THE SWISS CONFEDERATION.*
AT a time when the public is nearly sickened with abstract discussions as to the nature and effects of federal government, persons who have a taste for exploring the bypaths of history may be pardoned if they direct attention to the most remarkable confederacies ; for Switzerland, after all, possesses a singular history, which, perhaps, does not begin, and certainly does not end, with Tell's celebrated feat of archery, and a history, more- over, which throws light on the essential character of federalism. It must, however, be owned by the most enthusiastic of students that, if it be strange that men who know Switzerland better than many English counties, know less of Swiss history than of the annals of Turkey, there is some excuse for the general ignorance. What makes Swiss history valuable also, unhappily, makes it dull. A country in which every village and every township had its separate constitution and separate history would be a fine field for the investigation of antiquarians and constitutional theorists ; but would present a mass of petty details far from inviting to general readers. Such a country is Switzer- land. Even in its present state, divided as the land is into can- tons, its parts seem almost too small to present interesting objects for study. Men might, perhaps, feel a desire to under- stand the history of the Confederacy ; but they find it almost im- possible to grow elicited over the concerns of Zurich or of Zug. Yet if the Republic in its present form presents to the eye of casual observers a body of States, each of them almost too petty to deserve notice, it is scarcely possible to hope that the mass of zeaders will ever bring themselves to master the annals of Switzerland during the period when the country possessed a con- stitution which was the growth of centuries ; for the divisions of to-day are nothing in comparison with the divisions which existed in the old Swiss Federation. It was, in truth, a con- federacy of confederacies. Cantons were subdivided. Within the same canton and the same part of the canton were to he * Aleoldelde der Behaceirerischen Eidgenossenschaff. J. Conrad Vegan, Dr. aleinrioh Escher. (Yersch F. SchutIthess.)
found the most complete distinctions between various classes of ' inhabitants. A mere outline of the constituent portions of the Confederacy as it stood in 164,8, when Switzerland's independence of the German Empire, though having long actually existed, was then, for the first time, formally acknowledged, may suffice to give a faint idea of the character of the State which united in itself all the peculiarities of feudal institutions and of republicanism, as republicanism was understood by the cities of Greece or of mediaeval Italy. Thirteen cantons formed of them- selves the Confederation ; but their territory did not cover nearly the whole of what to foreigners bore the aspect of one country.
Geneva, for instance, and the Grisons, to take only two examples, were no part of the Federation, though allied with portions of it, and though, for many purposes, forming part of the union. Nor were the Thirteen Cantons possessed of equal rights. Having entered into the league at different times and under different circumstances, they occupied various positions. The eight so- called old cantons, that is, the four forest cantons—Glarus, Zurich, Berne, Lucerne, possessed an acknowledged superiority, represented by the quaintly simple device of the higher seats given to their representatives at the Diet. Next to the Thirteen Cantons stood the body of allied communities, the best known of which is Geneva, occasionally sending deputies to the Diet ;
but only when the presence of these representatives was formally requested. When to these two classes are added two more—the protected states and the common lordships, the reader may reasonably think he has approached the term of possible division. But students, alas ! soon find that the principle of federalism spread into the institutions of the States themselves. Appenzel and Zug are each considerably less than many English counties ; but they were divided, the one into two, the other into four distinct parts, and each of these parts had a certain amount of independence. No general statement speaks, however, so strongly as the tendency to separation which, as it were, per- vaded all Swiss institutions, as the fact that the allied State of the Grisons itself consisted of three federations, each of which in it turn consisted of minor federal bodies. In this case the princip of local independence reaches its climax. But the tendency which is developed in the constitution of the Grisons to its greatest length, is traceable in the arrangements of almost every canton or state throughout Switzerland. The political relations of the thirteen ruling cantons were themselves morecomplicated than the relations of all the existing powers of Europe. How great this complication was, the student dimly perceives when he learns that three cantons alone were directly allied with all and each of the thirteen. If we turn from territorial divisions to the relations exist- ing amongst the inhabitants of each canton, we discover a condition of civil and social inequality not to he found in any other European State. In many cases, the towns alone had full civil rights, and but a small part of the inhabitants of the towns were full burghers. The country folks were sometimes freemen, sometimes mere so-called settlers, whilst each village held its separate charter, and hence had different rights from its neigh- bour. Hera, in fact, comes into full view the essential pecu- liarity of Swiss institutions. The nations of antiquity made the town everything and the country nothing. Feudalism established an intricate system of social inequality. In Switzerland the government of small democracies is combined with the preserva- tion of feudal theory. The towns gained, and in most cases bought up the rights of the feudal lords; and hence stood in strange combination all the inequalities caused by the system of the ancient world with all the inequalities of the system of the middle ages. Thus the self-styled " patriciate" of the" Civitas at Respublica Bernensis" stood to the other inhabitants of the city in the same relation as that occupied by the Roman patricians towards the Roman plebs, whilst the same body was the liege lord of the inhabitants of Thun or of Interlachen. A Diet representing the Thirteen Cantons was the one central authority—if authority it can be called—guiding the destinies of
this strange mass of petty States. Its power was limited, and its capacity for action was not much greater than that possessed by the representatives of the modern German Band. That the parts of a federation so formed should have held very loosely together is by no means strange. What is strange is that the Federation should have kept together at all.
What were the results effected for good or for bad by this anomalous system of federal union ? The grand result was the preservation of Swiss independence, and the cultivation of Swiss courage. Down to 1798 Switzerland, in spite of internal divisions, in spite of the growing power of ambitious neighbours, maintained its independence against all foreigners, and Swiss
troops fought with admirable bravery for every cause and for every master. So much• may be said in praise of the old Federation; but when this is said, all that can be said in its praise is said. Some of the misfortunes, indeed, of Switzerland cannot be referred to its federal institutions ; but there are three evils springing, we hold, more or less directly from the very nature of the Swiss constitution. National power, in the first place, was utterly wasted. A nation which for centuries turned out soldiers who never suffered a defeat, and which always provided the armies of Europe with some of their best troops, was never able to extend its own power. When Charles the Bold was over- thrown, the Swiss might have gained Francini Comte. At a later period, it wanted but the consent of the confederates to in- corporate Constance within the Confederation. Later still, Geneva would gladly have become a canton. In each case, the opportu- nity for gaining a valuable and legitimate increase to the national influence was let slip, and in each case because different cantons saw that an increase of Swiss power would lead to a disarrange- ment in the balance of power between the cantons themselves. In other words, " sectional " jealousy was as dangerous to the prosperity of Switzerland as it has been to the prosperity of America. Another fault fairly chargeable to federal institutions was the gradual deterioration in the system of government pursued in the cantons. Other States during the middle ages kept large numbers of their inhabitants in a state of social and political degradation ; but in other States there was progress, if not towards liberty, at least towards social equality. In Swit- zerland men became less and less socially and politically equal as time went on. States which had once freely bestowed citizenships upon strangers grew more and more chary of their gifts. Governing bodies which had been comparatively open became more and more close. The power of the Confederation, weak as it was for good, was strong enough to guarantee the existence of the governing bodies throughout Switzerland, and hence all the petty exclusiveness, and, more than all, the jobbery found in the close corporation of a small municipality, had full scope to develop themselves in every town and canton in Switzerland. Nor—to mention the last and greatest injury in- flicted on the country by the Federal Government—could the Federal Government fail to check the progress of enlightenment and education. Every one knows what is the prejudice and stupidity of a small parish, and Switzerland was given over to the rule of small parishes. Hence the country which had been the freest became practically the most despotically governed in Europe, and whilst despotic courts were centres of enlighten- ment, the Swiss Cantons remained the refuge of ignorance and superstition.
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