THE SWISS QUESTION.

LETTER V.

RECOUNTED in my last letter how the Anti-Jesuit feeling in Switzer- land first arose, as a direct consequence of the catastrophe in the Valais ; how it rapidly got hold of the minds of the Liberal public ; and how the expulsion of the order was first submitted to the Diet in July 1844, on the proposition of Argau, but obtained no votes except Argau and Bale- Campagne. That same catastrophe had also provoked a vehement ani- mosity against the presiding Canton, Lucerne, as treacherous accomplice in the counter-revolution of the Valais for the profit of Ultramontane po- litics 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 decidedly adverse to them, determined for the first time to introduce them, and to confide to them the care of the Cantonal education. The leading men in the Canton knew perfectly well the storm which it would excite among the larger half of the Confederacy, as well as the resistance which it would call forth from a large minority of their own Cantonal citizens : lastly, they knew how much it would offend the expressed feel- ings, and even endanger the stability, of those Cantonal Governments which had declined to support the proposition of Argau in the Diet. Of this latter fact, the preceding debates in the Great Councils, and the in- structions given to their Deputies in the Diet, presented sufficient warn- ing. The Great Council of Zurich had passed the following resolution- " The Deputy of Zurich is instructed in the name of his Canton to in- timate the conviction that the Order of Jesuits contributes by its doctrines as well as by its missions to embitter the mutual relation between the Pro- testant and Catholic confessions in Switzerland ; and that it thus exercises a disturbing influence on the political harmony of the nation. The Can- ton of Zurich therefore expresses its regret that some Cantons have re- ceived this Order among them; and intimates its wish, in the spirit of confederate brotherhood, (den freundeidgeniissischen 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 far- ther extension of the Order." This was the voice of a Great Council then in majority Conservative, and of a Government in which the Conservative Dr. Bliintschli was the leading member : it was rendered, moreover, yet more significant by the antecedent circumstances. 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 signatures 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 re- sisted at much disadvantage : for they could not take the ground, nor were they disposed to take it, that the admission 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 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 purpose which it expressly and confessedly aims at, require us to expel them, though the letter may be silent ?" Dr. Bliintschli and his colleagues were here unfavourably placed : against a strong popular feel- ing supported by considerable plausibility of reason, they had to main- tain the danger of going beyond a strict construction of the Pact except where extreme necessity might compel an appeal to its spirit ; and to maintain this principle—of cardinal importance, yet appealing only to a far-sighted reason—against exciting allusions to the great Protest- ant name of Zwingli, of which they had themselves made so much use in rousing the people to arms in September 1839. It was evident that the resistance was ruining their hold upon the Cantonal popu- lation; 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 Government came with double emphasis, conveying, 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 Can- tonal Governments who thought the Jesuits a public mischief to the Con- federacy, without deeming themselves authorized 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, Valais, 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 portion, expressed without the insulting appearance of coercion. We must take this fact into consideration when we look at the extraordi- nary excitement which follows : immediately after the people have put forth their deep and widespread conviction 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, be- sides maintaining itself in Friburg, Valais, and Schwytz, makes the con- quest of the presiding Canton also. It has been often attempted to bar all such considerations by simply saying—" This is a case wherein the Federal Pact imposes no restriction, and gives to no other Canton a right of intervention : 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 tree 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 con- federacy. As presiding Canton, you are under serious obligations to the entire Confederacy : you are made aware, that a large fraction of it con- strues 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 paramount individual interest or individual duty. How far Lucerne took any pains to show this, may be judged by the language of M. Siegwart-Muller, then ?resident of the Diet in that town. The Radicals and Protestants," said be, " have poured out their venom on the Jesuits everywhere : 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 con- verted into a positive reason 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 Lu- cerne, and confiding to them the Cantonal education, was brought into formal discussion before the Cantonal Great 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 introducing Jesuit superintendence-- not without a strong protest from the minority, and vehement marki 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 subsequently 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 throughout the rural districts declared in its favour, and it became confirmed law.

During the discussion of the measure in the Great Council, the op- posing 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 conditions 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 lead- ing members of the minority, including among them Dr. Casimir Pfyffer, one of the ablest jurists in Switzerland. It represented moreover the full belief and conviction of the Liberal minority throughout the Canton, and aggragated their discontent arising out of genuine hatred to the Jesuits.

So strongly did this discontent manifest itself, at the moment when the law was accepted by the majority of voting citizens, that the Govern- ment was induced to arrest and imprison many of the most forward Anti- Jesuits in the town of Lucerne.

It was at this point, the beginning of December 1844, that the aggres- sions 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 Valais : 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 Valais—and both now materially heightened during the preceding three months, by the conduct of the Lucerne Government in adopting the Jesuits, precisely at a time when the majority of the Cantons express their friendly wish that the order might be dismissed even from those Cantons where it previously existed ; one of the actual reasons for such adoption being, (as M. Siegwart-Miiller proclaimed in the Diet,) that the Jesuits were unjustly hated in many parts of Switzerland. To these feel- ings was now added a new cause of excitement—sympathy for the minor- ity in Lucerne ; who believed, and made others believe, that their Cantonal 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 conspiring, created in the Liberal and Radical public throughout Switzerland, an ani- mosity 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 employment of force.

The first Corps Francs who invaded Lucerne were not numerous, and ware apparently altogether unorganized : the invaders had been apprized of the number of malecontents 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 insurrection took place. The Go- vernment easily repelled the invaders, and proceeded to very severe steps against the malecontents, 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- 1845, there were not less than 1,100 exiles from Lucerne spread through the neighbouring Cantons : and this contributed to aggravate still farther the preexisting animosity against the Government 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 multitude of in- dividuals, or any numerous body of exiles spread through the neighbour- ing Cantons, except in the two cases of Valais in May 1844 and Lucerne in the beginning 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 exciting the violent sympathies of the neighbour- ing Cantons.

In consequence of the first invasion of the Canton of Lucerne by citi- zens from other Cantons, on the 8th of 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 session for two months, until the third week in March : resolutions were adopted strongly condemning the Corps Francs or volunteers violating by arms the territory of other Cantons, and re- quiring each separate Canton to incorporate in its legislation prohibi- tion and punishment of such persons. But the excitement in the Can- tons surrounding 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 organized, in conjunction with the exiles : this time, the in- vaders were numerous, not unprovided with artillery ; and the plan of attack was concerted deliberately beforehand, by Colonel Ochsenbein and other considerable persons who accompanied and took the command of it. These invaders or Corps Francs were formed of volunteers from the neighbouring Cantons of Berne, Soleure, Bale-Campagne, and Argan ; the Governments of which all connived at the proceedings. Colonel Ochsenbein with his division and cannon actually reached the suburb of Lucerne, though not until nightfall : it is alleged that had he immediately commenced an attack, or fired a few shots, the Government would have abandoned the town ; but the account published by the Government itself does not countenance such a supposition. Lucerne was not unprepared for the attack, and had organized an alliance with Uri, Zug, and Unter- walden, 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 Cantonal Landsturm in their flight, while several hundred 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, meriting 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 ambas- sadors lectures the more galling because they 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 the previous faults, of Lucerne. The preceding circumstances do not at all divest this invasion 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 particu- lar a large number of gold watches) were induced to emperil their lives and expend their money, besides throwing aside the most obvious re- straints 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 simultaneous insurrections, to the infinite danger of both Governments, in the begin- ning of 1841; while the Cantonal Governments of Berne, Soleure, Argau, and Bale-Campagne, who connived at the organization and march of the Corps Francs against Lucerne, had before them the precedent of Lucerne itself a few months before, when that Canton shad been in privity and deliberate connivance with the conspirators who produced the counter- revolution in Valais—and that, too, in abuse not merely of Cantonal obligations, but of yet more sacred duties as directing Canton. Lastly, when it is indignantly remarked that Colonel Ochsenbein, commander 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 remember that he sees on his immediate left hand, as Deputy of Lucerne, M. Bernard Meyer, the director and instrument of Lucerne politics in the conspiracy of the Valais.

If it were important to take a comparative estimate 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 tranquillity of the Confederacy—the spirit of Catholic Ultramontanism and aggrandize- ment ; while those of the Corps Francs had their rise in a state of excitement, which, however culpable, depended on a peculiar com- bination of recent events, and was in its nature essentially transitory. But in truth, such a comparison would answer little purpose : the im- portant 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 mufti° sibi 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 importance took place—the discussions at the Diet, and the revolution in the Canton of Vaud.

At the previous Diet in July 1844, only one Canton and a Half- Canton had voted for the expulsion of the Jesuits from Switzerland : is the Diet of 1845, ten Cantons and two Half-Cantons voted for the same proposition : so great was the difference made by the fact of Lucerne, the presidential Canton, having adopted them in the interval. Zurich, pre- siding at the extraordinary Diet convoked in January.`1845, di not sup- port the proposition for expelling the Jesuits, nor rstrgni70 compe- tence of the Diet to do so : but its circular addr strongest manner the mischief, insecurity, and diseo , wine t e recep- tion of the Order into the Catholic directing Canton would be sure to ex- cite in Switzerland, and urgently invited Lucerne to revoke its resolu- tion. 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 further insisted that the character'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 tendencies, it is repugnant to a large portion even of the Catholic world ; from the second, it is placed in hostility with the Protestants ; and both reasons concurred to render its admission into the presiding Canton of Switzer- land disastrous, as a direct aggravation of the two great sources of dis- cord inherent in the Confederacy. The language of the Deputy of Geneva, then strongly Conservative, on the subject of the Jesuits, was of the same teuour' though he voted against the resolution for expelling them, on the ground of want of competence in the Diet. There needs no farther argu- ment to show that the Anti-Jesuit feeling in Switzerland was a perfectly genuine rid substantive feeling, not a mere pretence got up for the pur- pose 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 support a sentence of the Diet for expulsion. Indeed, the whole past history of the Jesuits, from the com- mencement of their Order, betokens an organized and systematic teaching of religion, not for religious ends, but as a means for procuring political and social ascendancy : other priests have done the same to a greater or less extent, but none except the Order of Jesus has become notorious as reducing it to rule, craft, and professional duty. It was against this tendency, not against 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 op- ponents of the Order protest at present; though they doubtless greatly exaggerate its power to do actual mischief. The argument has often been urged—" What prodigious harm can seven Jesuits in Lucerne (the num- ber at first introduced) effect, to justify such strong excitement ? " Bat 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 Ultramontane intrigues which Lucerne had been pushing, both as Canton and as Vorort : they had been so turned to account in the Valais, and their agency might be inde- finitely extended: moreover, it is to be remarked that the name Jesuit cannot be heard, on the Continent, without a cluster of odious smock

tions derived from the past, and 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 Fribarg, where the Jesuits had been long established. It was the double and confluent sett.

timent, against the Jesuits and against Lucerne, which roused them to the pitch of aggression. It was on the 14th of February 1845, during the sitting of the Diet, that the revolution of Vand occurred. Vaud is the Canton immediately adjoining to Valais : 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 ad- minister 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 territory only by swimming the Rhone, after having exhausted every effort of brave commanders. From all these circumstances, the excitement in Vand arising out of the Valaisa' n catastrophe was unusually great; and the two feelings in which that excitement manifested itself—animosity against the Jesuits, and ani- mosity against Lucerne—became proportionably aggravated. The De- puty of Vaud, though the Government of the Canton was then what is called Conservative, and did not support the vote for expelling the Je- suits in July 1844, was one of those who expressed the strongest indig- nation, when M. Meyer of Lucerne avowed in that assembly his long cognizance of the conspiracy for counter-revolutionizing the Valais. If such was the strong feeling general in Vaud 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 admitting the Jesuits; and when the Lucerne minority, through the consequences of their opposition to that tneasnre, were cast into banishment and spread through the sympathizing Cantons. When the Great Council of Vand met for the purpose of in- structing their Deputy in prospect of the Diet convoked for the last week in January, a petition was presented praying that he might be instructed 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 remarked by some of those who opposed this petition—what has been so often remarked upon petitions emanating from Swiss Radkals —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 Go- vernment in Switzerland. A similar remark had been made in the pre- ceding month of July in the Great Council of Zurich, by Dr. Bltintschli, in reference to the 10,000 petitioners of that Canton who asked for the expulsion of the Jesuits : it was a remark captious and unseasonable, overleaping causes obvious and forcible in order to arrive at others which were at once weaker and more distant ; and it was likelf only to irritate petitioners who knew themselves to be in earnest. How widely the feel- ing displayed in the petition was diffused throughout Vaud, 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 po- litical maxims now very widely diffused in Switzerland, it was contended by the supporters of the prayer of the petition, among other reasons for granting it, that this enormous majority ought of itself to be imperative, 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 ques- tionable than the two items demanded by the 32,000 persons who signed in 'Vaud. The majority of the two Councils in the Canton of Vaud refused 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 tune the Cantonal vote would have been given in Diet to sustain the Jesuits and the Government of Lucerne, appeared intolerable to a popu- lation 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 1831: and it is to be remarked, that no Swiss con- stitution contains any provision analogous to the power of arbitrary dis- volution 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 Government, on calling out the militia, found that this force was disposed to act not against but in unison with the insurgents. The movement throughout the Canton appears to have been not less unanimous than passionate : the Councils were forced to abdicate, and a Provisional Government was "formed, at the head of which was M. Druey, the leader of Opposition. It is right to mention, that in this revolution 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 analogous to a change of Ministry in England, with a dissolution of Parliament, than to the ideas commonly associated with a revolution.

The proceedings of the former Government of Vaud, by which they had in part lost popularity before this change, would be instructive to re- mark upon, inasmuch as they illustrate the subsequent conduct of the pastors and the reaction against the latter which manifested itself under the new Government. But upon these I do not touch, since they have no direct bearing on the Federal politics, to which the present letters are