THE SWISS QUESTION.
LETTER IL THE Federal Pact under which the Swiss Cantons nowlive has become un- popular not merely from its own intrinsic defects and ambiguities, but also from the time and circumstances of its origin. It was framed in /815, in place of the constitution 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 trium- phant 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, however, 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 popular: so that the Federal Pact remains as the only unaltered relic of an odious time. In 1832, the ma- jority of the Diet recognized the necessity of modifying it, and named a Committee for the purpose, of which Al. Rossi of Geneva was the reporter. Their scheme of Federal Reform—maintaining intact the cantonal so- vereignty and equal representation in the Diet, but remodelling the Federal authority and introducing in every way valuable improve- ments—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 acceptance of Switzerland. Unhappily for the country, it was rejected ; chiefly from the resolute opposition of the Conservative Cantons, who would endure no change at all—partly from the indifference, rather than the opposition, of extreme Radicals, 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 proper- ties, acquired partly by conquest partly by purchase : in the Town Can- tons—such as Bern; Soleure, Basle, Zurich, &c.—the town was the lord, the country districts were attached to it as dependant properties : in the Rural Cantons—such as Uri, Schwytz, &c.—it was an aggregate of rural communes which exercised lordship over other dependant oommunes in their neighbourhood. 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 tell into the hands of the citizens of the town, and was even confined to a small number of per- sons among those citizens; while the country districts were either es- sentially 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 pub- licity of debate; but was in practice a mere acquiescent adjunct of the Ex- ecutive, rather than a check upon it. In the Catholic Cantons, the reac.ion of 1815 took the form of a devoted Ultramontauisin ; the governing few surrendering themselves to the inspirations of the Papal Nuncio witita compliance not paralleled Many part of Europe, and forming a strong con- trast with the resolute independence of the old Swiss Cantons before 1798 in maintaining their civil authority against the Court of Rome. In the Can- ton of Valais, this Ultramontanism reached its maximum ; the priests being subject to a special jurisdiction for their persons, and enjoying immu- nity from taxation as to their properties, 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 coma- queace of the unequal relation of what were called the outer districts,) re- faked 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 adminis- trators required, who are very seldom changed. Such form of Democracy is universally acceptable to the people of these Cantons: though, when -taken in coujuuction with their dull and stationary intelligence, their -bigotry, and their pride in bygone power and exploits, it works in prao- tiee n mere routine, of power, practically -secret , and unresponsible, in the hands of a small number of old_families; very different from the Can- ton of Appenzell Attsser,Rhoden, where substantially the same form of government prevails among a population industrious, orderly, intelligent, and public-spirited, far beyond the average of Switzerland. These Swiss Governments, 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 Can- tonal egoism was not less rife than it is at present. Moreover, they were all, in the proper sense of the word, Conservative Governments—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 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 before 1830, however, a public feeling was gradually growing up against these oli- garchies; , • so that even beftwe 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. Gallen, and Glarus, became all popu- larized; the changes being carried without bloodshed, but by the same sort of intimidation which 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 fran- chise exercised by the people alike in town and country—were properly Radical movements, just as the party in power to which they were op- posed 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 applied after their fitness and appropriate meaning had 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 pre- vious oligarchies, was first diminished and has been subsequently effaced: for though in the first changes an artificial preponderance was still left to • the town in the number of its representatives compared with those of the country, such preponderance has since been annulled, and the suffrage has become practically equal and universal. Moreover, the Great or .Legislative Council was exalted to be the controlling superior of the Executive; debated publicly, under the stimulus of an active press, meet- ings, and all the exaggerated movement of a vigorous political life. The preceding Conservative functionaries were replaced by men of the move- ment, and either retired from public life or were thrown into opposition. To regain power as Conservatives, or champions of the old privileges, was impracticable: they were obliged to accept and work under the popular forms, by appealing 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 Ra- dical Government was violently overthrown, in consequence 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 sympathized 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- lion. Had the matter stopped here, no one (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 organized what were called Committees of Faith, com- posed of clergymen as well as laymen ; preached insurrection throughout the villages adjoining Zurich; prevailed upon a large number of the rural population to take up arms under the cry of "Religion 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 assail- ants ; whooverpowered 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 consequeuce of which the Government 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 pre,iding Canton of the Confedera- tion but when the Diet was actually assembled in the town.
If the religious feelings of the population admitted 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 iii Friburg, though to a less decided extent—new. and popular constitutions bad been promulgated in 1831, and the government had come into the hands of the leading Liberal poli- ticians in the Cantons. The old Conservative party and the Ultramon- tane 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 Zu- rich, nevertheless the ascendancy of the Catholic hierarchy and clergy was sufficiently 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 which took place in the first half of that year thoughout the Canton of Lucerne, for choosing a constituent body empowered to review and propose amend- ments 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 con- stitution and to the existing government. 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 ac- cepted by the people of Lucerne in 1841, was, however, no return to Conservatism as it had stood between 1815 and 1830. On the contrary, it was a great deal more Radical (measuring Radicalism by the extent of direct power given to the people) than that which the Radicals them- selves had framed in 1831. The grand object was to enlarge the power of the Catholic ecclesiastics, and to render them as completely 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 Legisla- tive Council. On the supposition that this Council should pass any law unacceptable to the priests, the priests had thus a good chance of pro- curing its rejection by the people. By enfeebling the lay ascendancy, 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 Valais, where their power is greater than in any other part of Europe, and where (as has already been observed) they even enjoy complete immunity from taxation for their large property, as well as a special jurisdiction for their persons—in the Valais there subsists not merely the popular veto, but even what is called the referendum ; that is, every law passed by the Representative Council not only may, if re- quired, be submitted to the vote of the primary assemblies, but it mast in every case be so submitted, before it acquires validity.
In the Canton of Zurich, the party which acquired power by the re- volution of 1839 lost it in 1845 by the quiet change of electoral ma- jority—partly from causes which will presently be explained, but partly also from the shame now felt for the means whereby that revolution was accomplished. 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 dis- sensions of Switzerland, as well as the present almost inextricable embar- rassments in the way of future union, are to be traced. They are-ani- mated 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 wayin which this disposition has been manifested more will be said in a futave letter : but it is impossible to comprehend the present condition of Swiss politics unless we go back to that alliance of clerical aggressiveness and ambition with the employment of religion as a party engine, by Oen- servative or Anti-Radical politicians, which first manifested itself in
Zurich and Lucerne in 1839 and 1840. A. B.
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