 in the town. Many of them were arrested and 
 imprisoned ; while those who escaped, or fled to 
 avoid such treatment, were yet more numerous. 
 During the winter of 1844-45, there were not less 
 
92 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letteb V. 
 
 than 1100 exiles from Lucerne spread through 
 the neighbouring Cantons : and this contributed to 
 aggravate still farther the pre-existing animosity 
 against the Grovernment of Lucerne. It is to be 
 remarked, that in none of the various revolutions 
 which Switzerland has experienced, has there ever 
 been harsh treatment of a mulitude of individuals, 
 or any numerous body of exiles spread through 
 the neighbouring Cantons, except in the two cases 
 of Valais in May 1844 and Lucerne in the begin- 
 ning of 1845. These are the only two cases of 
 political disturbance or revolution in which there 
 has been any severe reaction, visited upon a 
 number of individuals within the Canton and 
 driving a still larger number out of it : and both 
 of them produced an extraordinary effect in ex- 
 citing the violent sympathies of the neighbouring 
 Cantons. 
 
 In consequence of the first invasion of the Canton 
 of Lucerne by citizens from other Cantons, on the 
 8th December, 1844^ an extraordinary Diet was 
 summoned at Zurich (which had become presiding 
 Canton on the 1st January, 1845), at the beginning 
 of the following year. This Diet continued in 
 
Letter V.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 93 
 
 session for two months, until the third week in 
 March. Resolutions were adopted, strongly con- 
 demning the Corps Francs or volunteers violating 
 by arms the territory of other Cantons, and re- 
 quiring each separate Canton to incorporate in its 
 legislation prohibition and punishment of such 
 persons. But the excitement in the Cantons sur- 
 rounding Lucerne was too great to be restrained 
 by any such efforts; and some of the Cantonal 
 Governments had no sincere desire to restrain it. 
 On the 30th of March, a second invasion of the 
 Canton of Lucerne was organised, in conjunction 
 with the exiles : this time the invaders were nu- 
 merous, not unprovided with artillery : and the 
 plan of attack was concerted deliberately before- 
 hand by Colonel Ochsenbein and other considerable 
 persons who accompanied and took command of it. 
 These invaders or Corps Francs were formed of 
 volunteers from the four neighbouring Cantons of 
 Berne, Soleure, Bale-Campagne, and Argau ; the 
 Governments of which all connived at the pro- 
 ceedings. Colonel Ochsenbein with his division 
 and cannon actually reached the suburb of Lucerne, 
 though not until nightfall : it is alleged that had 
 
94 ' POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter V. 
 
 he immediately commenced an attack, or fired a 
 few shots, the Grovernment would have abandoned 
 the town ; but the account published by the Govern- 
 ment itself does not countenance such a suppo- 
 sition. Lucerne was not unprepared for the attack, 
 and had organised an alliance with Uri, Zug, and 
 Unterwalden, for the purpose of defence: the 
 arrival of contingents from these allies on the 
 following day enabled it to defeat and expel the 
 invaders, many of whom were slain by the Can- 
 tonal Landsturm in their flight, while several hun- 
 dred others remained as prisoners. 
 
 These two invasions of Lucerne by the Corps 
 Francs are so well known, and so unanimously 
 judged, as to dispense with the necessity both of 
 comment and detail. If I take pains to gather 
 together the antecedent circumstances which caused 
 the aggressive feeling of the invaders, it is with 
 no view of justifying such a proceeding. It was a 
 flagrant and unquestionable public wrong, merit- 
 ing all the censure which has been since bestowed 
 upon it; disgracing the country in the eyes of 
 Europe, and exposing the Swiss to hear from foreign 
 ambassadors lectures the more galling because they 
 
Letter V.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 95 
 
 admitted of no fair reply. Its main effect has been 
 to weaken and hamper the party who committed 
 it, and to fortify the position, as well as to efface 
 in part the previous faults, of Lucerne. The pre- 
 ceding circumstances do not at all divest this inva- 
 sion of its culpability; but they are essential to 
 explain it — to explain that violent animosity, under 
 the influence of which so many citizens of regular 
 life and easy circumstances (the Landsturm of 
 Lucerne obtained from their prisoners among the 
 Corps Francs an abundant plunder, and in parti- 
 cular a large number of gold watches) were induced 
 to imperil their lives and expend their money, 
 besides throwing aside the most obvious restraints 
 of intercantonal duty. The citizens of Argau and 
 Soleure, who took arms to assist the Lucerne 
 minority, recollected that the Catholic agitators of 
 Lucerne had helped their minorities to raise simul- 
 taneous insurrections, to the infinite danger of both 
 Grovernments, in the beginning of 1841 ; while the 
 Cantonal Grovernments of Berne, Soleure, Argau, 
 and Bale-Campagne, who connived at the organi- 
 sation and march of the Corps Francs against 
 Lucerne, had before them the precedent of Lucerne 
 
96 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter V. 
 
 itself a few months before, when that Canton had 
 been in privity and deliberate connivance with the 
 conspirators who produced the counter-revolution 
 in Yalais — and that, too, in abuse not merely of 
 Cantonal obligations, but of yet more sacred duties 
 as directing Canton. Lastly, when it is indig- 
 nantly remarked that Colonel Ochsenbein, com- 
 mander of the Corps Francs in their invasion, is 
 now in the exalted position of Chief Magistrate of 
 Berne and President of the Diet, we must remem- 
 ber that he sees on his immediate left hand, as 
 Deputy of Lucerne, M. Bernard Meyer, the director 
 and instrument of Lucerne treachery in the con- 
 spiracy of the Valais. 
 
 If it were important to take a comparative esti- 
 mate of the wrongs on both sides, we might remark 
 that those committed by Lucerne spring from a 
 cause at once permanent and fatal to the tranquil- 
 lity of the Confederacy — the spirit of Catholic 
 Ultramontanism and aggrandizement ; while those 
 of the Corps Francs had their rise in a state of ex- 
 citement, which, however culpable, depended on 
 a pecuKar combination of recent events, and was 
 in its nature essentially transitory. But in truth, 
 
Letter V.] POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 97 
 
 such a comparison would answer little purpose : 
 the important circumstance to remark is, that both 
 wrongs are real, and that the later of the two may 
 be traced back by a visible thread of causality to 
 the earlier. At the present moment, both parties 
 in Switzerland have the conviction that their 
 opponents have acted wrongly towards them : in 
 each, that conviction is well founded. " Convicia 
 et probra invicem rixantes ingerunt : neuter falso." 
 Herein lies one of the great difficulties of finding 
 any solution for the existing complication of affairs. 
 
 I have touched upon the two expeditions of the 
 Corps Francs together, because both grew out of 
 one and the same state of excited feeling. But 
 between the dates of the two (8th December, 1844, 
 and 1st April, 1845), events of material im- 
 portance took place — the discussion on the subject 
 at the Diet, and the revolution in the Canton of 
 Yaud. 
 
 At the previous Diet, in July 1844, only one 
 Canton and one Half-Canton had voted for the 
 expulsion of the Jesuits from Switzerland : in the 
 Diet of 1845, ten Cantons and two Half-Cantons 
 voted for the same proposition : so great was the 
 
 H 
 
98 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter V. 
 
 difference made by the fact of Lucerne, the pre- 
 sidential Canton, having adopted them in the 
 interval. Zurich, presiding at the extraordinary 
 Diet convoked in January 1845, did not support 
 the proposition for expelling the Jesuits, nor re- 
 cognise the competency of the Diet to do so : but 
 its circular address proclaimed in the strongest 
 manner the mischief, insecurity, and discord, which 
 the reception of the Order into the Catholic di- 
 recting Canton would be sure to excite in Switzer- 
 land, and urgently invited Lucerne to revoke its 
 resolution. It is to be remarked that the Jesuits 
 had not yet actually come into the latter Canton, 
 though the law had been passed to introduce them. 
 The Zurich circular farther insisted that the cha- 
 racter of the Order was not to be considered as 
 purely religious, but as 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 ten- 
 dencies, it is repugnant to a large portion even of 
 the Catholic world ; from tne second, it is placed 
 in hostility with the Protestants ; and both reasons 
 
Letter V.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 99 
 
 concurred to render its admission into the pre- 
 siding Canton of Switzerland disastrous, as a 
 direct aggravation of the two great sources of 
 discord inherent in the Confederacy. The lan- 
 guage of the Deputy of Geneva, then strongly 
 Conservative, on the subject of the Jesuits, was of 
 the same tenour; though he voted against the 
 resolution for expelling them, on the ground of 
 want of competence in the Diet. There needs no 
 farther argument to shew that the Anti-Jesuit 
 feeling in Switzerland was a perfectly genuine and 
 substantive feeling — not a mere pretence got up 
 for the purpose of revolutionizing the Pact, as so 
 many persons have argued. Here were Deputies 
 expressing the same Anti-Jesuit feeling as strongly 
 as it could be expressed, who yet would not sup- 
 port a sentence of the Diet for expulsion. Indeed, 
 the whole past history of the Jesuits, from the 
 commencement of their Order, betokens an or- 
 ganised and systematic teaching of religion, not 
 for religious ends, but as a means for procuring 
 political and social ascendency : other priests have 
 done the same to a greater or less extent, but none 
 except the Order of Jesus has become notorious as 
 
 H 2 
 
100 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter V. 
 
 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 in the last century, 
 when the Order was abolished : it is against the 
 same tendency that the opponents of the Order 
 protest at present ; though they doubtless greatly 
 exaggerate its present power to do mischief. The 
 argument has often been urged — " What pro- 
 digious harm can seven Jesuits in Lucerne (the 
 number at first introduced) effect, to justify such 
 strong excitement?" But it is to be recollected, 
 that when the Great Council of Lucerne first de- 
 termined to adopt the Jesuits, no one knew to 
 what extent they would be employed. There was 
 every reason to believe that they would be made 
 actively available in prosecution of those Ultra- 
 montane intrigues which Lucerne had been push- 
 ing, both as Canton and as Yorort : they had been 
 so turned to account in the Yalais, and their 
 agency might be indefinitely extended : moreover, 
 it is to be remarked that the name Jesuit cannot 
 be heard, on the Continent, without a cluster of 
 odious associations derived from the past — and 
 
Letter V.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 101 
 
 that the proclamation, "The Jesuits are coming!" 
 is really more terrific than the men so called 
 when they stand before you in flesh and blood. 
 The Corps Francs invaded Lucerne before the 
 Jesuits were actually in it : they did not invade 
 Friburg, where the Jesuits had been long esta- 
 blished. It was the double and confluent senti- 
 ment, against the Jesuits and against Lucerne, 
 which roused them to the pitch of armed ag- 
 gression. 
 
 It was on the J 4th of February, 1845, during 
 the sitting of the Diet, that the revolution of Vaud 
 occurred. Yaud is the Canton immediately adjoin- 
 ing to Yalais : its citizens were almost witnesses 
 of the battles in the preceding May in that Canton, 
 though without taking the least part in them : its 
 surgeons and its ambulances went across the border 
 to administer succour to the wounded on both sides : 
 it received and fostered the greater part of the 
 exiled sufferers ; the two chiefs of whom, Maurice 
 Barman and Colonel Joris, escaped into its terri- 
 tory only by swimming the Rhone, after having 
 exhausted every effort of brave commanders. 
 From all these circumstances, the excitement in 
 
102 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Lbtteb V. 
 
 Vaud^ arising out of the Yalaisan catastrophe, 
 was unusually great; and the two feelings in 
 which that excitement manifested itself — animosity 
 against the Jesuits, and animosity against Lu- 
 cerne — became proportionably aggravated. The 
 Deputy of Yaud, though the Grovernment of the 
 Canton was then what is called Conservative, and 
 did not support the vote for expelling the Jesuits 
 in July 1844, expressed the strongest indignation 
 when M. Meyer of Lucerne avowed in that as- 
 sembly his long cognizance of the conspiracy for 
 counter-revolutionizing the Yalais. If such was 
 the strong feeling general in Yaud in July 1844, 
 much stronger did it become during the months 
 immediately succeeding, when Lucerne, in defiance 
 of the sentiment expressed throughout the larger 
 portion of Switzerland, passed the law for admit- 
 ting the Jesuits ; and when the Lucerne minority, 
 through the consequences of their opposition to 
 that measure, were cast into banishment and 
 spread through the sympathising Cantons. When 
 the Great Council of Yaud met for the purpose of 
 instructing their Deputy in prospect of the Diet 
 convoked for the last week in January, a petition 
 
Letter V.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 103 
 
 was presented praying that he might be directed 
 to support in the Diet two points — expulsion of 
 the Jesuits from Switzerland, and amnesty for the 
 Lucerne exiles. This petition, signed by no fewer 
 than 32,000 persons, was supported by a minority 
 both in the Executive and in the Legislative 
 Council ; but the majority of both were opposed 
 to it. 
 
 It was asserted by some of those who opposed 
 this petition — what has been so often asserted of 
 petitions emanating from Swiss Radicals — that 
 those who signed it did not really care about the 
 substantive thing asked for, but only asked it as a 
 means to arrive underhand at the abolition of the 
 Cantonal sovereignty and the erection of an Unitary 
 Government in Switzerland. A • similar insinua- 
 tion had been made in the preceding month of 
 July in the Great Council of Zurich, by Dr. 
 Bliintschli, in reference to the 10,000 petitioners 
 of that Canton, who asked for the expulsion of 
 the Jesuits : it was a remark captious and un- 
 seasonable, overleaping causes obvious and forcible 
 in order to arrive at others which were at once 
 weaker and more distant ; and it was likely more- 
 
104 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter V. 
 
 over to irritate petitioners who knew themselves 
 to be in earnest. How widely the feeling dis- 
 played in the petition was diffused throughout 
 Yaud, is proved by the number of signatures : for 
 the total population of the Canton is only 190,000 
 souls, and 32,000 signatures must represent seven- 
 eighths of the qualified voters under a system of 
 universal suffrage. According to political maxims 
 very widely diffused in Switzerland, it was con- 
 tended by the supporters of the prayer of the peti- 
 tion, among other reasons for granting it, that 
 this enormous majority ought of itself to be im- 
 perative, and to overrule any objection which the 
 Council might entertain. In England, no such 
 general maxim would be admitted : but we may 
 safely assert, that if ever the time should come 
 when five millions of petitioners (about the same 
 proportion of our population) demand anything at 
 the hands of Parliament, and are known to care 
 for it intensely and earnestly, that petition will 
 not be refused, even though it contain matter more 
 questionable than the two items demanded by the 
 32,000 persons who signed in Yaud. The majority 
 of the two Councils in the Canton of Yaud, refused 
 
Letter V.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELANB. 105 
 
 to comply with the prayer of the petitioners. To 
 wait for the return of the quinquennial elections, 
 and then choose a Council of different sentiments 
 (which would have been the constitutional course), 
 while in the mean time the Cantonal vote would 
 have been given in Diet to sustain the Jesuits and 
 the Grovernment of Lucerne — appeared intolerable 
 to a population all excited on one and the same 
 immediate point. We may doubt whether even 
 the English people would have submitted thus to 
 wait if they had been baulked at the moment of 
 their feverish excitement about the Reform Bill in 
 1832 : and it is to be noted, that no Swiss consti- 
 tution contains any provision analogous to the 
 power of discretionary dissolution of Parliament 
 by the English Crown. The immediate result of 
 the refusal of the Councils was, that large numbers 
 of armed citizens from the neighbourhood, marched 
 into Lausanne ; while the G-overnment, on calling 
 out the militia, found that this force was disposed 
 to act not against, but in unison with, the insur- 
 gents. The movement throughout the Canton 
 appears to have been not less unanimous than pas- 
 sionate : the Councils were forced to abdicate, and 
 
106 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter V, 
 
 a Provisional Grovernment was formed, at the 
 head of which was M. Druey, the leader of Oppo- 
 sition. It is right to mention, that in this revolu- 
 tion no man sustained the least damage either in 
 person or property. A new constitution, more 
 popular than the preceding, was drawn up, and 
 accepted by the people during the ensuing summer : 
 but in truth, the preceding constitution had also 
 been very popular, and was so regarded even by 
 Radical writers who wrote during the year 1844: 
 so that the new constitution worked no violent 
 transfer of the seat of power, and was more analo- 
 gous to a change of Ministry in England, with a 
 dissolution of Parliament, than to the ideas com- 
 monly suggested by a revolution. 
 
 The proceedings of the former Grovernment of 
 Yaud, by which they had in part lost popularity 
 before this change, would be instructive to remark 
 upon, inasmuch as they illustrate the subsequent 
 conduct of the pastors and the reaction against the 
 latter which manifested itself under the new Go- 
 vernment. But upon these I do not touch, since 
 they have no direct bearing on the Federal politics, 
 to which the present letters are chiefly confined. 
 
Letter VI.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 107 
 
 Letter VI. 
 
 Oct. 9, 1847. 
 The perilous disposition to unauthorised employ- 
 ment of force, which had pervaded Switzerland 
 during the winter of 1845, was quenched by the 
 repulse of the Corps Francs from Lucerne on the 
 1st of April, disastrous and humiliating to the last 
 degree. The Grovernments which had connived 
 at it were under the ignominious necessity of ne- 
 gotiating with Lucerne for the ransom of their 
 prisoners; which they obtained at the cost of 
 between 500,000 and 600,000 francs: besides 
 which sum, Lucerne claimed and received from 
 the Diet, assembled in July, a further indemnity of 
 150,000 francs for damage sustained, out of the 
 general Federal treasury. Resolutions strongly 
 condemnatory of Corps Francs were again passed 
 at that Diet ; and it must be added that from the 
 1st April, 1845, to the present day, the peace of 
 Switzerland, as between Canton and Canton, has 
 never once been disturbed : every one of the 
 
108 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter VI. 
 
 Governments has manifested an unshaken deter- 
 mination to maintain it, and to repress individual 
 " sympathisers," if they attempted to march in 
 armed bands across their own Cantonal border. 
 
 But though the spirit of armed invasion had 
 thus been extinguished, the political feeling con- 
 tinued unaltered; and the elections of 1845 in the 
 Canton of Zurich returned a majority in the Great 
 Council which displaced the Government called 
 Conservative, the offspring of the 6th September, 
 1839. That Government had maintained, as long 
 and as much as it could, a sympathy with the 
 Lucerne politics, which at length robbed it of its 
 popularity with the citizens of the Canton, though 
 none of the latter had taken part in the expedition 
 of the Corps Francs. In the Diet of July, 1845, 
 the expulsion of the Jesuits from Switzerland was 
 again discussed : ten Cantons and two Half-Cantons 
 voted for it ; nine Cantons, including Geneva, 
 against it. St. Gallen did not vote at all ; its Great 
 Council were equally divided on the question, 75 
 foT it and 75 against it, 
 
 To the question of the Jesuits, the one great 
 matter of controversy during 1845, was added in 
 
Letter VI.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 109 
 
 the early part of 1846 the formation of the armed 
 separate league called Sonderbund, between Lu- 
 cerne, Uri, Schwytz, Unterwalden, Friburg, Zug, 
 and Yalais. Formal announcement of this league 
 with its conditions was made to all the Swiss Go- 
 vernments : in point of fact, these same seven 
 Cantons had long before been connected by a 
 league called the League of Sarnen ; but their new 
 organisation, called the Sonderbund, brought with 
 it the important addition, that it became profess- 
 edly an armed confederation — its members bound 
 themselves to furnish contingents of men and 
 money, and to obey a common military authority 
 — all announced to be exclusively for purposes of 
 common defence. To this is to be added the still 
 more important fact, that the Cantons of the Son- 
 derbund not only bound themselves by covenant 
 to arm, but actually did arm and organise them- 
 selves, providing means of offence as well as means 
 of defence. The question was thus raised. Is a 
 separate league, thus armed and organised, con- 
 trary to the Pact, the sixth Article of which says 
 expressly — "No alliances shall be formed by the 
 Cantons among each other, prejudicial either to 
 
110 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter VL 
 
 the general Confederacy or to the rights of other 
 Cantons " ? 
 
 This question was brought before the Diet at 
 Zurich, for the first time, on the 4th September, 
 1846, by the proposition of the Canton of Thurgau 
 to declare the Sonderbund illegal. Ten Cantons 
 and two Half-Cantons voted in favour of this pro- 
 position, — Berne, Zurich, Grlaris, Soleure, Schaff- 
 hausen, Argau, Tessin, Yaud, Thurgau, Grrisons, 
 Appenzell-Exterieur, Bale-Campagne. The seven 
 Cantons of the Sonderbund voted against it, to- 
 gether with Appenzell-Interieur. Neufchatel, St. 
 Grallen, Geneva and Bale-Yille, did not vote at all, 
 but referred for fuller instructions to their Cantons. 
 Neither on this question, nor on that of the expul- 
 sion of the Jesuits, which was again discussed, was 
 any majority of the Diet obtained. 
 
 So these two questions stood over, to be re-dis- 
 cussed in the Diet of the present year. But the 
 year 1846, and the first half of 1847, produced 
 events in Switzerland which materially altered the 
 second discussion as compared with the first. Be- 
 volutions took place in Berne and Geneva ; a revi- 
 sion of the constitution in Bale-Ville ; and the 
 
Letter VI.] POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. HI 
 
 attainment of an electoral majority in the Great 
 Council of St. Grallen. 
 
 The revolution of Berne, properly speaking, was 
 only partially connected with Federal politics, and 
 would not have been much spoken of in connexion 
 with them, if it had not happened to raise to the 
 Presidency so marked a man as Colonel Ochsen- 
 bein, the previous commander of the Corps Francs. 
 For in truth, the Grovernment of M. J^euhaus, which 
 Colonel Ochsenbein supplanted, was just as much 
 Eadical and Anti-Jesuit, and would have been, if 
 it had lasted, just as much against the Sonderbund, 
 as himself: and it is one among many proofs of 
 the loose use of names as applied to Swiss political 
 parties, that M. Neuhaus is spoken of in 1845 as 
 the leader of all the Kadicals, and in 1846, though 
 his politics had not at all altered, as a Conserva- 
 tive, merely because he stood opposed to Colonel 
 Ochsenbein. After the repulse of the Corps Francs 
 from Lucerne on the 1st April, 1845, the Grovern- 
 ment of M. Neuhaus, which had before connived 
 at them, thought it necessary to make demonstra- 
 tions against them, and to take some steps calcu- 
 lated to prevent any repetition of the attempt. In 
 
112 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter VL 
 
 this they were certainly right, whatever censure 
 they may deserve for their previous connivance : 
 moreover, it may be remarked, that in the state of 
 widespread excitement which preceded the 1st of 
 April, their interference would probably have been 
 of little effect, had they really applied themselves 
 to the task ; whereas, in that state of depression 
 which succeeded the repulse, there remained only 
 a provoked minority anxious for farther action, and 
 that minority was not too large for the Grovern- 
 ment to control. The anger and vexation which 
 pervaded a large mass of the people after the 
 defeat of the Corps Francs was pretty sure to vent 
 itself upon some one ; and the Government of M. 
 Neuhaus, disavowing and beginning to repress 
 what it was known to have previously connived 
 at, became the object of discontent .with a consi- 
 derable party which took Colonel Ochsenbein for 
 its leader. 
 
 The opposition against the Government of M. 
 Neuhaus thus doubtless began in causes connected 
 with Federal politics ; but it was enabled to succeed 
 by agencies of a totally different character. It col- 
 lected together all the financial malcontents and 
 
Letter VI.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 113 
 
 embarrassed interests from the different parts of 
 the Canton, promising some special Government 
 intervention to meet the particular case of each. 
 The proprietors of land in the communes of the 
 Bernese Oberland were distressed and surcharged 
 with mortgages at high interest : to them was pro- 
 mised an advance of 5,000,000 francs from the 
 funds of the Government at an interest of 5 per 
 cent., 14 of which was to be laid by as a sinking- 
 fund for repayment of the principal. This was to 
 be ultimately enlarged into a general caisse hypo- 
 thecaire for the whole Canton. Next, the communes 
 of the Emmenthal were borne down by the weight 
 of pauperism: to them was offered an enactment 
 relieving each separate commune from legal lia- 
 bility to maintain its own poor, and making that 
 charge public or Cantonal — at the same time con- 
 solidating the poor-funds of all the separate com- 
 munes into one aggregate Cantonal poor-fund, 
 whereby the richer communes would have borne a 
 large part of the charges of the less affluent. 
 
 Such was the scheme as originally projected, 
 though not carried into full effect : its tendencies 
 appeared so dangerous that it met with the most 
 
114 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter VI. 
 
 strenuous opposition in passing through the con- 
 stituent assembly, and was ultimately modified so 
 as to leave to every commune its own poor-fund 
 apart, but at the same time to alter for the future 
 the principle of poor-law relief from compulsory 
 to spontaneous, and to abolish the legal claim of a 
 poor person on his commune. This latter change 
 is recognised in principle, and is to be gradually 
 approached in practice : over and above the 
 amount of the poor-fund (which of course remains 
 consecrated to its original purpose), the amount of 
 compulsory rates hitherto levied upon the different 
 communes is to be gradually diminished^ until at 
 length, after the lapse of four years^ no farther 
 recourse is to be had except to voluntary collec- 
 tion. To smooth this transition, and to aid the 
 distressed communes, the Cantonal treasury is to 
 furnish to each commune assistance proportioned 
 to the amount of its rates : but the aggregate 
 charge thus arising on the Cantonal treasury is 
 not to exceed in any case the maximum of 400,000 
 Swiss francs (about 600,000 French francs, or 
 24,0001, sterling : the population of the Canton is 
 at present about 430,000 souls). It will be seen. 
 
LettebVI] politics of SWITZERLAND. 115 
 
 that in the poor-law thus modified, the change first 
 projected, or Cantonal aid to the pauperised com- 
 munes, was retained in principle, but much con- 
 tracted in extent ; while the new provision of 
 abolishing compulsory poor-rates was introduced. 
 
 Lastly, a third financial operation, besides what 
 related to mortgages and pauperism, was included 
 in this same party move. The communes of the 
 Seeland and other parts of the Canton were subject 
 to various burdens of immemorial antiquity — 
 tithes, rent-charges, &c., old feudal redevances 
 attaching to the different districts, and which had 
 passed into the hands of the Cantonal Grovernment 
 when it first conquered or purchased the seig- 
 neurial rights, and under which of course the land 
 had often changed proprietors. These burdens 
 had always been odious, from their association 
 with the ideas and feelings of feudal superiority ; 
 after 1798, the Helvetic Republic then framed had 
 tried partly to abolish, partly to commute them : 
 but this was found impracticable, and they were 
 ultimately rendered redeemable at a rate which 
 the Government of M. Neuhaus in 1845 had re- 
 duced from eighteen to twelve years' purchase. 
 
 i2 
 
116 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter VI. 
 
 His opponents promised a still further reduction 
 to six years' purchase ; and inasmuch as by such a 
 step those who had already redeemed at the higher 
 rate would be placed in a worse condition, an 
 indemnity was insured to them out of the public 
 treasury, equal to the difference between the 
 higher and the lower rate. This operation has 
 since been carried into effect; and its result has 
 been, that the Government has had to pay out in 
 the way of indemnity (partly to private impro- 
 priators of tithe, partly to those who had before' 
 redeemed at the higher rate), a greater positive 
 amount than all which it received of principal 
 money from redemption on the reduced scale. It 
 thus not only ceases to receive for the future a 
 certain tithe-revenue, but has incurred a positive 
 loss. 
 
 The defalcation arising in the public revenue 
 out of these various operations, is to be made up 
 by imposing a direct property-tax upon the entire 
 Canton, excepting only those Catholic portions 
 which formerly constituted the Bishopric of Basle, 
 and which are subject already to an impot foncier 
 of fixed amount. The property-tax — a painful 
 
LetteeVI.] politics OF SWITZEELAND. 117 
 
 novelty to the Bernese — has been distinctly an-, 
 nounced in perspective, but not yet actually 
 levied : it is to be hoped that the actual collection 
 of it, which is now become indispensable to cover 
 a large deficiency in the public revenue, will not 
 prove too unpopular to be carried into efi*ect. 
 
 Such were the various financial combinations 
 whereby the party of M. Ochsenbein gathered 
 together sufficient support to displace M. Neuhaus, 
 procure a constituent assembly, and frame a new 
 constitution. In that constitution the new finan- 
 cial changes stand embodied, though in point of 
 fact they have no proper right of admission into 
 an act of political constitution : they are all serious 
 matters of legislation, proper to be considered 
 and settled by the elective Councils which that 
 constitution may provide : they threaten, more- 
 over, to embarrass greatly the future state of the 
 revenue. The new coDstitution, politically speak- 
 ing, is an improvement, since it substitutes direct 
 election of the Great Council in place of election 
 by two stages : but this would hardly have been 
 sufficient of itself to displace the former Govern- 
 ment, which might well have adopted such a 
 
118 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Lettkb VI. 
 
 change if recommended by popular feeling. Con- 
 sidered with reference to Federal politics, the revo- 
 lution of Berne in 1846 is of no great moment: 
 considered with reference to internal affairs, to the 
 stability of public property, and to the precedent 
 afforded of acquiring partisans by helping em- 
 barrassed debtors out of the public purse, it is 
 one of the most unpromising which as yet oc- 
 curred in Switzerland. It was accomplished 
 merely by popular meetings and demonstrations, 
 without the use of arms on either side : M. Neu- 
 haus was displaced during the winter, the Con- 
 stituent Assembly held its sittings through the 
 spring, and the constitution was published and 
 ratified by the popular vote in July 1846. 
 
 On all these points the Kevolution which occurred 
 at Geneva on the 7th of October, 1846, was ma- 
 terially different. It was of great Federal import- 
 ance : it was purely politioal, a triumph of Radicals 
 over Conservatives, without any appeal to pecu- 
 niary interests : moreover, it involved a serious 
 armed contest. The proximate cause of it was, 
 the debate and decision in the Great Council re- 
 specting instructions to be given to the deputation 
 
Letter VI.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. HQ 
 
 at the Diet in reference to the Sonderbund and the 
 Jesuits. I have already mentioned, that when the 
 former question was discussed at the Diet on 
 the 4th September, 1846, the Deputy of Geneva 
 reserved his vote ; and in the beginning of Oc- 
 tober, the Executive Council of Geneva proposed 
 to the Great Council a draft of instructions for his 
 future conduct. 
 
 After 1814, the year of liberation from France, 
 the government of Geneva became representative 
 in principle, yet with a restricted suffrage and 
 little responsibility to the people. Though con- 
 fined to the hands of the old Genevese families 
 in the Upper Town, however, it was administered 
 with liberality and intelligence, and formed in this 
 respect an honourable contrast to the retrograde 
 and reactionary spirit which animated nearly all 
 the Swiss Governments between 1815 and 1830. 
 Hence, the vehement burst of popular feeling 
 which traversed Switzerland after 1830, remained 
 for a long time without much effect on Geneva ; 
 nor was it until 1841 that a movement at length 
 broke out which that Government was unable to 
 resist : a new constitution was then framed, with 
 
120 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Lbttbb VI. 
 
 suffrage substantially universal, and with the 
 voters distributed into ten electoral colleges. 
 The practical working of this system was, to 
 transfer the real power from the Upper Town to 
 a combination of the Upper and Lower Town, 
 and to throw the Radicals of St. Gervais into 
 a minority. The politics of Greneva have been 
 not a little influenced by its topography: the 
 Rhone divides the town into two unequal parts — 
 the larger part on the left bank containing the 
 Haute and Basse Yille, while the smaller part on 
 the right bank forms the district called St. Gervais. 
 The Haute Yille or Upper Town contains the 
 Hotel de Ville, the public buildings, and the resi- 
 dences of the old families or aristocracy of Geneva 
 — men wealthy and prudent as a class, socially as 
 well as politically exclusive, and proud in the 
 recollections of the ancient town when it figured 
 during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
 as a refuge for persecuted Protestantism, and when 
 its professors and clergy, enjoying European cele- 
 brity, added some dignity to a government essen- 
 tially narrow and repulsive. The Basse Yille 
 contains the bourgeois of various occupations, mer- 
 
Letter VL] POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 121 
 
 chants, tradesmen, &c., who are separated from 
 the aristocracy of the Haute Yille by a social line 
 not the less felt and observed because it is nowhere 
 traced on the map. On the opposite side of the 
 river, in St. Grervais, dwell the artisans and opera- 
 tives, with smaller tradesmen among them : a class 
 industrious and energetic, as well as intelligent — 
 of independent spirit — strongly attached to the- 
 ories of Democracy and social equality, and hating 
 priestly dominion not less than political privileges 
 — moreover^ though last not least, every man 
 among them more or less a soldier, possessing his 
 rifle and familiar with the use of it. The move- 
 ment of 1841 had been one in which the Basse 
 Ville joined with St. Grervais to abrogate the privi- 
 leges of the Haute Yille : but when the new con- 
 stitution was formed and put in working, the result 
 of it was found to be that the Haute and Basse 
 Yille combined together against St. Grervais — 
 aristocracy and bourgeois against the Eadicals. 
 The newly-allied parties seem to have acted under 
 a persuasion that universal suffrage was in itself 
 dangerous and full of bad tendencies which it was 
 their duty to neutralize ; and for this purpose they 
 
122 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letteb VI. 
 
 constituted themselves a government of resistance. 
 Their principal supporters formed themselves into 
 secret societies, both in the G-reat Council and out 
 of it, which were made to act powerfully upon the 
 elections as well as upon legislative proceedings : 
 and so strongly did the tide of party organisa- 
 tion set among these Conservatives, that whoever 
 among their own number declined to join some 
 one of these societies, was looked upon coldly and 
 unfavourably. The effect of such organisation was 
 of course sensibly felt, and the existence of the 
 societies as a general fact well known by the 
 Eadical leaders. M. James Fazy in the G-reat 
 Council, and others, commented upon them severely 
 under the usual title of " les embrigades." To the 
 Eadicals, moreover, the symptoms of aristocratical 
 pretension in the newly admitted members of 
 Government from the Basse Ville — who had united 
 with them to bring about the movement of 1841, 
 and who but for that movement would not have 
 been accounted worthy to occupy the chairs of the 
 Executive Council — were more galling than those 
 same dispositions would have proved in the mem- 
 bers of the old families whom they had been so 
 
Letter VI.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 123 
 
 long accustomed to see in the seats of power. The 
 G-enevese Government between 1841 and 1846 
 was thus in its political spirit a government of 
 resistance as well as of party ; though its adminis- 
 tration then, as well as before 1841, gave little 
 ground for complaint. It commanded a large 
 majority in the Great Council ; but it had the 
 considerable and compact minority of Radicals in 
 St. Gervais in strong opposition — on one occasion, 
 indeed, in 1843, in actual revolt, which was only 
 put down by force. M. James Fazy was the lead- 
 ing Radical representative in the Great Council. 
 
 Upon this state of dissentient parties fell the 
 passionate course of Swiss Federal pohtics during 
 the interval between 1841 and 1846. The Radi- 
 cals of Geneva sympathised strongly with the 
 feeling against the Jesuits, and still more strongly 
 with that against the Sonderbund in 1846. On 
 the first of these questions, the Government of 
 Geneva, while refusing to concur in any vote 
 for expelling the Jesuits out of other Cantons, 
 as a matter beyond their competence, always 
 expressed their strong opinion that the Jesuits 
 were noxious to the peace of the country, and 
 
124 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Lbttbb VI. 
 
 invited other Cantons to dismiss them volun- 
 tarily. This reserve did not suit the views of 
 the Radicals ; nevertheless, on the question of 
 the Jesuits, the Government obtained large ma- 
 jorities and an easy triumph. With the question 
 of the Sonderbund their course might have been 
 even easier, since there was really less difference 
 of opinion : but it was rendered unnecessarily 
 difficult, and became ultimately even critical and 
 perilous, from the political feelings with which 
 the Grovernment approached it in October 1846, 
 in proposing the instructions for their Deputies 
 at the future Diet. There were two points to 
 be determined : first, whether the Sonderbund 
 should be declared illegal ; next, what security 
 should be provided against renewal of the Corps 
 Francs, which the Cantons of the Sonderbund 
 set forth as one of their main justifications for 
 the formation of the separate league. Now on 
 neither of these points does there seem to have 
 been any substantial difference of opinion between 
 the Government and the Radicals — both agreed 
 that the Sonderbund was contrary to the Pact, 
 and both agreed that the Corps Francs ought 
 
Letter VI.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 125 
 
 to be repressed. But though there was little 
 difference of opinion, there was an immense differ- 
 ence of feeling between the two parties: the 
 Government did not approve the Sonderbund, but 
 it cordially detested the Corps Francs and the 
 vein of feeling in which they had originated; 
 while the Radicals on their part did not approve 
 the Corps Francs, and were nowise unwilling 
 to concur in prohibiting them, but their positive 
 hatred was directed against the Sonderbund and 
 its originating sentiment. Now the Government, 
 even though consenting to declare the Sonder- 
 bund illegal, were most afraid of appearing to 
 give a triumph to Radical principles : accordingly, 
 they proposed to instruct the Deputy, while pro- 
 nouncing the illegality of the League, to couple 
 his vote with such strict conditions respecting the 
 Corps Francs as would probably not have been 
 realized, so that he would have been prevented 
 from forming one of a majority against the Son- 
 derbund. Moreover, M. Demole, the first Syndic 
 of Geneva, one of the most vehement Anti- 
 Radical speakers in Switzerland, would probably 
 have gone to the Diet with these instructions. 
 
126 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter VI. 
 
 and would have given all the right of the case, 
 and all the weight of the Cantonal authority^ to 
 the Lucerne side of politics, even while pro- 
 nouncing that Canton to have gone further than 
 the Pact justified, in forming the Sonderbund. 
 The instructions thus proposed by the Govern- 
 ment, repugnant in the extreme to the Eadical 
 minority, were Anti-Eadical to so impolitic a 
 degree as even to offend many of their own 
 partisans in Council; several of whom supported 
 an amendment, moved by one of their number 
 (M. Senn), which was a certain approximation 
 towards the Radical view, and as such was sup- 
 ported also by M. Fazy and his friends, though 
 rejected by the Government. Ultimately the 
 original instructions were carried, but by a ma- 
 jority much smaller than the Government were 
 in the habit of obtaining. Moreover, there were 
 other points in these instructions which provoked 
 the displeasure of the Radicals, such as the pro- 
 position made to appoint Federal Representatives 
 in restraint upon the recently formed Radical 
 Government of Berne, when that Canton should 
 become Yorort on the 1st of January, 1847. Such 
 
Letter VI.] POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 127 
 
 a power is given to the Cantons in the Pact, 
 but has never yet been actually exercised; and 
 the mere proposition of it was a party move 
 indicating a dislike of Radicalism, which the 
 Radicals on their side were not backward in 
 repaying. 
 
 As soon as the instructions had passed the 
 Council, vehement manifestations of discontent 
 broke out in St. Gervais : meetings were held ; 
 and M. Fazy with others proclaimed an indignant 
 protest, to be addressed to the Vorort, against the 
 resolution taken by the Council. This was re- 
 garded as a decided act of illegality by the Q-overn- 
 ment, who thought it their duty to arrest M. Fazy. 
 He refused to obey ; and the Radicals of St. Ger- 
 vais, full of sympathy for him as well as indigna- 
 tion against the course of political affairs, rose 
 in insurrection to defend him : while the Govern- 
 ment, trying to overpower them by military force 
 and by cannonade, found itself worsted in the 
 attempt and obliged to abdicate. For all ordinary 
 purposes it was doubtless strong enough, but not 
 for such an act of force as the arrest of the popular 
 leader under the existing state of feeling. No 
 
128 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter VI. 
 
 one, however, seems to have been prepared, cer- 
 tainly not M. Fazy himself, for the spontaneous 
 burst as well as the obstinate determination mani- 
 fested by the Radicals. When once political dis- 
 pute passes from words to arms, new forces which 
 before slumbered are found to awake, while those 
 which were before in evidence fall short of their 
 apparent promise, in a way which renders calcula- 
 tion of the result extremely difficult, and throws 
 much to the score of accident. 
 
 The strong and unmixed political character of 
 this revolution — the courage manifested by the 
 men of St. Gervais — and the absence of reactionary 
 lawlessness after success — rendered it a most im- 
 pressive event throughout Switzerland; and its 
 future influence upon Swiss affairs will be the 
 greater, inasmuch as it has elevated M. Fazy, 
 known before only as an able Opposition speaker 
 and journalist, to a post wherein he has been 
 enabled to display powers of positive government 
 and organisation for which few had given him 
 credit. In the constitution as now changed, the 
 elective franchise remains nearly the same in ex- 
 tent, having been before practically universal ; 
 
Letter VI.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 129 
 
 but it has been distributed anew ; the aggregate 
 of about 12,000 voters is now divided into three 
 electoral colleges, instead of ten, while the number 
 of members in the Great Council has been dimi- 
 nished by one half. On both these points the 
 previous arrangement was highly favourable to 
 the influence of the Genevese aristocracy, who 
 have thus by the present change lost an under- 
 hand advantage adroitly infused into universal 
 suffrage by the constitution of 1841. In all times 
 of political quiet, a wealthy aristocracy like that 
 of Geneva will be able to sway more or less the 
 fair expression of electoral opinion, even under the 
 present or any other system : but they cannot 
 reasonably expect that the constitution should be 
 so framed as to help them in the work. The most 
 questionable change introduced by the new con- 
 stitution appears to be the election of the Execu- 
 tive Council by the aggregate body of Cantonal 
 electors, instead of by the Great Council, as is the 
 practice in the other Swiss Cantons. But we may 
 remark, in regard to the Genevese constitution of 
 1847, what was already observed about the new 
 constitution of 1845 in the canton of Yaud — that 
 
130 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter VI. 
 
 it does not bring about any capital transfer of 
 the seat of power : it is a change from universal 
 suffrage, partially hampered and laid open to cor- 
 rupt influence, to universal suffrage more free and 
 spontaneous. But the 12,000 electors continue 
 now, as before 1846, to constitute the political 
 sovereign ; and the large majority now possessed 
 by the Radicals in the Great Council is probably 
 more owing to the strong temporary stimulus of 
 the revolution itself, than to any inherent differ- 
 ence between the working of the present and the 
 former systems of election. Whether that large 
 majority will be durable, depends much on the 
 conduct of the Radical Government ; but under 
 all circumstances it may well be considered 
 doubtful. 
 
 Bale-Yille has always been inflexibly Conserva- 
 tive down to the beginning of the present year, 
 in sympathy with Lucerne and its allied Cantons. 
 The rich mercantile aristocracy of Basle forms 
 in many respects a parallel to that of Geneva, 
 and the minds of its population were strongly 
 affected by the revolution in the latter. At the 
 beginning of the year 1847, political discontent 
 
Letter VI.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 131 
 
 being on the increase in Basle, the Government 
 were prudent enough to take warning by the occur- 
 rences in Greneva, and to determine on a revision 
 of their constitution, which is supposed to have 
 averted the chance of a revolution. Since that 
 revision, the Federal politics of Bale-Ville have 
 assumed a neutral or a juste-milieu character; 
 neither supporting the Sonderbund nor voting 
 with the majority. 
 
 The vote of St. G-allen, at the Diet of the 
 present year, was determined by the elections 
 of last May for the Great Council of the Canton. 
 Previous to last May, the Great Council was 
 divided into two parties equal in number, so that 
 at the Diet of 1846, the Canton gave no vote 
 on the questions of the Jesuits or the Sonderbund. 
 In May last, the elections for the Catholic district 
 of Gasters returned new men, of the Liberal or 
 Radical party ; and this gave a majority, though 
 a small majority, to that party in the Great 
 Council. St. Gallen is a Canton of parity, divided 
 between Catholics and Protestants, with equal 
 political rights to each confession : the population 
 is about three-fifths Catholic and two-fifths Pro- 
 
 K 2 
 
132 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter VI. 
 
 testant, not inhabiting continuous districts, but 
 Catholic and Protestant communes intermingled 
 one with another. There exists moreover in 
 this Canton what is called the Confessional Separa- 
 tion, — a distinct organisation of both confessions, 
 apart from and to a great degree independent 
 of the Grovernment, for the management of all 
 that relates to religion, education, matrimony, 
 and a range of other matters connected with 
 these general heads. There is a Catholic Council 
 of Administration, elected by the general body 
 of Catholics, and a Catholic Executive Board, 
 chosen by that Council : and as the fund belong- 
 ing to the confession is ample, this board is well 
 paid, exercises great influence, and is almost a 
 match for the Government itself. Moreover, a 
 Bishop for the Canton exclusively has recently 
 been named, and endowed, together with several 
 Canons, out of a remaining portion of the pro- 
 perty belonging to the old Abbots of St. Gallen. 
 The Catholic religious leaders in that Canton 
 have thus received a reinforcement which will 
 make their organisation even more effective than 
 it has hitherto been in correspondence with 
 
Letter VI.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 133 
 
 Lucerne, and may probably enable them to break 
 down the present narrow majority. The know- 
 ledge of this fact is of course familiar to the 
 Grovernment of Lucerne ; who have even been 
 led to doubt whether the Great Council of St. 
 Gallen, with so small a majority, would go so 
 far as to sanction measures of execution against 
 the Sonderbund : this explains in part the lan- 
 guage of inflexible determination and defiance 
 which they have maintained. 
 
 The two votes of Geneva and St. Gallen, added 
 to the ten and two half-votes of 1846, constitute 
 the majority against the Sonderbund and the 
 Jesuits in the Diet of the present year. Bale- 
 Yille, which was before favourable to the League, 
 is now in a position of neutrality. 
 
 I have now followed down the course of Swiss 
 Federal politics from their causes in the past to 
 their present condition. One letter more — con- 
 taining some general remarks on these past facts, 
 and on the probable tendencies of the future, in 
 so far as they admit of being dimly discerned — 
 will close the series. 
 
134 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letteu VII. 
 
 Letter YII. 
 
 Oct. 16, 1847. 
 We trace a distinct though compHcated sequence 
 of events, one growing out of another, from the 
 poh'tico-rehgious movements prior to 1840 down 
 to the present Diet and its votes respecting the 
 Sonderbund. It is impossible even to comprehend, 
 still less fairly to appreciate, the feelings and posi- 
 tion of Switzerland at present, without going back 
 to these previous circumstances. If the Sonder- 
 bund is to be characterised as an effect resulting 
 from the expeditions of the Corps Francs^ these 
 expeditions resulted even more directly from the 
 peculiar train of events which preceded them in 
 1843 and 1844. And it has been the more neces- 
 sary to go briefly over these, because the actual 
 condition of Switzerland is usually presented in a 
 totally erroneous point of view — as resulting from 
 the systematic efforts of the party called Radical 
 to merge the Cantonal sovereignty in a unitary 
 government, and to oppress the Catholic religion. 
 
Letter VII.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 135 
 
 The invasions of the Corps Francs — the real wrong 
 for which the Radicals of four Cantons adjacent to 
 Lucerne are responsible- — had their rise in neither 
 of these dispositions. It seems, indeed, strange 
 that the Radicals should be so often charged with 
 preference for a unitary government, since Radi- 
 calism, as such, could not possibly gain, and would 
 in all probability lose, by the change; for it is 
 certain that government has less weight as a sub- 
 stantive force apart from the people, and that the 
 demagogic influences are more perpetually opera- 
 tive, in the separate Cantons, than they would be 
 in the case of one concentrated system pervading 
 all Switzerland. If any one reads M. Tillier's 
 valuable History of the Helvetic Republic down 
 to the Act of Mediation in 1803 — a time during 
 which the comparative fitness of the unitary and 
 Cantonal systems of government was really under 
 serious deliberation, which it never has been since 
 — he will see that one of the objections urged by 
 opponents of the Cantonal system was, that it 
 opened so many easy and tempting markets for 
 demagogic speculation. Some particular Radical 
 leaders might gain in importance by a unitary 
 
136 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. [Letter VH. 
 
 government ; but the greater number of them 
 would be personally losers — to say nothing of the 
 feeling common to the population of every Canton, 
 which puts all idea of unitary government out of 
 the question. Nor is the alleged hostility towards 
 the Catholic religion on the part of Radicals at all 
 better founded. Hostility to the Jesuits is not 
 hostility to the Catholic religion : still less was the 
 act of suppressing the Argovian convents a proof 
 of this latter feeling ; for the real persons who 
 have gained by that suppression are the Catholic 
 ministers, Catholic schoolmasters, and Catholic 
 parishioners of the Canton; while the means of 
 inculcating the Catholic faith and duties are un- 
 questionably strengthened and not weakened. 
 The monks of Muri did not employ their property 
 for any such purpose ; though they were ready 
 enough to assist politico-religious agitation, either 
 in their own Canton or in others. 
 
 The series of facts set forth in the preceding 
 letters, sufficiently shews that the two parties in 
 the Federal quarrel are not distinguished from 
 each other by systematic respect or disrespect 
 for Cantonal independence. On the two matters 
 
Letter VII.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 137 
 
 of contention which have stood out most pro- 
 minent — the suppression of the Argovian con- 
 vents and the maintenance of the Jesuits — the 
 position of the two parties in respect to Cantonal 
 rights has been reversed. On the first of the 
 two, the Radicals were the upholders of Cantonal 
 sovereignty, which was then held very cheap by 
 Lucerne and its allies ; while on the second, 
 Lucerne has pushed its separate rights to their 
 extreme limits (as may be seen from the language 
 addressed to that Canton by the Conservative 
 Cantonal Governments, nowise unfriendly to 
 Lucerne), against the Anti- Jesuit feeling enforcing 
 a wide construction of the Pact. If Lucerne in 
 1842-43 had been able to obtain a majority in 
 the Diet for the unconditional restitution of the 
 Argovian convents, and had Argau refused to 
 obey, the Cantons now forming the Sonderbund 
 would have marched out their entire military 
 force to execute it, at any cost of bloodshed : they 
 would have left to Radicals all the talk about 
 sanctity of Cantonal rights. It suits their policy 
 now to take stand upon unrestrained Cantonal 
 omnipotence; but when we put 1843 and 1847 
 
138 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letteh VII. 
 
 together, we may see plainly that this forms no 
 fixed line of distinction between the two parties. 
 
 That which runs through the Federal quarrels 
 during the last seven or eight years is, not so 
 much the disputed competence of Canton against 
 Diet, as the struggle for ascendency between the 
 Catholic church and the political power. The 
 success of the Catholic priestly agitators in the 
 revision of the Lucerne constitution in 1840 — 
 their attempt, even by force, to accomplish a 
 similar change in Soleure and Argau — the sub- 
 sequent events connected with the Argovian con- 
 vents, the Yalais, and the Jesuits — all these are 
 under one form or another the continuation of 
 the struggle above mentioned, brought into pro- 
 minent relief by the action of Lucerne both as 
 Canton and as Yorort. That Canton has put 
 itself at the head of the Catholic Clerocracy (if 
 we may venture to add one to this already 
 numerous family of compound words) of Switzer- 
 land, working through Democratical forms, and 
 adopting the Jesuits as the most effective of all 
 trainers for a political priesthood ; while on the 
 other hand the party called Radical, including 
 
Letter VIL] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 139 
 
 both Catholics and Protestants, throughout Swit- 
 zerland, have been brought together by common 
 antipathy to this movement — of which antipathy 
 the great and perfectly natural manifestation has 
 been, the protest against the introduction of 
 Jesuits into Lucerne. We here discover the 
 real pivot of Swiss Federal dissensions during 
 the last few years ; dissensions which have divided 
 the country into two hostile camps, and have 
 given to the proceedings of the Diet a positive 
 and central character foreign to its habitual 
 negation and impotence. Of course each Canton 
 has had its own local parties and grounds of 
 dissension, and with these the Federal politics 
 have blended, often in predominant proportion. 
 In Zurich, in Yaud, and in Greneva, the then 
 existing Conservative Governments were placed 
 in a false position, — an ti -Jesuit in theory and 
 pro- Jesuit in vote, — which distinctly caused the 
 overthrow of the two former, and mainly aided 
 in that of the latter. Allowing for such separate 
 Cantonal individualities, it is not the less true 
 that the general cast of Swiss parties is as follows. 
 1. The Clerocracy of Lucerne, working for the 
 
140 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter Vn. 
 
 promotion of Catholic priestly ascendency through- 
 out Switzerland — ultra Democratical in constitu- 
 tional forms, and leaning upon the veto or 
 referendum as a means of nulHfying the lay 
 representative council. 2. The Eadicals of both 
 confessions — bound together chiefly, if not en- 
 tirely, by a strong common antipathy to what 
 may be termed the Lucerne policy. 3. The Con- 
 servatives, principally Protestants, distinct from 
 both — adverse to the Radicals (who form their 
 own immediate opponents), and thrown by this 
 circumstance into sympathy with Lucerne, which 
 does not always proceed from coincidence of views 
 — now generally in opposition, except in Neuf- 
 chatel and partially in Bale-Yille, having been 
 elsewhere elbowed out by the stronger contentions 
 between the two other parties. The conduct of 
 Lucerne has indeed been such as to do much 
 unintentional service to the Radicals its oppo- 
 nents, and much mischief to the Conservatives 
 its supporters. 
 
 Such is the manner in which the contending 
 parties now stand opposed in Switzerland : the 
 main antithesis is that between lay-power and 
 
Letter VII.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 141 
 
 priest-power, each working through Democratical 
 forms — the same Hne of parties, substantially, 
 as that which now divides Belgium; whilst the 
 powerful organisation of the Catholic Church, 
 pervading as it does so large a portion of the 
 country, and applied as it has been systematically 
 to convert political questions into religious, is 
 in truth a much stronger restraint on Cantonal 
 sovereignty than the feeble powers exercised by 
 the Diet. The purely political question, between 
 privilege on the one side and the sovereignty 
 of the people on the other, is one of subordinate 
 moment in Switzerland. The former creed is 
 not found convenient to proclaim anywhere as 
 a party formula, even by those who regret the 
 times anterior to 1830 : either the Landsgemeinde, 
 or universal suffrage with or without direct ex- 
 pression of the popular voice in veto or referen- 
 dum^ prevails everywhere ; and the competition 
 lies between the priest and the magistrate, which 
 of the two shall influence that voice, or in what 
 proportions it shall be divided between them. 
 Throughout the Cantons of the Sonderbund, 
 and amidst much of the Catholic population in 
 
142 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letteb VH. 
 
 the other Cantons, the larger share of such in- 
 fluence is in the hands of the priest : in the 
 Protestant Cantons, the sphere of the latter is 
 much more limited, in spite of a frequent dis- 
 position to extend it by direct political preaching. 
 The difference between popular government under 
 Catholic priestly ascendency and under lay as- 
 cendency, is strikingly manifested in the fact, 
 that in the Cantons of the Sonderbund there is 
 at this moment no free expression of opinion 
 on the part of the minority : not only is the 
 Cantonal press under restraint, but even Liberal 
 newspapers, published in other Cantons, are sys- 
 tematically refused admittance ; while in the 
 Radical Cantons, the Opposition press is as out- 
 spoken as in any part of Europe, and every one 
 who chooses to denounce the Government or 
 uphold the Sonderbund is at liberty to do so. 
 
 The preceding observations on the general cast 
 of Swiss parties are not calculated to lighten our 
 conception of the political dilemma in which that 
 country is now placed. On the contrary, they 
 bring to view forcibly the points of repugnance 
 between one part of the Confederation and an- 
 
Letter VII.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 143 
 
 other^ and the diffieultj of maintaining that degree 
 of harmony which is absolutely essential to the 
 idea of a common " Vaterland," recognised in 
 words in the Federal Pact. The two hostile camps 
 into which the country is now divided, and the 
 tone of discussion hence arising, go to deprive 
 this impressive German word not only of all hold 
 upon the feelings but of all import and reality in 
 argument. 
 
 If we assent to the claims and to the reasoning 
 set up on behalf of the Sonderbund, we should be 
 driven to pronounce the Pact entirely at an end — 
 we should be driven to affirm that the majority of 
 the Confederation have no right in any case what- 
 ever to bind the minority. The right of the Diet 
 to condemn that League cannot be denied, except 
 upon arguments which go to deny it in all and 
 every case. It would be clear, even upon general 
 reasoning simply, that the most essential purposes 
 of the Pact would be frustrated if armed leagues 
 among the separate Cantons were allowed to sub- 
 sist. But this is a matter not left to inference ; 
 for the sixth Article of the Pact (already alluded 
 to) expressly says — *' No alliance prejudicial either 
 
144 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter VII. 
 
 to the general Confederacy or to the rights of 
 other Cantons shall be formed by separate Cantons 
 among themselves." Commentators on the Pact, 
 such as Professor Stettler of Berne (not a Radical 
 writer), distinctly read this clause as constituting 
 the Sonderbund Anti-Federal ; and it is hardly 
 possible to construe it otherwise. The Sonderbund 
 do indeed contend — " Our League is necessary for 
 self-defence ; it is formed exclusively for purposes 
 of defence, and is therefore not prejudicial either 
 to the Confederacy or to any other Canton : of 
 this we ourselves, as sovereign Cantons, are the 
 only competent judges, and we deny the com- 
 petence of the majority of the Diet to determine 
 it for us." Here the point at issue is distinctly 
 raised, " Have the majority of the Diet competence 
 to determine whether a particular league formed 
 comes under the general description of league 
 forbidden by the Pact?" In other words, "Have 
 they the right to apply the general provisions of 
 the Pact to a particular case? Or has every 
 separate Canton a right to determine this for 
 itself?" To concede this latter point, would be to 
 extinguish altogether the practical obligation of 
 
Letter VII.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 145 
 
 the Pact. Commentators upon the Pact always 
 reason upon it as an instrument according to 
 which each Canton has voluntarily renounced a 
 certain definite portion of its independent sove- 
 reignty, and in which the majority of the Diet 
 have a right judicially to construe its provisions 
 and apply them to particular cases, but no right 
 to enlarge or modify them ; such judicial decision 
 being binding on the minority. Unless we grant 
 this, the whole business of voting at the Diet, and 
 of distinguishing between Cantons of half vote and 
 Cantons of whole vote, would be an absurdity : 
 indeed, the Sonderbund themselves grant it, in 
 cases where they are the parties complaining and 
 not the parties to be bound. Not to mention the 
 efibrts of Lucerne to procure a majority for the 
 purpose of enforcing restitution of the Argovian 
 convents— efforts which of course imply that the 
 majority had a right to overrule the step taken by 
 Argau, and to dictate an authoritative construc- 
 tion of the Pact — during the past session of the 
 Diet, and at the very time when the Sonderbund 
 formally refused to obey its resolution, the Deputy 
 of Friburg preferred complaints to it against the 
 
146 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter VIL 
 
 Government of Yaud, for having laid undue taxes 
 upon the properties in that Canton belonging to 
 the Abbey of St. Bernard. The case was one 
 much less clear, in respect to contravention of the 
 Pact, than the very existence of the Sonderbund 
 itself: but whether clear or not, the Deputy of 
 Yaud would have had a ready answer, if he in his 
 turn had denied the competence of the majority to 
 construe the Pact judicially, and had claimed for 
 his Canton the right of separate and independent 
 interpretation. 
 
 To deny the right of judicial construction in the 
 majority when it goes against you, and to invoke 
 it when it makes in your favour^ is an inconsistency 
 not at all likely to be tolerated. And the more we 
 look at the resistance of the Sonderbund to the 
 Diet, combined with the arguments whereby it is 
 defended, the more we shall be satisfied that it 
 amounts to nothing less than a suspension of the 
 Pact in practice as well as in theory. If a French 
 or an Austrian army were at this moment to cross 
 the frontier, it is certain that they would meet 
 with no unanimous resistance, even if they were 
 not hailed as positive allies, by the Cantons of the 
 
Letter VII.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 147 
 
 Sonderbund. The continuance of that separate 
 armed League is plainly incompatible with the 
 continuance of the Pact as something real, vital, 
 and operative. Lucerne cannot be Vorort of the 
 Confederation, and at the same time chief of a 
 Catholic Sonderbund. 
 
 How the majority of the Diet will deal with 
 this grave and critical conjuncture — how they will 
 construe their Federal rights, and what degree of 
 firmness combined with moderation they will show 
 in exercising them — we shall see when they re- 
 assemble on the 18th of this month. If we were 
 to judge by the recent manifestations on both 
 sides, we should conclude that the melancholy con- 
 tingency of a civil war was all but inevitable. 
 Berne, Zurich, and Yaud, the three most populous 
 Cantons in the Confederation, have placed them- 
 selves in a complete state of military readiness ; 
 while the Landsgemeinden in Schwytz, Uri, and 
 Zug, have also passed the strongest resolution of 
 resisting force by force ; and arms have been trans- 
 mitted to the Sonderbund both by France and 
 Austria. It will be seen after the 18th — first, 
 whether all the Cantons of the majority concur in 
 
 L 2 
 
148 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter VH. 
 
 sanctioning measures of forcible execution,* in case 
 pacific tentatives fail ; next, whether the popula- 
 tion of all or most of those Cantons heartily 
 espouses the cause; thirdly, what species of com- 
 promise they are disposed to offer or accept, as a 
 means of avoiding war. On none of these points 
 can we safely venture to indulge predictions at 
 present. If the Cantons of the majority, with 
 their population, are all unanimous, and most of 
 them really earnest in the cause, there can be no 
 reasonable doubt (looking at the question merely 
 as one of military superiority) that they could take 
 Lucerne and Friburg, in the latter of which there 
 is already a discontented and compressed minority : 
 the principal force and agency of the Sonderbund 
 resides in these two Cantons. But this alone will 
 be very far from- accomplishing what is really 
 desired — the renovation of a Pact which has been 
 practically set aside, and of an extinct confederate 
 brotherhood. The population of the recusant 
 Cantons^ instead of being conciliated, would pro- 
 bably be still farther alienated : no man supposes 
 
 * AH the Cantons have now concurred : the decision of St. Gallen 
 having recently become known. (Oct. 24.) 
 
Letter YII.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 149 
 
 that they could be permanently constrained by 
 force, or hindered from renouncing, the Confedera- 
 tion, should such be their confirmed wish ; and in 
 such case the separation would only become formal 
 and avowed, without any maintenance of the Pact 
 even in name. Mere superiority of force, assuming 
 it to be ever so complete, lands us only in this 
 untoward result. 
 
 We may, however, spare ourselves the trouble 
 of speculating at present on a subject so melan- 
 choly as well as so perplexing; for a civil war 
 would be sure to throw up contingencies such as 
 no man can foresee — not to mention the chance 
 of foreign intervention which opens the door to a 
 host of new mischiefs. 
 
 The present majority of the Cantons has on its 
 hands a grave and responsible task. They are 
 now in a state of positive and intimate co-operation 
 altogether unusual in Switzerland, which it is 
 deeply to be wished that they may have the 
 wisdom to preserve, resisting that spirit of Can- 
 tonal egoism which has hitherto constituted the 
 chronic malady of the country. They possess by 
 far the larger portion of the wealth, the intel- 
 
150 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter VII. 
 
 ligence, the industry, and the population, of 
 Switzerland : all the progressive elements in the 
 country, and all its means of future permanent 
 union, reside with them. The Sonderbund may 
 break up the Confederation, but cannot possibly 
 guide or hold it together : all its tendencies are 
 those of discord and disintegration — setting Can- 
 tonal individuality against Confederate brother- 
 hood, Protestant against Catholic, one half of the 
 Catholic world against the other half, priest 
 against layman, and the dictation of religious 
 preaching against the liberty of political discus- 
 sion. That M. G-uizot or Prince Metternich, who 
 have every interest in the disunion of Switzerland, 
 should patronize the Sonderbund, is extremely 
 intelligible : that this sentiment should also be 
 shared by those who desire to see Swiss nationah'ty 
 maintained, at least at such a pitch of efficiency as 
 will defend the integrity of the territory, is more 
 extraordinary, and has its source probably in an 
 un distinguishing aversion to Radicalism. Even if, 
 by some fortunate compromise, the present quarrel 
 were appeased, it would still be an indispensable 
 condition of future unity that the Government of 
 
Letter VIL] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 151 
 
 Lucerne should desist from its Ultramontane and 
 aggressive policy, and from acting as the champion 
 of the political aggrandizement of the Catholic 
 Church throughout Switzerland : if such policy 
 were renewed, the same antipathies and excite- 
 ment would again be roused throughout the 
 Confederacy. 
 
 It deserves to be remarked, that the Diet at 
 its last meeting passed a peremptory resolution 
 against the Sonderbund, but only a modified re- 
 solution against the Jesuits — inviting each Canton 
 to dismiss them, but not putting forth the lan- 
 guage of command. This, in point of fact, is no 
 more than what has been expressed as a wish even 
 by the Conservatives. We may perhaps infer 
 from such difference of language that the majority 
 of the Diet is not likely to be unanimous in insist- 
 ing upon the worst part of its case — the expulsion 
 of the Jesuits from Schwytz, Friburg, and Yalais. 
 If this shall be publicly declared, it will be a 
 material step towards narrowing the ground of 
 contention, and depriving the Sonderbund of its 
 common motive for resistance. And it seems not 
 wholly impossible that the present excellent Pope 
 
152 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter VIL 
 
 might think the motive of restoring peace in 
 Switzerland sufficient to warrant his interference, 
 and might enjoin the Jesuits to withdraw from 
 Lucerne. In the present excited state of the 
 country, however, with the party manoeuvres of an 
 active Opposition in each separate Canton, and 
 with the taunts thrown out against the majority 
 that they are afraid to execute their own resolu- 
 tions — no man can reckon on the dispositions 
 necessary to a moderate compromise on both sides : 
 not to mention the chance of some accidental colli- 
 sion on the borders of Friburg or Lucerne, which 
 might produce a state of ungovernable exaspera- 
 tion, and destroy all chance of adjustment. 
 
 There is so much of all that constitutes both the 
 good man and the good citizen distributed through- 
 out Switzerland, that the present dissensions which 
 agitate that country cannot but inspire a profound 
 and anxious interest. Industry, forethought, self- 
 supporting energy, and reciprocal dispositions to 
 neighbourly help, pervade a larger portion of the 
 population than perhaps in any other country of 
 Europe. Of the spontaneous tendency to order 
 which prevails there with the minimum of poHce 
 
Letter VII.] POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 153 
 
 agency, a striking proof is afforded by tlae fact 
 that there were no food riots in any part of the 
 country throughout the last winter and spring, 
 though the distress was of the severest kind, the 
 price of bread in some parts even higher than in 
 London, and the necessity for extraordinary pri- 
 vate aid unexampled. Of none of the neighbour- 
 ing countries can the same thing be said : in 
 France, Germany, Italy, even in England, such 
 riots were but too notorious. Political revolutions 
 have undoubtedly been frequent in Switzerland : 
 but these revolutions have rarely been attended 
 with any loss at all, either of life or property ; and 
 never in any case, except Lucerne and the Valais, 
 have they produced any harshness, or cruelty, or 
 multiplied exiles. Proprietary rights have never 
 been disturbed, and are especially protected by 
 the fact that property in land is widely dissemin- 
 ated among the people. In most of the Cantons, 
 the Small or Executive Council addresses every 
 year to the Great Council a report of its annual 
 administration, and the series of these reports 
 forms a record of the internal government of the 
 Canton. If we follow that series for the larger 
 
154 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. [Letter VII. 
 
 Cantons, such as Berne, Zurich, St. Gallen, So- 
 leure, &c., we trace proofs of an improving and 
 corrective administration, and the greatest pains 
 taken to turn limited powers to the best account. 
 In particular we observe gradual and systematic 
 amelioration in the management of the Communes, 
 resulting from increased activity of Cantonal super- 
 intendence : the Commune is the unit of Swiss 
 social life, and its common funds as well as its 
 common obligations are of the most essential im- 
 portance to the comfort of the citizen ; both the 
 one and the other have been subjected to good 
 rules, and rescued from neglect and jobbing, with- 
 out at all extinguishing the principle of distinct 
 Communal management. The two grand items of 
 expense which figure in the budget of a Swiss 
 Canton, are the roads and public education : the 
 sums which have been bestowed on both these 
 purposes since the changes of 1831 have been 
 immense, relatively to the total means of the 
 Cantons. The habit of borrowing money on the 
 security of Cantonal or Communal credit, has 
 happily obtained little footing in Switzerland : far 
 from being disposed to spare themselves by throw- 
 
Letter VII.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 155 
 
 ing burdens on successors, the Swiss think it 
 necessary to get together and keep together a 
 capital which shall produce interest — a school-fund 
 or poor-fund — so that the weight of annual taxa- 
 tion for the purpose may be lightened : the actual 
 generation thus imposes burdens upon itself 
 greater than those which will be borne by the 
 succeeding. Elementary education is nearly uni- 
 versal ; and in many Cantons, the public senti- 
 ment, even among the poor population, sustains 
 the principle of making it compulsory. The dark 
 side of the picture presents itself in increasing 
 pauperism^ as in so many other countries of 
 Europe : the poor families multiply but too fast, 
 and a proletary population appears to be augment- 
 ing in the manufacturing Cantons; and this is 
 unfortunately an evil which, when once estab- 
 lished, contains in itself a principle of contagion 
 spreading more and more. The indirect taxes, 
 from which a large proportion of the Cantonal 
 revenues are derived, have tended everywhere to 
 become more and more productive ; but it seems 
 that the difficulties by which Swiss manufactures 
 are surrounded in respect of sale of their products, 
 
156 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. [Letter VII. 
 
 by the restrictive systems of other nations, are 
 found almost insuperable even by present capital- 
 ists, and are at least likely to check further in- 
 crease. In many of the Cantons much has been 
 done since 1830 to improve the security and 
 facility of the relation of lender and borrower on 
 landed security, by means of cheap and authentic 
 registration of mortgages and sales, and in some 
 cases even by formal cadastre of the territory. It 
 is only since 1831 that any general habit of can- 
 vassing public affairs has obtained among the 
 people : before that period, neither the proceedings 
 of the Great Council nor even the Cantonal budgets 
 were in general published. This new activity 
 of public life, and strong attachment to the theory 
 as well as the practice of popular government, has 
 produced its full crop of political dissension ; but 
 it has at the same time awakened a zeal for turn- 
 ing the powers of government to profitable public 
 account, and a sensibility to the exposure of wrong 
 or abuse, which have already manifested them- 
 selves in a thousand beneficial ways, and which 
 present every chance of improvement in the 
 future. i 
 
Letter VII.] POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 157 
 
 The Cantons of the Sonderbund are in every 
 respect the stationary and backward portions of 
 the Confederacy. It would be unjust and un- 
 reasonable to disturb their population in a state of 
 things suitable to their feelings ; but there will be 
 the deepest reason for regret, if the preservation 
 of that which they cherish is found, through the 
 intrigues of their partisan Vorort, to break up the 
 union, arrest the progress, or endanger the inde- 
 pendence, of the larger and more improving Can- 
 tons. Whether such shall be the case or not, the 
 intelligence of the next two or three months, so 
 full of anxious anticipation, will reveal. 
 
POLITICS OF SWITZEKLANB. 159 
 
 Supplemental Letter. 
 
 To M. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE {BS^ute). 
 
 London, Dec. 21, 1847. 
 
 I AM glad to hear, by your letter received a day 
 or two ago, that you have at last been put in pos- 
 session of the third and fourth volumes of my 
 History of Greece. They ought to have been 
 delivered to you much earlier ; my bookseller had 
 orders to send them immediately on their being 
 published, and the delay which occurred is to me 
 surprising, as well as vexatious. 
 
 I have desired a few copies of my letters on 
 Switzerland to be sent over to Gralignani at Paris ; 
 and orders will be given to Galignani to deliver 
 your copy to you, if you will take the trouble of 
 asking there for it. I shall be very glad if you 
 will read them before your debates come on in the 
 Chamber : whether you will agree in all points 
 with the opinions which I give, I do not knpw ; 
 but the value of my letters consists in the series of 
 
160 POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 
 
 facts which they set forth, showing that the anti- 
 Jesuit movement cannot be understood except in 
 connection with the peculiar circumstances which 
 preceded it. You will see that I sympathize with 
 the Diet, or (as it is called by its opponents) the 
 Radicals : which does not at all mean that I defend 
 everything that they have done. 
 
 The manner in which the war has terminated 
 exceeds everything which my most sanguine hopes 
 could have anticipated. I never ventured to ex- 
 pect that 90,000 citizens would have turned out 
 at the orders of the Diet, not only to brave all the 
 perils and all the hardships of war, but also to 
 execute with perfect order and system all the com- 
 mands of an able general. I never ventured to 
 expect that the Bonderbund would have displayed 
 so little of that resolution, at the moment of trial, 
 which was so much extolled before the moment 
 arrived. Lastly, I never expected that M. Guizot 
 and Prince Metternich, having so admirable a 
 game to play, could have been guilty of such 
 extravagant blunders. These three chances have 
 all turned out so much better than any one could 
 have reasonably predicted, that I am almost tempted 
 
POLITICS OF SWITZEKLAND. 161 
 
 to augur (my mind being now very full of Hero- 
 dotus and his point of view in reference to human 
 affairs) that there must be some countervailing 
 misfortunes in reserve for the Diet. When I left 
 Switzerland, I came away with very melancholy 
 anticipations as to the prospects of the country. I 
 fancied that the Sonderbund, aided by Gruizot and 
 Metternich, would be quite strong enough to keep 
 Switzerland disunited and helpless, if not to tear 
 it entirely in pieces. The magnificent and unani- 
 mous military demonstration which the people have 
 just made has been the salvation of the country — 
 not merely from the loss of its political existence 
 and independent working, but also from the spread 
 of that degrading fanaticism over the Catholics of 
 Switzerland generally, which was the only engine 
 for the Government of Lucerne to operate upon. 
 
 You know that I am no great admirer generally 
 of Lord Palmerston, and that especially, in regard 
 to his proceedings in 1840, I strenuously and 
 publicly condemned him. But his conduct during 
 the present year, both in Italy and in Switzerland, 
 appears to me to have been no less prudent than 
 liberal ; while I quite agree with you in saying, 
 
 M 
 
162 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 
 
 that Guizot has committed, in regard to tlie latter, 
 almost all the faults which a Government pos- 
 sibly could commit. It will be a great misfortune, 
 if, in consequence of the strong anti-English pre- 
 possessions common to all the parties in France, 
 he is enabled to throw the blame of his own 
 blunders on the alleged hostility of Lord Palmer- 
 ston. Gruizot and Metternich were in reality the 
 accomplices and allies of the Sonderbund, in the 
 most barefaced manner, for the purpose of treading 
 down and humiliating " Radicalism " in Switzer- 
 land : they constituted themselves parties in the 
 case, and arrogated to themselves the right of 
 interpreting and enforcing the Swiss Federal 
 Pact : putting themselves out of condition to act 
 as impartial mediators and arbitrators. So far 
 from wishing to prevent war, it was they who got 
 up the internal war, in order that they might have 
 a pretext for interfering. What right can they 
 have to complain of Palmerston because he would 
 not sympathise in such a policy, or that he re- 
 fused to concur in any intervention except one 
 purely amicable, and confined to a case of pressing 
 necessity ? It will really be a pity if a few adroit 
 
POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 163 
 
 sentences about the '' Machiavelism'' of Palmer- 
 ston and of England, should enable Guizot to 
 escape from the censure which his conduct so 
 justly deserves. He has made his own position 
 completely for himself: he has endeavoured, by a 
 furious and calumnious use of the press, and by 
 the aid of the Conservative press in Switzerland, 
 to persuade the French people that the Swiss 
 majority had neither courage nor conduct, and 
 were unfit to manage their own affairs: he has 
 been accusing them of intentions which are not 
 only untrue, but are the reverse of the truth, e.g., 
 a disposition to put down cantonal sovereignty 
 and establish an unitary government. The truth 
 is, that his hatred of Radicalism is so intense as to 
 blind him to all rational estimate of what is before 
 him : he has been the dupe of the lies of his own 
 partisans. And the result of his manoeuvres has 
 been, that he has strengthened Switzerland at 
 home, and the cause of Eadicalism generally in 
 Europe, more than any Swiss patriot or Radical 
 could at all have calculated on doing. 
 
 You will perceive that my Swiss Letters do not 
 go beyond the 18th or 19th of October, just the 
 
 M 2 
 
164 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 
 
 time when the Diet resumed its sittings after 
 adjournment. But the events which happened 
 after that period, and before the actual commence- 
 ment of war, are important to understand : if you 
 will procure the files of the Constitutionnel, which 
 has had a very good correspondent in Switzer- 
 land, from the 18th of October to the 7th or 8th 
 of November, you will follow the series of facts 
 without much labour. In particular, I beg you to 
 remark the conduct of the majority of the Diet, as 
 well as that of the Sonderbund, in reference to 
 compromise, immediately before the war. The 
 Sonderbund made no offer to treat at all — no offer 
 at all tending to procure peace — until after the 
 25th October, the day on which the Austrian 
 Ambassador wrote to the Diet to acquaint them 
 " that he should withdraw in case war broke out, 
 but that his Government would not interfere in the 
 war for or against either party." The next day 
 (or next but one), after this intimation of the 
 Austrian, the Sonderbund communicated certain 
 terms on which they would consent to dissolve 
 their separate league. These terms were not a 
 diminution, but an enlargement of their demands : 
 
POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 165 
 
 for they required that not only the question of 
 retaining or expelling the Jesuits, but also that of 
 re-establishing the suppressed Argovian convents, 
 should be submitted to the determination of the 
 Pope. This reference to the Argovian convents 
 was in reality the introduction of a new element 
 of dispute, and of a demand more inadmissible 
 ,than anything concerning the Jesuits: for it re- 
 opened a question which had been formally decided 
 by the Diet in 1843, and which the Diet could not 
 possibly consent to submit to arbitration anew, 
 thereby reversing its own former determination. 
 You see thus that the Sonderbund really made no 
 offer of compromise at all — no offer to surrender 
 a portion of the disputed ground in order to keep 
 the rest. But the majority of the Diet, in the 
 private conferences which took place immediately 
 before the Sonderbund Deputies left the Diet, really 
 did make a very genuine and serious offer of com- 
 promise. They offered to leave the Jesuits undis- 
 turbed in Friburg, Schwytz^, and Yalais, provided 
 the Government of Lucerne would dismiss them 
 from that Canton. This was peremptorily refused 
 by the Sonderbund. You will see this stated in 
 
 M 3 
 
166 POLITICS OF SWITZERLAND. 
 
 the Proclamation of the Diet, issued 4th No- 
 vember, immediately before going to war, which 
 I beg of you to read : it is so good, that our 
 newspaper the Times, in its fondness for the Son- 
 derbund, suppressed the document. 
 
 I felt particular satisfaction — sympathising as 
 I do with the majority of the Diet — that they had 
 offered this compromise in order to avoid the evils of 
 war. At that time, it was the reasonable and fair 
 compromise : for the admission of the Jesuits into 
 one of the three presiding Cantons always appeared 
 to me to be much more open to complaint from the 
 other Cantons, than their admission (or rather 
 their continuance) in Friburg, &c. Now that 
 the evils and hazards of war have actually been 
 incurred, I think the Diet are quite right to turn 
 the Jesuits out of all Switzerland : but the case 
 stood very differently before the war, when there 
 were chances on both sides. 
 
 To think of the blindness of Guizot and the 
 Sonderbund, in refusing to compromise on such 
 terms ! The dismissal of the Jesuits from Lucerne 
 alone would really have been but little loss to the 
 Sonderbund party and little gain to the other : 
 
POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 167 
 
 the real Jesuit power was in Friburg and the 
 Yalais, and their expulsion from those Cantons 
 is a serious blow to their influence everywhere. 
 If the Sonderbund had accepted the compromise 
 then offered, and consented to dissolve themselves, 
 they would have remained hardly less strong than 
 before the dissolution. For while the same Go- 
 vernments remained in the seven Cantons, the 
 mere formal act of proclaiming that the league 
 had ceased, would have been of very little prac- 
 tical effect, and pretexts might easily have been 
 found for renewing it afterwards. Moreover, the 
 large majority in the Diet would still have re- 
 mained, breaking up all harmony of political 
 action, and the policy might still have been 
 pursued, with hardly less chance of success, of 
 trying to fanaticise the minds of the Catholics all 
 over Switzerland. The acceptance of that com- 
 promise would have been a partial defeat in name, 
 for the Sonderbund, but a victory in substance 
 and reality ; and it would, in all probability, have 
 sown the seeds of disunion among their antago- 
 nists, the majority — many of whom would have 
 been much displeased at the offer. Fortunately 
 
168 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 
 
 for Switzerland, the Sonderbund refused the com- 
 promise, and took the chances of war : it was 
 absolutely necessary for G-uizot that a war should 
 break out, in order that he might have a pretext 
 for intervention. 
 
 I think you will be inclined to consider the Son- 
 derbund party (when you i:ead my Letters) as a 
 knot of men trying to turn religion to political 
 account, and to put the priest above the political 
 leader; employing for that purpose all the artifices 
 of an ultra democracy : unfortunately, the Con- 
 servatives of Geneva, Neufchatel, and Basle, and 
 elsewhere, have lent their support to this party, 
 without any direct sympathy with its objects, but 
 from ungovernable hatred of their political rivals, 
 the Radicals — the same monomania which now 
 besets Gruizot. There never was any mistake 
 greater than that of supposing the Sonderbund to 
 represent religious liberty : on the contrary, it 
 represented an intensity of Church predominance 
 and power, such as could not have existed any- 
 where but in these Cantons, and such as has now 
 ceased to exist even in them. Nothing, in my 
 judgment, can be more important than the general 
 
POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 169 
 
 principle of leaving every man to tliat form, of 
 religious belief and practice which he approves : 
 but when a band of men (like the Jesuits) con- 
 federate for the express purpose of making re- 
 ligion an instrument of political power, they become 
 most proper subjects for interference, restraint, or 
 expulsion (in case of need), on the part of the 
 magistrate. I do not understand how Gruizot will 
 prove that he has promoted the credit or the per- 
 manent ascendency of France by identifying him- 
 self with these " ligueurs " of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, and by employing these traitors (who are 
 now proved to have been in correspondence with, 
 and to have borrowed money from, Austria) as 
 means for disuniting and dismembering Switzer- 
 land. The principle which he laid down about 
 that country appears to me to be most unjust and 
 detestable, treating it as a country which was to 
 be governed, not according to the choice of its own 
 people, but according to the bon plaisir of the 
 allied Powers. Believing, as I do, that his end was 
 thoroughly mischievous, I will not quarrel with 
 him for the egregious mistakes which he has 
 made in the means. Intending the direct contrary, 
 
170 POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 
 
 he has been really the great creator and sustainer 
 of Swiss nationality — he has brought about the 
 greatest and most important revolution which has 
 happened in the country since 1798, and has im- 
 parted to the people a sentiment of force as well 
 as of union, which Eadicals might long have 
 prayed for in vain. Yive Guizot ! You are 
 almost the only Frenchman to whom I would 
 venture to write so frankly and copiously about 
 Guizot : for I know well that, generally speaking, 
 condemnation of him from an Englishman is a 
 sure way of procuring for him support, or at least 
 of softening opposition against him, in your 
 Chamber. For any one who, like me, wishes 
 for the progressive advance of liberal ideas in 
 Europe, and desires also to see Fiance in the van 
 of that movement — it is melancholy to see that 
 the foreign policy of France has receded to the 
 same sympathy with Austria and Russia as it had 
 before 1830, and that we might almost fancy 
 ourselves in 1827, as far as the French Govern- 
 ment is concerned, instead of in 1847. I trust 
 the nation, at any rate, will not be found to have 
 remained thus stationary. 
 
POLITICS OF SWITZEELAND. 171 
 
 Adieu — my dear M. de Tocqueville — I am 
 almost ashamed at the length of this letter. Give 
 my very best compliments and regards to Madame 
 de Tocqueville : I was very glad to hear from 
 Milnes that she was well. I am pretty well, and 
 am progressing with my Greek history. 
 
 Yours most faithfully, 
 
 G. G. 
 
 to^JDOx: riu.NtKD by Avrti.tAM cr,o\vi;s aXd soxs, stamfokd street 
 
 AND CHARING CUOSS. 
 

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