SWITZERLAND AND THE EUROPEAN SITUATION 450
POPULATION AND SOIL, CENSUS, 1888 469
MONEY, WEIGHTS, MEASURES 469
CENSUS OF 1888 470
ORDER AND DATES OF THE ENTRY OF THE TWENTY-TWO CANTONS
INTO THE CONFEDERATION 471
APPENDIX 473
THE SWISS REPUBLIC.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
The first inhabitants of Switzerland, according to tradition, were
fugitives from Italy, who had been driven by the Gauls from the country
where now flourish the cities of Genoa and Florence, and who, 600 B.C.,
found an asylum in the recesses and wilderness of the valleys above
which the Rhine has its source. They were known as the Rhetians, from
the name of their hero Rhetus; hence the country about the source of
the Rhine, embracing the Grisons, is even now called by some, Rhetia.
The Canton of Schwyz claims to have been peopled by the Cimbrians, who,
leaving their original habitations in Sweden, Norway, and Friesland,
conquered their way over the Rhine to the cities of the Gauls, in the
country which is now France. The people of Gaul implored help from
Rome; a strong army was sent against them, defeating and driving them
into the Helvetian mountains. Another tradition says that they were
a race of Gaulic Celts, whom some unknown accident had guided from
the borders of the Rhine and Main to those of the Lake of Geneva,
their collective name being Helvetians, after whom the country was
named in Roman times. The first authentic mention we find of these
people, as a nation, is by Julius Cæsar, who, in the first book of his
“Commentaries,” related the war he waged with the Helvetians, who had
made an irruption into Burgundy during his government in Gaul. He
defeated them, and reduced the country to the obedience of the Romans,
annexing it to that part of his government which was called Gallia
Celtica. They lived in subjection to the Roman government till that
empire fell. Among the new kingdoms and principalities that were raised
out of the ruins was the kingdom of Burgundy, composed of a Vandal race
from the Oder and the Vistula. Helvetia was overrun and made a part of
this kingdom in the beginning of the fifth century (409 A.D.). Then
followed irruptions of Alemanni, Ostrogoths, and Franks. The division
of Switzerland into German- and French-speaking races is doubtless to
be ascribed to these early settlements of different tribes from Germany
and Gaul. In the sixth century (550 A.D.), the Franks having subjected
the other two, all Helvetia was united to the crown of France. It was
lost to the kings of France during the ninth century, under the weak
reign of Charles the Fat. About the year 870 there sprang up again
two new kingdoms of Burgundy, one called Cis-Jurana and the other
Trans-Jurana; the first, at the end of fifty years, was merged in the
latter. In this kingdom was comprehended the country of Helvetia, and
continued part of it till about 1032, when Rudolph, the third and last
king of Burgundy, dying without children, left all his kingdom to the
Emperor Conrad II., whose successors enjoyed it for two centuries, when
it was broken into several petty sovereignties.
Feudalism had been rapidly growing up, and, like other parts of Europe,
Helvetia fell under the rule of military chiefs and of powerful bishops
and abbots. A numerous and ancient nobility divided the possession with
ecclesiastical lords; of the former, conspicuous were the Dukes of
Zähringen and Counts of Kyburg, Rapperswyl, and Hapsburg; and of the
latter, the Bishop of Coire, the Abbot of St. Gallen, and the Abbess
of Seckingen. There is no country whose history better illustrates
the ambiguous relation, half property and half dominion, in which
territorial aristocracy under the feudal system stood with respect to
their dependants. The power under these princes, to which the country
was subjected, was so limited that it might properly be said to be
under their protection rather than their dominion. In the thirteenth
century the race of the Dukes of Zähringen became extinct, which made
way for the Counts of Hapsburg to enlarge their authority, being raised
afterwards to the Austrian Duchy, and invested with the imperial
dignity in Germany. The Helvetic people placed themselves under the
protection of Rudolph of Hapsburg, with permission to send governors or
bailiffs among them. They were governed with mildness while he lived.
He died, and his son Albert did not tread in his father’s footsteps.
This was the beginning of the fourteenth century, the memorable period
of Rütli and William Tell. A resolution was taken to form a general
insurrection in each Canton, in order to surprise and demolish all the
castles and drive the governors and adherents out of the country. “They
judged that a sovereign unjust towards a vassal, ceased to be himself
protected by justice, and that it was lawful to employ force against
him.”[1]
The confederates pursued so well the measures agreed on that their
object was easily accomplished, and with rare examples of moderation.
A few years later, a further attempt was made to bring them under
the yoke of the empire, when the brave peasants routed the imperial
army, under Leopold, Duke of Austria, at Morgarten, on the 15th of
November, 1315. This victory confirmed the independence of the three
original Cantons. Soon afterwards followed the perpetual league of
Brunnen, on December the 9th of the same year; there is at Brunnen this
inscription: “_Hier geschah der erste Bund, Anno 1315, die Grundfeste
der Schweiz_” (“Here was the first perpetual league, the foundation of
Switzerland”).
According to the Swiss historian, Planta,[2] the Helvetic union, as
founded by the three forest Cantons, called _Waldstätten_, composed of
Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden, bears date from the most remote periods
of their existence, and was framed long before they knew how to commit
it to writing. In 1291 this league was reduced to writing; the first
covenant is in Latin, and begins, “_In nomine Domini, Amen_,”[3] and
this form was followed in the several later covenants at Rütli, 1307,
and Brunnen, 1315. Each Canton obligated itself to assist and succor
the others, with its utmost force, and at its own expense, against
all persons or states that should assault or molest any of them; that
neither of the Cantons should submit to receive any new sovereign
without the knowledge and consent of the others; that none should enter
into any alliance or engagement with any other prince or state without
the said consent; and that if any difference should arise between any
two of these confederated Cantons, the third should be the arbitrator,
and obliged to assist that Canton which submitted to its arbitration
against the other that should refuse it. The express purpose of this
league was for self-defence against all who should attack or trouble
them.
The constitution of each Canton was purely democratic; the supreme
power was vested in the people at large; all males of fourteen years
old in Uri, of fifteen in Schwyz and Unterwalden, having a voice.
Though deputies were chosen to represent the people in the Council of
Regency, and a Landammann, or chief magistrate,[4] was also appointed,
yet the supreme power was exercised by a general assembly held in the
open air. In 1332 Luzern joined the three Cantons, and thus arose
the federation of the Four Forest Cantons, _Vierwaldstätten_. Zurich
came in in 1351, Zug and Glarus in 1352, and Bern in 1353. These eight
Cantons continued until 1481, or a hundred and twenty-eight years,
without increasing their number, and are distinguished by the name
of the _Eight Old Cantons_. For a long time these Cantons possessed
many distinctive privileges. This league upheld its independence in
1386 against Duke Leopold III., of Austria, in the battle of Sempach,
when the most heroic courage was shown. This resulted in the decree
of Sempach, whereby the eight Cantons agreed to preserve peace among
themselves; to uphold each other; and in war to unite their banners
against the common enemy. The last remnant of ancient Helvetic
territories in Aargau was wrested in 1417 from Frederic, Count of
Tyrol. Though still comprehended within the nominal sovereignty of the
empire, encroachments upon their territory or their political liberties
were no longer dreaded. They were henceforth free from external control
and from contributions imposed by the Germanic Diet. In 1444 followed
the defeat of the Dauphin Louis of France at St. Jacob, and the defeat
of the Burgundians at Morat and Nancy in 1477. In 1481 Solothurn and
Freiburg were admitted. The Cantons then bound themselves under a
treaty effected at Stantz, Canton of Unterwalden, in December of that
year, to two additional articles:
1. That all the Cantons oblige themselves to succor one another in the
support of the form of government then established in each of them.[5]
2. That a body of military laws therein referred to should be received
throughout the whole nation, and the observation of them enjoined.
The Emperor Maximilian I. determined to force the Swiss to join the
Suabian League; hence resulted the Suabian war, which was concluded
after the Swiss had gained six victories, by the peace of Basel in
1499. In 1501 Basel and Schaffhausen acceded to the league. In 1512, by
the Milanese war, the Swiss obtained from Milan the territory which at
present forms the Canton of Ticino. In 1515, after losing the battle of
Marignano,[6] an advantageous peace was concluded with France, which
was followed by the first formal alliance with that kingdom in 1521;
and the two countries enjoyed an almost uninterrupted amity for nearly
three hundred years.
Such was the political state of Switzerland in the beginning of the
sixteenth century; it was an independent federal republic, renowned in
war and distinguished for its ancient political institutions. In the
Thirty Years’ War the Confederates maintained a prudent neutrality, and
the Peace Congress of Münster in 1648, through the mediation of France,
solemnly acknowledged the complete renunciation of Switzerland’s
nominal allegiance to the German empire. From this time until the
outbreak of the French Revolution, in 1789, the history of Switzerland
presents few events of general importance. Appenzell had been united
to the league in 1573, making the number of Cantons thirteen. The
thirteen Cantons took the name of _Eidgenossen_, a word signifying
confederates, because they bound themselves together as comrades by
oath. This endured without a further change of actual members until
1803. From the peace of Aarau, in 1712 (generally credited to 1718,
since the Abbot of St. Gallen did not accede to it until six years
after its agreement), down to 1798, the Cantons enjoyed the blessings
of seventy-nine years of comparative quiet. The tranquillity enjoyed
was favorable to the progress of commerce, agriculture, the arts,
and sciences. The French Revolution, which disturbed the peace and
unsettled the political institutions of every country in Europe,
convulsed Switzerland with civil war and anarchy. In January, 1798, a
French army entered Switzerland to assist the Pays de Vaud, which had
declared its independence against the Bernese; Bern was taken and the
Swiss Confederation converted into the “Helvetic Republic, one and
indivisible.”
The Cantons of Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Zug, Glarus, and Appenzell
declared that they would not accept the laws which had been forced
upon them, and leagued together to resist. These refractory Cantons
were overpowered and coerced, but so gallantly did they maintain their
ground that the French general declared, “that every Swiss soldier
fought like a Cæsar.” It was then ordained by the French that an oath
of allegiance to the new government should be taken in every Canton.
Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, and Zug refused obedience to this ordinance.
It was forced upon them and upheld by a costly army, which practised
intolerable exactions and haughty and insolent domination. Geneva
at this time was annexed to France. Lavater styled this epoch “the
first year of Swiss slavery.” The atrocities of the French invasion
of Switzerland excited great indignation in Europe. All that tyranny
the most oppressive, rapine the most insatiate, cruelty the most
sanguinary, and lust the most unbridled, could inflict did that devoted
country experience. The effect on the friends of freedom may be judged
of from the following indignant lines of Coleridge, once an ardent
supporter of the Revolution, in his “Ode to Freedom,” written in 1798:
“Forgive me, Freedom! oh, forgive those dreams;
I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament,
From bleak Helvetia’s icy cavern sent;
I hear thy groans upon her blood-stain’d streams;
Heroes, that for your peaceful country perish’d,
And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain snows
With bleeding wounds, forgive me that I cherish’d
One thought that ever bless’d your cruel foes;
To scatter rage and traitorous guilt,
Where peace her jealous home had built;
A patriot race to disinherit
Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear.”
When Switzerland became the battle-field of French and Austrian armies,
by the treaty of Lunéville, between the Emperor of Austria and the
French Republic, the independence of the Helvetic Republic, and the
right of the people to adopt whatever form of government they pleased,
were guaranteed; but the irreconcilable dissensions of the French and
National Swiss parties prevented the adoption of any constitution
generally acceptable to the people.
The withdrawal of the French troops in 1802 led at once to a revolution
in almost every Canton. Again Napoleon, First Consul of the French
Republic, in contravention of the treaty, interfered, and subdued the
movement. Forty thousand French troops took military occupation of
Switzerland. Deputies were ordered to assemble at Paris, and after
long discussion with them, Napoleon, on the 2d of February, 1803,
transmitted to Switzerland what is known as the Act of Mediation, under
which he assumed the title of “Mediator of Switzerland.” In some cases,
what had been subject lands were incorporated into the league, and to
the thirteen old Cantons six new ones were added,--St. Gallen, the
Grisons, Aargau, Thurgau, Ticino, and Vaud.
The downfall of the arbitrary “Mediator” was for the Swiss, as for
the greater part of Europe, the signal of a happy deliverance. The
apparent interest taken by Bonaparte in the welfare of Switzerland,
and his anxious desire to suit its civil institutions to the local
prejudices and habits of each small community, were wholly military
and political. He looked upon Switzerland as a watch-tower between
the three great divisions of Europe, of which the Act of Mediation
secured possession to him, without the trouble of a garrison. Soon
after his defeat at Leipsic in 1813, the Allies invaded Switzerland,
and in December of that year the Swiss Diet met at Zurich and formally
annulled the Act of Mediation. A general council was assembled, and new
articles of confederation agreed upon, known as the Federal Pact, in
September, 1814. This Confederacy was acknowledged by the Congress of
Vienna, November 20, 1815; by which the eight powers, Austria, Russia,
France, England, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden, proclaimed
the neutrality of Switzerland and the inviolability of its soil. It
must in justice be said that at that epoch of sweeping annexations
and unblushing bartering of countries, Switzerland was better treated
than she had reason to expect,--Russia and England were her steadfast
friends.
The nineteen Cantons were increased to twenty-two by the addition
of Geneva, which had been annexed to France under the Directory in
1798, and Neuchâtel[7] (a Prussian possession), and the Valais.
The greater Cantons demanded a return to the old status and their
ante-revolutionary supremacy. The relapse would have been worse, had
it not been for the Allied Powers, who would guarantee neutrality only
on the condition that the new Cantons be maintained free.
In 1817 Switzerland, upon the invitation of the Emperor Alexander of
Russia, joined the Holy Alliance. The restoration of peace to Europe,
and the securities obtained for the neutrality and independence of
Switzerland at the Congress of Vienna, gave great encouragement to the
intellectual and material progress of the country, wealth increased,
and industry prospered. Public works of great utility were undertaken,
including noble roads over the passes of the St. Gothard, the St.
Bernard, and the Splügen. In July, 1830, the peace of the country
was suddenly disturbed by the French Revolution. Violent political
agitation broke out in riots and insurrection. Political wrongs were
rudely redressed; but life and property were respected. The general
aim of this movement was to wrest from the aristocratic class and
the capital towns the exclusive privileges which they had gradually
recovered since the beginning of the century, and to increase the
power of the people. The Cantons were forced to reorganize their
constitutions on a more liberal and democratic basis. This movement
naturally drifted into a plan for revising the federal constitution;
but the effort to do this in 1832 was defeated by a popular vote.
The old religious jealousy of the Catholic and Protestant Cantons now
revived with increased violence. These troubles were attributed by many
to the influence of the Jesuits, and an active agitation was commenced
for obtaining their expulsion. Under the claim that religion was in
danger, delegates from seven Catholic Cantons assembled at Rothen,
in the Canton of Luzern, and formed a separate League, called the
_Sonderbund_, or separate confederation. In violation of the Federal
Pact of 1815, these Cantons engaged to defend each other by an armed
force, and appointed a council of war to take all necessary steps. The
Federal Diet, in session at Bern in July, 1847, realized that prompt
action must be taken to suppress a movement which was threatening the
country with a civil war. Friendly negotiation having failed, the Diet
declared the League to be dissolved, and at once hostilities broke out.
A sharp, decisive contest of only eighteen days’ duration brought the
strife to an end; the seceding Cantons were overwhelmed and forced back
to their allegiance.
The strength of the Confederation being so decisively proved, it
was regarded an opportune time to revive the effort for a thorough
reformation of the federal system. This was accomplished the following
year by the constitution of 1848.
Swiss history is largely the history of the drawing together of parts
of three adjoining nations for common defence against a common foe,
little by little winning their independence.
“A liberty that sprang to life in Greece; gilded next the early and
the middle age of Italy; then reposed in the hallowed breast of the
Alps, and descended at length on the coast of North America, and set
the stars of glory there. At every stage of its course, at every
reappearance, it was guarded by some new security; it was embodied
in some new element of order; it was fertile in some larger good; it
glowed with a more exceeding beauty.”[8]
The name “Swiss” and “Switzerland,” German “_Schweiz_,” French
“La _Suisse_,” supposed to be derived from the Canton of Schwyz,
though long in familiar use, did not form the official style of the
Confederation until 1803. Schwyz, according to Gatschet, signifies
“clearing the ground by fire;” and, again, it is derived from “Sweiter”
and “Swen,” two brothers who are said to have founded it; and these
family names, common in Sweden, are now heard in the valleys of Schwyz.
Switzerland is triangular in shape, and occupies an almost
imperceptible space upon an ordinary map of the world. Voltaire used
to say he “shook his wig and powdered the republic.” It is bounded
on the north and east by Germany, on the south by Italy, and on the
west by France; and is situated between latitude 45° 50′ and 47° 50′
north, and longitude 6° and 10° 25′ east. Its greatest length from
east to west measures two hundred and sixteen miles; its greatest
breadth north and south is one hundred and fifty-six miles. Nearly its
entire boundary is formed by rivers, lakes, and mountains. The Rhine
constitutes almost two sides of its boundary, from the point where the
various streams from the glaciers of the Grisons have met to form a
river into the Lake of Constance, and from its exit thence to where
the Jura Mountains turn its course to the Northern Ocean. The Jura
separates it from France; and with merely an outlet for the Rhone, the
Alps take up the line, dividing its rugged regions from the plains of
Northern Italy. On the eastern side is an entangled mass of mountains;
on the western side is a succession of parallel ridges, separated from
each other by longitudinal valleys. The elevation varies from six
hundred and forty-six feet, at Lake Maggiore, to fifteen thousand two
hundred and seventeen feet on Monte Rosa. Only two per cent. has an
altitude less than one thousand feet, and six per cent. of the whole
surface is covered with snow-fields and glaciers. Two-thirds of its
surface consist of lofty mountain chains and valleys; the remainder a
plain thirteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. That portion
which lies to the east of the Rhine rises from a platform no less than
three thousand two hundred feet in height, even in the valleys. All
of Switzerland, with Savoy, and indeed the Tyrol and other adjoining
countries, lie on a huge mountain. They all have their valleys, it
is true, but their valleys are more elevated than even the hills of
the lower regions. Two of the mightiest European rivers, the Rhine
and Rhone, have their sources in Switzerland. Their head-waters are
separated only by the tangled mass between the Pizzo Rotondo and
the Oberalp Pass,--the Rhine running towards the east and the Rhone
towards the west. The St. Gothard may be regarded as the central point
of the country, and from its sides these two rivers take their rise
in a great transversal valley of the Central Alps. On the east, the
Rhine, springing from the glaciers, flows through the Grisons to the
north and loses itself in the Lake of Constance, issues from it at
Stein, and flows to the westward as far as Basel, where it commences
its perpendicular course towards the German Ocean. On the west, the
Rhone, rising in the blue and glittering glacier of the same name,
descends through the long channel of the Valais, expands into the Lake
of Geneva, and takes its rapid course to the Mediterranean. Both of
these rivers purify their waters in a large lake; and in their passage
through the same Jurassic range of mountains they both form cataracts
and waterfalls, though separated by that time by an interval of one
hundred and eighty miles. Nine-tenths of the central table-lands of
Switzerland belong to the Rhine system, and only one-tenth to the
Rhone. In addition to these, two great rivers on the north of the St.
Gothard, the Reuss and the Aar, descend in parallel ravines through
rugged mountains, feeding the Lakes of Luzern, Thun, and Brienz; while
on the south its snows nourish the impetuous torrents of the Ticino,
which swells out into Lake Maggiore, and loses itself in the waves of
the Po.
Within two degrees of latitude, Switzerland contains the climate of
thirty-four degrees. The variety in the vertical configuration of the
country naturally affects its climate, and nearly every valley and
every mountain-side has a climate of its own. Besides “mathematical
climate,” which is expressed by latitude, and depends on the elevation
of the surface of the earth to the sun, modern science gives “physical
climate.” It describes isothermal lines, which do not exactly coincide
with the circles of latitude, but diverge to north or south, according
as the temperature is modified by other factors, such as the height
of the land above the sea, the modifying action of mountain chains,
currents of wind and water, and the neighborhood of lakes and sea.
The climate of Switzerland is specially modified by the influences
which spring from the capricious consequences of the nearness of
mountains, which are a bulwark against the periodical agitations of the
atmosphere; they form a great barrier to the northward against the icy
blasts sweeping down from the snow-fields of Russia and Siberia; and to
the south, to the hot Libyan winds blowing across the Mediterranean.
For regular isotherms, it would be idle to seek in such a broken
region. The lakes, which are fed by the glacier waters, have a cooling
effect on the temperature of the summer heat; the temperature of the
water of Lake Brienz does not exceed from 48° to 53° Fahrenheit in the
warmest days. It is a great benefit to the circulation of air which
comes in contact with surfaces so relatively cold, nor do these bodies
of air carry away with them any large amount of moisture, because the
low temperature of the water does not favor any great evaporation.
Within a short distance one may see at the same time all the seasons
of the year, stand between spring and summer,--collecting snow with
one hand and plucking flowers from the soil with the other. In Valais
the fig and grape ripen at the foot of ice-clad mountains; while near
their summits the lichen grows at the limit of the snow-line. There
is a corresponding variety as regards the duration of the seasons. In
Italian Switzerland, winter lasts only three months; at Glarus, four;
in the Engadine, six; on the St. Gothard, eight; on the Great St.
Bernard, nine; and on the Théodule Pass, always. Upon first beholding
the peaks of the Alps, shrouded in their everlasting mantles of snow,
one would little dream that in the valleys beneath ran musical streams
of summer water, with emerald meadows spreading their velvet cloaks,
dappled with clustering rose-bush, and the sun-loving flowers of the
gardens of the tropics.
In ancient times writers exhausted their eloquence in painting the
horrors of the climate of the Alps. Livy wrote, “and the snows almost
mingling with the sky, the shapeless huts situated on the cliffs, the
cattle and beasts of burden withered by the cold, the men unshorn and
wildly dressed, all things, animate and inanimate, stiffened with
frost, and other objects more terrible to be seen than described, renew
their alarm.”[9]
To-day, within its habitable regions, the climate is distinguished for
being generally temperate, healthful, and invigorating. It enjoys, from
its geographical smallness, immunity from the penalty a vast continent
pays in colossal visitations and vicissitudes of meteorological
conditions.
The Föhn is a remarkable local wind in Switzerland; it is a strong
southwest or south wind, very hot and dry, formerly supposed to
originate in the Sahara, and flowing in towards the area of low
atmospheric pressure; or to be a tropical counter-current of the trade
winds. Meteorologists now hold that it is engendered by local causes.
Commencing its descent in the northern valleys with a high temperature,
it necessarily increases its temperature and dryness as it passes
into the higher pressure of lower levels; it sweeps through certain
valleys, especially in Glarus and Uri, where old laws enact that when
it blows, every fire in the place, for whatever purpose used, is to be
extinguished, for its violence is often extreme. It is much dreaded,
yet acts beneficially by a rapid polar-like awakening of nature; it is
it which melts most of the snow in the spring, and “without the Föhn,”
says the peasant of the Grisons, “neither God nor the golden sun would
prevail over the snow.” The Bise is the opposite of the Föhn, a cold,
biting north wind, whose tooth has been sharpened by its passage over
the ice-fields, bringing all the chills of Siberia, and searching one
through and through, eating into the very marrow. This wind is confined
within a narrow area of the country, pouring from the northeast over
the Boden-See, and along the Jura to the Lake of Geneva below Lausanne;
its effect is blighting on the pastures, which it sometimes visits at
untimely seasons, killing even cattle exposed to it in May.
The German, Burgundian, and Italian nations which joined together to
form the modern Swiss nation, cast away their original nationality, and
made for themselves a new one, forming a nation as real and true as if
it had strictly answered to some linguistic or ethnological division.
These northern and southern nations of Europe have been singularly
intermingled in Switzerland, and in this respect furnish an interesting
study, as a striking exception to the general idea suggested by
the word “nation” as a considerable continuous part of the earth’s
surface, where speakers of a single tongue are united under a single
government. The long persistent division of the Swiss people into
German, French, and Italian stands in marked contrast with the thorough
unity of the nation. They have never been blended into one people,
so far as speaking a common language is concerned. German, French,
Italian, Romansch, and Ladin are spoken within the limits of the
Confederacy. And even the dialects of the German differ so much as to
make communication almost impossible, at times, between the different
villages and towns.
The census of December 1, 1888, showed the total population of
Switzerland to be 2,933,612. The German-speaking element increased from
2,030,792, in 1880, to 2,092,479, which, taking into account the normal
growth of the population, was no relative increase; the proportion in
both cases being about seventy-one per cent. of the whole. The French,
on the other hand, increased from 608,007 to 637,710, which was a
relative increase of from 21.4 to 21.07 per cent., while the Italian
declined actually as well as relatively, the numbers being 161,923
in 1889, and 156,482 in 1888, or 5.7 and 5.3 per cent. respectively.
The decline of the Italians in Uri and Schwyz may be explained by the
return home of a large number of Italian workmen engaged on the St.
Gothard Railway. It is difficult to explain the large decrease of
Germans in the Cantons of Bern and Neuchâtel, while the French have
increased. In general, the French increase in Switzerland seems to be
at the expense of the Germans, while the German element recovers its
place at the expense of the Italian.
The region extending from the Lake of Geneva to the Lake of Constance,
and from the foot of the Alps to the foot of the Jura, forms only
one-fourth of Switzerland, so far as area is concerned; but nearly
its whole population, wealth, and industry are concentrated there.
The population is settled in the plains, the hill regions, and the
valleys; there are chalets nearly eight thousand feet high on the
Fleck and Indre Alps, but only one town, viz., Chaux-de-Fonds, in the
Jura of Neuchâtel, has been built at an elevation of more than three
thousand two hundred feet; but there are villages in Alpine valleys
with an elevation of four thousand to five thousand feet, and the
hamlet of Juf, in the dreary valley of the Avers, has an elevation of
six thousand seven hundred feet, and is the highest village in Europe
permanently inhabited.
In point of religion the Swiss are as sharply divided as they are in
tongue and customs. It is to the increasing efforts of the clergy,
during the many centuries that elapsed between the fall of the Roman
empire and the revival of knowledge, that the judicious historian of
Switzerland ascribes the early civilization and humane disposition
of the Helvetic tribes; and invariably the first traces of order and
industry appeared in the immediate neighborhood of the religious
establishments. The traveller will behold with interest the crosses
which frequently mark the brow of a precipice, and the little chapels
hollowed out of the rock where the road is narrowed, and will consider
them so many pledges of security; and he will rest assured that so long
as the pious mountaineer continues to adore the “Good Shepherd” he
will never cease to befriend the traveller or to discharge the duties
of hospitality. That a church, or rather that churches, existed in
Switzerland in the fourth century is proved by the signatures, coming
down from that date, of certain bishops and elders of Geneva, Coire,
and the Valais; and one century later it is known that other places
besides these had been in a measure Christianized. The Fraternity
of St. Bernard was founded in the latter part of the tenth century
by Bernard de Menthon, an Augustinian canon of Aosta, in Piedmont,
for the double purpose of extending bodily succor and administering
spiritual consolation to travellers crossing the Pass of St. Bernard,
where winter reigns during nine months of the year. The idea of
establishing a religious community in the midst of savage rocks, and at
the highest point trodden by the foot of man, was worthy of Christian
self-denial and a benevolent philanthropy. The experiment succeeded in
a degree commensurate with its noble intention: centuries have gone
by, civilization has undergone a thousand changes, empires have been
formed and overturned, and one-half of the world has been rescued
from barbarism, while this piously-founded edifice still remains in
its simple and respectable usefulness where it was first erected, the
refuge of the traveller and a shelter for the poor. The building,
the entertainment, the brotherhood, are marked by a severe, monastic
self-denial which appears to have received a character of stern
simplicity from the unvarying nakedness of all that greets the eye in
that region of frost and sterility. In storms, monks, helpers, and dogs
all go out to search for helpless travellers; and during the severe
winter of 1830 both packs of dogs had to be taken out, and nearly all
perished; the names of Barry and Bruno are kept with those of departed
archbishops and monks. These St. Bernard dogs are adapted, by their
instincts, intelligence, and benevolence, to the charitable work in
which they are engaged. The moment they scent a traveller buried in the
snow they announce the fact by setting up a loud bark, but they do not
wait for the arrival of their human companions, but begin at once to
dig into the snow with all their strength. The pure breed is said to be
extinct, but the cross variety still retains many of the good points of
the genuine breed.[10]
Einsiedeln is a very ancient and celebrated monastery in the Canton of
Schwyz; it is more generally known as the Monastery of “Our Lady of the
Hermits,” and is one of the most famous pilgrim resorts in the world.
It was here that Meinrad, an anchorite of the house of Hohenzollern,
is supposed to have retired in the ninth century, and built a cell
for the worship of the Black Virgin, presented to him by the Abbess
Hildegard of Zurich. He was murdered, and respect for his memory
induced a religious community to establish themselves there. On the
occasion of the consecration of the chapel erected by them, the Bishop,
it is related, was anticipated by angels, who performed the rite to
heavenly music at midnight. Leo VIII. declared this consecration to be
a full and perfect one, and forbade the repetition of the rite; and
Pope Benedict VIII. placed Count Meinrad in the catalogue of saints
one hundred and fifty years after his death. The inscription over
the church-door at Einsiedeln is “_Hic est plena remissio peccatorum
a culpa et a pœna_” (“Here is plenary remission of sins from their
guilt and from their punishment”). There is a copious fountain before
the church, and another tradition has it that the Saviour visited the
shrine and drank from it. This fountain has fourteen jets, carved to
imitate the heads of strange beasts and birds, and the pilgrims must
drink of every one to make sure that they should not miss the right
one, which is said to have refreshed our Lord.
It has been disputed to whom the priority in the race of reform in
Switzerland belongs, Zwingli or Luther. Zwingli himself declares that
in 1516, before he had heard of Luther, he began to preach the gospel
at Zurich, and to warn the people against relying upon human authority.
The name of Zwingli is always associated by the Swiss with the rise of
Protestantism as that of Calvin is with its triumphant progress.[11]
This Reformation, introduced by Zwingli and extended by Calvin,
occasioned the fiercest dissensions. Early in the sixteenth century
both Geneva and Zurich became cities of refuge for French, Italian,
and English who were forced to flee from their native lands on account
of their faith. The first edition of the English Bible was printed in
Zurich in 1535. The Reformers separated themselves into Lutherans,
Calvinists, and Anabaptists. It was held to be the duty of each Canton
to force its own faith upon the whole body of the people; church-going
was enforced by fines and corporal punishment; staying away from
church on Sunday mornings, in some localities, was followed by a loss
of citizenship. The latter part of the sixteenth and the whole of the
seventeenth century are crowded with controversies and bloodshed;
that violence and those animosities which are found so terribly to
prevail where religious zeal has been abused for the purposes of
intolerance. Nowhere were the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation
more ardently embraced; nowhere was the strange moral phenomenon,
which is to be traced in so many quarters of Europe, more conspicuous
than among the Cantons of Switzerland, the early, exact, permanent,
geographical division, which was realized between the Protestant and
Popish communities; a division which frequently an insignificant stream
or street has been sufficient to maintain for ages. Religious parties,
like glaciers, became at once frozen up in set attitudes and forms,
which no subsequent events have been able to alter. In three instances
controversies on the subject of religion kindled violent and bloody
contests. The most memorable was the war between Bern and Zurich, on
the one part, and five little Catholic Cantons on the other, in 1712.
At the close of the period of the Reformation, seven of the Cantons,
Luzern, Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Zug, Freiburg, and Solothurn adhered
to their ancient Catholic faith; the Cantons of Bern, Basel, Zurich,
St. Gallen, and Schaffhausen adopted the reformed religion; Appenzell
and Glarus recognized both forms of worship. In Geneva, over which the
Duke of Savoy ruled, the effects of the Reformation were peculiarly
important. Calvinism, as it existed at Geneva, was not merely a system
of religious opinion, but an attempt to make the will of God, as
revealed in the Bible, an authoritative guide for social and personal
as well as for moral direction. Moral sins were treated after the
example of the Mosaic law, as crimes to be punished by the magistrates;
“elsewhere,” said Knox, speaking of Geneva, “the word of God is taught
as purely, but never anywhere have I seen God obeyed as faithfully.”[12]
Reprobating and lamenting that the great reformer depended upon the
use of the sword for the extirpation of heresy, let us remember that
Calvin was not only the “founder of a sect, but foremost among the
most efficient of modern republican legislators; and that his genius
infused enduring elements into the institutions of Geneva, and made
it for the modern world the impregnable fortress of popular liberty,
the fertile seed-plot of democracy.” That “theological city,” called
by some the Jerusalem of Switzerland, seems to be pervaded by an
endemic influence inciting to religious discussion and agitation;
the eager, irrepressible spirit of John Calvin walks abroad from his
unknown sepulchre as the _genius loci_. The Reformation contributed in
Switzerland to the enlightenment of the people and to the maintenance
of a spirit of freedom; but in a political point of view it was the
cause of the gravest evils, which continued long after the original
convulsions. To differences of race and language it added divisions
of religious faith and the conflict of hostile churches. For some
time there was an alliance of clerical aggressiveness and ambition,
with the employment of religion as a political influence. The radical
government of Zurich was violently overthrown on the 6th of September,
1839, in consequence of the nomination of Dr. Strauss to a chair of
theology; thousands of peasants, led by their pastors and singing
hymns, armed with scythes and clubs, entered Zurich, and the government
was forced to dissolve itself. As late as the war of the Sonderbund,
in 1847, religious intolerance appeared to threaten the integrity
of the Confederation; and by an article in the Constitution of
1848, and re-enacted in that of 1874, the Jesuits and all affiliated
societies were interdicted throughout the Confederation. Hostility to
the Jesuits was not regarded as hostility to the Catholic religion.
The order of Jesuits, as then existing in Switzerland, could not be
considered purely religious, but partly political, partly sectarian and
controversial, its direct aim being to aggrandize the Church at the
expense of the state, and the Catholic religion at the expense of the
Protestant. From the first of these two tendencies, it was repugnant to
a large portion even of the Catholic world. The whole history of the
Jesuits in Switzerland betokened an organized and systematic teaching
of religion, not exclusively for religious ends, but largely as a means
for procuring political and social ascendency; even to the extent of
reducing it to rule, craft, and professional duty. It was against
this tendency, not against any matters essential to the Catholic
religion, that even the Catholic world protested. The growth of the Old
Catholics, after the Vatican Council of 1870, caused many disturbances
in Western Switzerland, specially in the Bernese Jura. Inaugurated
in the Catholic universities of Germany, it was transplanted for a
complete and more vigorous growth into the soil of Geneva, and there
taking on a logical, consistent, and organized form, it seemed fitted
for the wide propagation and success that marked the great Reformation
of the sixteenth century, to which, in its early stages, it showed
curious points of undesigned coincidence.
The Swiss serve God and serve Liberty; two facts which go far to
solve all the phenomena of their remarkable history. They hold with
Plutarch that “a city might more easily be founded without territory
than a state without belief in God.” It may be, as Professor Tyndall
contends, that there is “morality in the oxygen of the mountains.” Man
feels himself reduced to nonentity under the stupendous architecture of
these elevated regions which carries his thoughts up to the Creator.
A cultivated and pious mind may find itself stayed and soothed and
carried upward, at some evening hour, by those great symbols of a
duration without an end to a throne above the sky; and this impression
may be deepened until the outward glory reproduces itself in the
inward, and causes it to cry out:
“Great Hierarch! Tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.”
The lives of the Swiss are in continual struggle with the elements,
the visible power of the Deity; their sober habits, simple, natural,
imaginative, all predispose them to believe; and the Gospel easily
obtained dominion over their faith and feelings.
The sublime works of nature are equally calculated to arouse sentiments
of patriotism; they are capable of a companionship with man, full of
expression of inexplicable affinities and delicacies of intercourse.
No race of men can dwell in Switzerland, amidst its mountains, its
precipices, its rocks, glaciers, avalanches, and torrents, without
being strong, brave, and resolute. Just as we recognize an elevated
region by its growth of peculiar timber, whether stunted or lofty,
alike in their power of resisting the tempest, and by its hardy plants
characterized by their intense tenacity of life, just so a mountainous
country is indicated by a courageous, athletic, close-knit population
of liberty-loving, patriotic men.
“_Montani semper liberi_,” everywhere mountainous regions have been
favorable to a free and manly spirit in the people; in every zone the
mountain races are a free, a pastoral, an unchanging people, rather
confirming Emerson’s hasty generalization as to snow and civil freedom.
In the East the warlike hill-tribes have been less subject to despotic
rule than the milder races dwelling on the plains. The varied grandeur
of the mountains no less than the awful power of the ocean counts for
something in the perpetuation of distinctive characteristics. But the
spirit of freedom is thought to take a different color from the sea and
from the mountain; in the mountain it is stubborn and resolute; by the
sea it is excitable and fickle. The hill-tribes of Judea kept their
covenant, the tribes of Jordan fell away; those Medes who never changed
their laws descended from the Caspian Alps, those Greeks who sought new
things from day to day were dwellers by the Ægean Sea. Among the vines
and olives in Italian gardens men are soft, poetic, phosphorescent, no
less full of fire than they are fond of change; among the pines and
larches of the Swiss glaciers men are hardy, patient, dumb, as slow to
fume and flash as they are hard to bend and break. The poet Wordsworth
represents that it was the peculiar fortune of Switzerland to enjoy the
influence of mountain and sea at once,--
“Two voices are there: one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty voice:
In both, from age to age, thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty.”
There are few principles of action which are more immediately
beneficial to society, and which have received more assiduous
cultivation, than _love of country_. The Swiss regards his country
with the tenderness of filial affection, and, like the undiscerning
lover, fondly gazes without discrimination upon its beauties and
its deformities.[13] Enamored of their rocks, ice, and snow, they
look on milder climates and more fruitful plains without one envious
emotion. Deeper down even than the deep-seated differences of race,
language, and creed lies the feeling that comes from the common
possession of a political freedom that is greater than that possessed
by surrounding peoples: this is the enduring bond of the Confederation.
Switzerland has demonstrated that democracies are not necessarily
short-lived. The short-lived glory of Athens and its subjection under
the rough foot of the astute Macedonian was not the result of too
much freedom, but because the Greek states had too little unity. In
Switzerland republican institutions can claim to have been fairly
tried and thoroughly succeeded. Dating from the perpetual Alliance
of 1291, the Confederation now counts six centuries; living through
many forms of government, feudal, clerical, imperial, radical, the
League of Cantons never ceased to be a union of republics, and is the
only federal government which has come down from mediæval times to
our own day. We see that the Swiss have lasted well, “for utility is
their bond and not respects.” While in some European countries very
anomalous forms of government have assumed the republican name, it is
gratifying to observe that there is at least one European state in
which republicanism is a fact and a living force properly understood
and properly practised, uniting with as large a measure of individual
liberty all the advantages of careful and judicious legislation,
economy in the administration, and justice in the execution of the
laws to as high a degree as can be found in any country. Every man is
free; every child educated; the sovereign power resides in hands that
defend it in danger and adorn it in peace; a common faith that love
of country, “all for each and each for all,” is better than a love of
self pervades the entire population. Amid powerful monarchies there
is a state without king or nobles, with a well-developed system of
democratic institutions, admirably suited to the genius of the people
and administered with the economy, the wisdom, and the consistency
of a well-regulated family. There the problem of a free commonwealth
was first solved, and popular government first made possible. There
are presented some of the most striking examples of democracy in its
simplest form, and of carefully-contrived and durable republican
institutions, to be found in the annals of political history. There is
a government based on the simple but sound philosophy expounded in the
homely observations of the honest old boatman of Geneva, Jean Desclaux,
“If one man rule, he will rule for his own benefit and that of his
parasites; if a minority rule, we have many masters instead of one,
all of whom must be fed and served; and if the majority rule, and rule
wrongfully, why the minimum of harm is done.”
CHAPTER II.
THE CONSTITUTION.
“On the main-land only two little spots at the two extremities of
the old Teutonic world came out of the mediæval crucible with their
self-government substantially intact. At the mouth of the Rhine, the
little Dutch communities were prepared to lead the attack in the
terrible battle for freedom with which the drama of modern history was
ushered in. In the impregnable mountain fastnesses of upper Germany,
the Swiss Cantons had bid defiance alike to Austrian tyrant and to
Burgundian invader, and had preserved in its purest form the rustic
democracy of their Aryan forefathers. By a curious coincidence, both
these free peoples in their efforts towards national unity were led to
frame federal unions, and one of these political achievements is from
the stand-point of universal history of very great significance.”[14]
Writers, as a rule, properly consider a federal government, owing to
its nice balances in regard to a division of power between the union
and the members, and in regard to the conflicting interests of the
parts, as a peculiarly delicate and almost unadjustable framework.
“The federative system,” says Guizot, “is one which evidently requires
the greatest maturity of reason, of morality, of civilization in the
society to which it is applied.” The two poles of a federal government
are independent action of the members in certain things, and a central
power or government which in certain things is equally independent.
The aim is to gain the advantages of the concentrated power of great
states, while retaining the advantages of local interest found in small
states. On the one hand, each of the members of the union must be
wholly independent in those matters which concern each member only. On
the other hand, all must be subject to a common power in those matters
which concern the whole body of members collectively. Switzerland
represents the happy outcome of the first attempt at such a federal
union made by men of Teutonic descent. Complete independence in local
affairs combined with adequate representation in the Federal Council
has effected such an intense cohesion of interests throughout the
nation as no centralized government, however cunningly devised, would
ever have secured. The constitutional history of the confederation is
a study in federalism. First a mere defensive alliance or league;[15]
then a _Staatenbund_, or permanent alliance of several small states, to
which the term confederacy nearly corresponds; then a _Bundesstaat_, or
an organized state with central legislative, executive, and judicial
departments, which answers substantially to the term federation as
usually employed, and as realized in the Constitution of 1848, and
perfected in that of 1874. The distinction which German publicists
have introduced into political science between a _Staatenbund_ and
a _Bundesstaat_, constituting the two chief forms of union between
states, is a very valuable one,--the former word denoting a league
or confederation of states; the latter, a state formed by means of
a league or confederation. In order to know to which of the two
classes a given state belongs, we need to inquire only whether the
political body in question has the essential qualities of a state
or not. Confederation and federation; both are composite political
bodies, and in so far different from mere alliances which form no new
state. _Staatenbund_, or confederation, is rather a conglomeration of
states than a real state; it retains the character of a contractual
combination of states. _Bundesstaat_, or federation, implies the
advance from the incomplete and transitional form to the formation of a
collective state or union; it is a more highly developed _Staatenbund_,
the difference is only one of degree in purpose, form, and powers
to carry out the national will. A confederation, by joining several
states in a political association, presents at least externally the
appearance of one state of an international personality; but yet is
not organized into one central state distinct from the particular
states. The management of the collective state is left either to
some particular state as President (_Vorort_), or to an assembly of
delegates and representatives of all the several states. The former
was the case with the Greek leagues under the hegemony of Sparta and
Athens; the latter with the American Union under the ancient articles
of 1778, and the German confederation of 1815. In a federation there
are not merely completely organized particular states, each remaining
sovereign and independent within the range of such powers as it does
not hand over to the federal authority; but there is an independently
organized common or central state, that within the range of the powers
handed over to it forms a single commonwealth under a government with
its own executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The Achæan
league was already in some measure such a federal state. This form of
state first appears in modern times in the Constitution of the United
States adopted in 1787, and subsequently imitated by Switzerland.
The Swiss Confederation previous to 1848 joined the members of the
league only on such terms and for such purposes as were agreed on, and
their common affairs were administered by a federal Diet. Still each
Canton remained perfectly independent in all its internal concerns;
even keeping the right of separate dealings with foreign governments.
There was nothing which could be strictly called a federal government,
whose one will makes the constitution, and demands obedience from the
minority, even of particular Cantons. The foundation of the Swiss
Constitution is the old Swiss league, which lasted from 1291 to 1798.
But there had been simply alliances between different Cantons, and no
real federal constitution existed. The establishment of the Helvetic
Republic, one and indivisible, was the first attempt at a constitution.
The representative democracy of the United States found a soil ready
prepared for it in Switzerland, to which it was transplanted by French
intervention. The constitution _unitaire_ was imposed on Switzerland
most tyrannically, but it was not in itself a bad one. Under what may
be called the French readjustment of Switzerland, constitutions rose
and fell and succeeded each other in rapid rotation from 1798 to 1803.
First appears a project of the Constitution of March, 1798; by this a
single centralized state was substituted for the thirteen old Cantons.
It served with modifications as the groundwork of another sketched
in April of the same year. This latter was prevented by the outbreak
of war between France and Austria in 1799 from taking root. Another
Constitution of May, 1801, approved by Bonaparte, then First Consul,
was acceptable to few in its political and territorial arrangements.
The Cantons became mere divisions, like counties or departments.
One of its earliest provisions abolishes the ancient democracies of
the Forest Cantons. The traditions of independence in these older
Cantons, and the elements of internal opposition, were too strong to
admit of submission. The inhabitants of these sequestered regions,
communicating little with the rest of the world, ardently attached to
their liberties, inheriting all the dauntless intrepidity of their
forefathers, clearly perceived that, in the wreck of all their ancient
institutions, the independence of their country could not long be
maintained. They saw that the insidious promises of the French envoys
had terminated only in ruinous exaction and tyrannical rule. Animated
by these feelings, “We have lived,” said they, “for several centuries
under a republic based on liberty and equality; possessing no other
goods in the world but our religion and our independence; no other
riches but our herds; our first duty is to defend them.” This attempt
to form the whole of Switzerland into a united representative system
could not be permanent, and was soon dissolved. Other constitutions
followed in October, 1801, February, 1802, and July, 1802. Then
February 2, 1803, came, under the so-called Act of Mediation, a
moderately centralized federal government granted by Napoleon. Old
family and civic privileges were annulled; all Swiss were made equal
in the eye of the law, and vassalage was altogether abolished, and
free right of settlement in any part of Switzerland assured to all.
All alliances of one Canton with another, or with a foreign state,
were interdicted. This was stipulated in consequence of an improper
alliance in 1442 by Zurich with the House of Austria. It was ordained
that each Canton should send one deputy to the general Diet; that they
should have definite instructions and powers of attorney, and should
not vote against their instructions. The functions of the Diet were
declared to be: 1. To proclaim war or peace, and conclude foreign
alliances, which required the consent of three-fourths of the Diet.
2. To fix regulations for foreign commerce, capitulations in foreign
service, and the recruiting of soldiers. 3. To levy the contingent,
appoint commanders of the armed forces, and the foreign ambassadors. 4.
To adopt measures of external utility and settle disputes between one
Canton and another. The act concluded in these terms: “The present act,
the result of long conference with enlightened persons, appears to us
the best that could be devised for the constitution and happiness of
the Swiss. As soon as it is carried into execution the French troops
shall withdraw. We recognize Helvetia as organized by this act as an
independent power, and guarantee the Federal constitution, and that of
each Canton in particular, against the enemies of the tranquillity of
the state.” This act for the remainder of Napoleon’s reign settled the
condition of the Helvetic Confederacy; and although it was peaceful
and prosperous, the Act of Mediation was felt to be the work of a
foreigner and master, and it fell with the extinction of his power.
Here French readjustments came to an end, and after the Congress of
Vienna, March, 1815, guaranteed the neutrality of Switzerland, there
followed in November of the same year the Federal Pact. This was a
looser confederation, and in many respects a return to the state
of things previous to the French Revolution, and restored to the
Cantons a large portion of their former sovereignty. There continued
to be a _Tagsatzung_, or Diet for general affairs, consisting of
“ambassadors from the sovereign estates,” meaning the Cantons, each
Canton still having only one voice, and three-fourths of the votes
being necessary for war or peace and treaties with foreign powers;
but in other matters of business an absolute majority decides. It
fixes the rate of troops and taxes for federal purposes; gives every
Canton the right to demand defence against internal and external
force; provides for the settlement of disputes between the Cantons;
puts an end to all dependent territory and exclusive possession of
rights by a class of citizens; and continues the old plan of having a
_Vorort_. Military capitulations and conventions concerning affairs
of police or public economy may be made by single Cantons, provided
they oppose no federal principles, nor existing league, nor cantonal
rights. Ambassadors from the league may be sent to foreign powers when
their appointment is thought necessary. In extraordinary cases the
_Vorort_ may be invested with especial powers, and a committee can be
appointed, composed of the officer of the _Vorort_, who is intrusted
with the management of the federal affairs in conjunction with other
representatives of the Confederation. This representative committee
is chosen by six circles of Cantons each in turn. The Diet gives the
requisite instructions to these federal representatives, and fixes
the duration of their duties, which cease, of course, when there is
a new Diet. When this assembly is not in session, the _Vorort_ has
the charge of federal affairs within the limits existing before 1798.
Cloisters and chapters are allowed to continue, but are subject to
taxation like private property; and the Helvetic national debt is
acknowledged. The Federal Pact became unpopular not merely from its
own intrinsic defects and ambiguities, but also from the time and
circumstances of its origin. It was a reactionary instrument, bringing
back the yoke of the patrician families and the extreme Ultramontane
party. The central authority of the Confederation was wreak. It had no
powers, either legislative, executive, or administrative, binding upon
the several Cantons; no provision for the repression of wars between
rival Cantons, nor for the proper restraint of separate alliances with
foreign powers which endangered the peace, if not the independence, of
the federal state; no federal army, no public treasury, no national
mint, no common judiciary, nor any other common marks of sovereignty.
The Diet assembled for little more than deliberation, all matters
of importance being referred to the determination of the Cantons.
National affairs were discussed in general Diets, as in fact they
had been from the beginning, but they were Diets which lacked the
very essentials of republican government, majority rule, and power of
execution. They depended more upon moral authority than legal powers,
persuading where they could not command obedience. The difficulties of
a union so obviously imperfect and narrow were greatly increased by
the Reformation, which alienated the Catholic and Protestant Cantons,
causing political and religious struggles that culminated in civil war.
There is then a constitutional rest until the next great revolutionary
storm, which swept over so many countries of Europe in 1848, when a
new constitution, modelled in many respects after that of the United
States, was adopted, and superseded the Federal Pact. It changed the
federal union of states into a federal republic; a transition from
a _Staatenbund_ to a _Bundesstaat_. The stage of confederation was
passed over and the higher state of federation reached; an organized
nation, and at the same time the peoples of the particular Cantons
also possessing organic unity; a Swiss nation, and yet a Bernese and
Genevese people. The Constitution of 1848 was the first which was
entirely the work of the Swiss without any foreign influence. For
the revolution of 1848, which paralyzed Austria, Rome, and Germany,
enabled the Swiss to reassume in full the reins of self-government.
Two legislative chambers were for the first time created, and invested
with the power of enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding
directly on individual citizens. This most important and far-reaching
principle, that the Federal head should operate directly on individuals
and not on states, involved momentous consequences, forcing the
construction of a “Composite State.” The joint action of the two
chambers, constituting the _Bundesversammlung_, or Federal Assembly,
became a substantive part of the government of every Canton; and,
within the limits of its attributions, made laws which are obeyed
by every citizen, and executing them through its own officers, and
enforcing them by its own tribunal; powers essential for an effective
federal government. The old Diets never ventured on any undertaking
of public utility, amelioration, or reform, during more than three
hundred years. The Confederation was loose and incomplete even for its
essential objects, mutual defence and foreign relations. The principal
objects of this new constitution were:
1. The strengthening of the national government, reconciling the
supremacy of the Confederation with the autonomy of the Cantons.
2. The overthrow of oligarchies.
3. The protection of the state from the dominion of Rome.
The first two were attained by the direct provisions of the
Constitution; the third was afterwards promoted by the expulsion of the
Jesuits and their affiliated societies from Swiss territory. A great
benefit was conferred upon the Confederation by the unification of such
matters as coinage, weight, measures, and posts; and the surrender by
the Cantons to the Confederation of the exclusive right to levy duties
at the frontiers of the country. For twenty-four years Switzerland
enjoyed under this Constitution uninterrupted peace and prosperity; the
European wars between 1855 and 1871 did not disturb her neutrality,
though military operations offered great temptation to march across her
territory. In 1872 a project of amendment was submitted conferring upon
the general government many additional powers. By a small popular and
a large cantonal majority it was defeated. The agitation for amendment
continued, and in 1874 a more moderate revision of the Constitution
of 1848 was again presented. This remodelling in 1874 did little more
than work out in a complete and logical form the principles laid down
in 1848; the most marked difference being a further enlargement of the
Federal authority; forming a well compacted union, a Federal state,
each portion of which has its sphere of sovereignty. This revised
Constitution received the sanction of the Federal Assembly, January 31,
1874, was submitted to the popular vote on Sunday, April 19, following,
resulting in a vote of 340,199 in favor of, and 198,013 against,
acceptance. The vote by Cantons was fourteen and a half Cantons for,
and seven and a half Cantons against, acceptance (the votes of the
half-Cantons being counted each as a half vote). The Cantons voting
against the adoption of the Constitution were Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden
(the original three), Luzern, Zug, Freiburg, Valais, and Appenzell
(Inner). A decree of the Federal Assembly, May 28, 1874, after setting
forth that the revised Federal Constitution had received both a
majority of all the votes cast and the approval of a majority of all
the Cantons, says, “That it is, therefore, hereby solemnly declared in
effect, bearing date of May 29, 1874.” The Federal Council, on May 30,
1874, ordered the above decree, together with the Constitution, to be
enrolled in the official collection of statutes of the Confederation,
and the decree to be transmitted to the governments of the Cantons, to
be published by them through posting up in public places. The Federal
system thus established has many features which are strikingly like,
as well as many which are almost as strikingly unlike, those in the
system of the United States. The preamble, and Articles I. and II. of
the Constitution, point out the aim and lay down the fundamental idea
of the Confederation.
IN THE NAME OF ALMIGHTY GOD.
The Swiss Confederation, desiring to confirm the alliance
of the confederates, to maintain and to promote the unity,
strength, and honor of the Swiss nation, has adopted the
Federal Constitution, following:
ARTICLE I.--The peoples of the twenty-two sovereign Cantons
of Switzerland, united by this present alliance [then follow
the names of the Cantons], form in their entirety the Swiss
Confederation.
ARTICLE II.--The purpose of the Confederation is to secure
the independence of the country against foreign nations, to
maintain peace and order within, to protect the liberty and
rights of the confederates, and to foster their common welfare.
The Constitution is divided into three chapters, embracing,
respectively, seventy, forty-seven, and four articles, numbered
consecutively throughout the whole. The chapters have subdivisions,
with descriptive titles to the general heads.
The first chapter is titled _General Provisions_, and covers a wide
field.
A literal transcript of the most important provisions of this chapter
will be given.
CHAPTER I.
The Cantons are sovereign so far as their sovereignty is
not limited by the Federal Constitution, and as such they
exercise all the rights which are not delegated to the Federal
government. All Swiss are equal before the law, with neither
political dependence, nor privilege of place, birth, persons,
or families. The Confederation guarantees to the Cantons their
territory, their sovereignty (within the limits fixed), their
Constitutions, the liberty and rights of the people, the
constitutional rights of citizens, and the rights and powers
which the people have conferred on those in authority. The
Cantons are bound to ask of the Confederation the guarantee of
their Constitutions: this is accorded, provided,--
(_a_) That the Constitutions contain nothing contrary to the
provisions of the Federal Constitution.
(_b_) That they assure the exercise of political rights
according to republican forms, representative or democratic.
(_c_) That they have been ratified by the people, and may be
amended whenever the majority of all the citizens demand it.
All separate alliances and all treaties of a political
character between the Cantons are forbidden. The Confederation
has the sole right of declaring war, of making peace, and
of concluding alliances and treaties with foreign powers,
particularly treaties relating to tariffs and commerce. No
military capitulations shall be made.[16] Members of the
Federal Government, civil and military officials of the
Confederation, and Federal Representatives or Commissioners
shall not accept from foreign Governments any pension, salary,
title, present, or decoration. The Confederation has no right
to maintain a standing army: every Swiss is subject to military
service. The Confederation may construct at its own expense, or
may aid by subsidies, public works which concern Switzerland
or a considerable part of the country: the Confederation has
the right of general supervision over the water and forest
police measures in the upper mountain regions. It is authorized
to adopt regulations as to the right of fishing and hunting,
especially for the preservation of the large game in the
mountains, and for the protection of birds which are useful
to agriculture or forestry. Legislation pertaining to the
construction and operation of railways is an affair of the
Confederation. It has the right to establish, in addition to
the existing Polytechnic school, a Federal University and other
higher institutions of learning, or assist in their support.
The customs are in the province of the Confederation; it may
levy export and import duties; but the collection of the
Federal customs shall be regulated according to the following
principles:
1. Import duties.
(_a_) Materials necessary to the manufactures and agriculture
of the country shall be taxed as low as possible.
(_b_) Likewise all articles which may be classed as necessaries
of life.
(_c_) Luxuries shall be subjected to the highest duties.
2. Export duties shall also be as low as possible.
3. The customs legislation shall include suitable provisions
for the continuance of commercial and market intercourse across
the frontier.
The freedom of trade and of industry is guaranteed throughout
the whole of the Confederation: excepted from this rule are
the salt and gunpowder monopolies, the Federal customs,
measures of sanitary police against epidemics and cattle
diseases, import duties on wines and other spirituous liquors,
and other taxes on consumption expressly permitted by the
Confederation, under certain restrictions: but all the import
duties levied by the Cantons as well as the similar duties
levied by the Communes to cease, without indemnity, at the end
of the year 1890. The Confederation has power to enact uniform
provisions as to the labor of children in factories, and as
to the duration of labor fixed for adults therein, and as to
the protection of workmen against the operation of unhealthy
and dangerous manufactures. The business of emigration agents
and of private insurance companies shall be subject to the
supervision and legislation of the Confederation. The opening
of gambling-houses is forbidden (those in existence allowed
until December 31, 1877, to close); necessary measures may
also be taken concerning lotteries. The post and telegraphs
(now includes the telephone) in all Switzerland are controlled
by the Confederation, and the proceeds belong to the Federal
Treasury; the tariff charges shall be regulated according to
uniform principles in as equitable a manner as possible, and
inviolable secrecy of letters and telegrams is guaranteed. To
the Confederation belongs the exercise of all rights included
in the coinage monopoly: it alone shall coin money, establish
the monetary system, and enact provisions, if necessary, for
the rate of exchange of foreign coins, and to make by law
general provisions as to the issue and redemption of banknotes:
it shall not, however, establish any monopoly for the issue
of banknotes, nor make them a legal tender. The Confederation
fixes the standard of weights and measures. The manufacture
and the sale of gunpowder throughout Switzerland pertains
exclusively to the Confederation (the manufacture and sale of
spirituous liquors was made a Federal monopoly December 22,
1885). Every citizen of a Canton is also a Swiss citizen, and
as such he may participate in the place where he is domiciled
in all Federal elections and popular votes, after having duly
proven his qualification as a voter.[17] A Federal law shall
establish the distinction between settlement and temporary
residence, and shall at the same time make the regulations
to which Swiss temporary residents shall be subjected as to
their political rights and their civil rights. A Federal law
shall make provision as to the cost of the care and burial
of indigent persons of one Canton who may become sick or die
in another Canton. Freedom of conscience and belief shall be
inviolable; no one shall be compelled to take part in any
religious society or in any religious instruction, or to
undertake any religious act, nor shall he be punished in any
way whatever for his religious views. The person who exercises
the parents’ or guardians’ authority has the right, conformably
to the principles above stated, to regulate the religious
education of children up to the close of their sixteenth year.
The exercise of civil or political rights shall not be abridged
by any provisions or conditions whatever of an ecclesiastical
or religious kind. Religious views shall not absolve from the
performance of civil duties. No person is bound to pay taxes
of which the proceeds are specifically appropriated to the
expenses of any religious society to which he does not belong.
The free exercise of religious worship is guaranteed within
the limits of morality and public order; the Cantons and the
Confederation may take suitable measures for the preservation
of public order and of peace between the members of different
religious bodies, as well as against any interference in the
rights of citizens or of the state by church authorities.
Contests in public and private law which arise out of the
formation or the division of religious bodies may be brought by
appeal before the competent Federal authorities. No bishopric
shall be created upon Swiss territory without the consent of
the Confederation; neither the order of the Jesuits nor the
societies affiliated with them shall be suffered in any part
of Switzerland, and all participation of their members either
in church or school is prohibited; this prohibition may be
extended also by Federal ordinance to other religious orders
whose action is dangerous to the state, or disturbs the peace
between sects. The establishment of new convents or religious
orders or the restoration of those which have been suppressed
is forbidden. The civil status and the keeping of records
thereof is subject to the civil authority (taking it away from
the clergy, who were formerly the custodians). The disposition
of burial-places shall belong to the civil authorities; they
shall take care that every deceased person may be decently
interred (to prevent denial of burial by the church). The
right of marriage is placed within the protection of the
Confederation; this right shall not be limited for confessional
or economic considerations, nor on account of previous conduct
or other police reasons; no tax upon admission or similar tax
shall be levied upon either party to a marriage. Freedom of
the press is guaranteed; the Confederation may enact penalties
against the abuse of the freedom of the press when directed
against it or its authorities. The right of petition is
guaranteed. No person shall be deprived of his constitutional
judge, and there shall consequently be no extraordinary
tribunal established.[18] Ecclesiastical jurisdiction is
abolished. Suits for personal claims against a solvent debtor
having a domicile in Switzerland must be brought before the
judge of his domicile; in consequence his property outside the
Canton in which he is domiciled may not be attached in suits
for personal claims; with reference to foreigners, however,
the provisions of the respective international treaties shall
apply. Imprisonment for debt is abolished. The exit duty on
property is abolished as respects foreign countries, provided
reciprocity be observed. The Confederation shall have power to
legislate:
1. On civil capacity.
2. On all legal questions relating to commerce and to
transactions affecting chattels (law of commercial obligations,
including commercial law and law of exchange).
3. On literary and artistic copyright.[19]
4. On the legal collection of debts and on bankruptcy.
Capital punishment abolished;[20] corporal punishment is
forbidden. The Confederation by law provides for the
extradition of accused persons from one Canton to another;
nevertheless, extradition shall not be made obligatory for
political offences and offences of the press. Measures shall be
taken by Federal law for the incorporation of persons without
a country.[21] The Confederation has power to expel from its
territory foreigners who endanger the internal or external
safety of Switzerland.
The second chapter embraces the _Federal Authorities_:
CHAPTER II.
1. The Federal Assembly or Legislative Department.
2. The Federal Council or Executive Department.
3. The Federal Tribunal or Judicial Department.[22]
4. The Federal Chancellery.
It is provided that the duties of Secretary to the Federal
Assembly and Federal Council shall be performed by a Federal
Chancellery under the direction of a Chancellor of the
Confederation. The Chancellor shall be chosen for the term of
three years by the Federal Assembly at the same time as the
Federal Council. The Chancellery shall be under the special
supervision of the Federal Council.
5. Miscellaneous provisions.
These are three in number:
1. All that relates to the location of the Federal authorities
is a subject to be determined by the Confederation.
2. The three principal languages spoken in Switzerland--German,
French, and Italian--shall be considered national languages of
the Confederation.[23]
3. The officials of the Confederation shall be responsible
for their conduct in office. Federal law shall define this
responsibility and the means of enforcing it.
The third chapter directs the method by which the Constitution can be
amended.
CHAPTER III.
1. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended.
2. Each revision shall take place by the ordinary method of
Federal legislation.
3. If one branch of the Federal Assembly passes a resolution
for amendment of the Federal Constitution and the other does
not approve; or upon the demand of fifty thousand qualified
voters, in either case, the question whether the Constitution
ought to be amended must be submitted to a vote of the Swiss
people, voting yes or no. If a majority of the citizens voting
pronounce in the affirmative, there shall be a new election
of both branches of the Federal Assembly for the purpose of
preparing amendments.
4. The amended Constitution shall go into effect whenever
it shall receive a majority of all the votes cast, and the
approval of a majority of the Cantons. In determining the
majority of the Cantons, the vote of a half-Canton shall be
counted as half a vote. The result of the popular vote in each
Canton shall be taken as determining the vote of the Canton.[24]
The Constitution closes with five articles, styled _Temporary
Provisions_:
1. The proceeds of the posts and customs shall be divided
upon the existing basis until such time as the Confederation
shall take upon itself the military expenses up to this time
borne by the Cantons. The loss which may be occasioned to the
finances of any Canton by the sum of the charges which result
from certain articles of the Constitution shall fall upon such
Canton only gradually.
2. The provisions of the Federal laws and of the Cantonal
concordats, constitutions or Cantonal laws which are contrary
to this Constitution cease to have effect by the adoption of
the Constitution, or when the Federal laws passed in pursuance
thereof, shall be published.
3. The new provisions in regard to the powers of the Federal
Tribunal shall not take effect until the passage of the Federal
laws relating to it.
4. The Cantons shall be allowed a period of five years within
which to introduce the system of free instruction in primary
public education.
5. Those persons who practise a liberal profession, and who
before the publication of the Federal law provided for by the
Constitution have obtained a certificate of competence from a
Canton or a joint authority representing several Cantons, may
pursue that profession throughout the Confederation.
There have been three amendments to the Constitution from the date of
its adoption in 1874 to 1889 inclusive:
1. In 1879, Article lxv. of the Constitution abolishing capital
punishment was repealed, and in lieu thereof the following
substituted: “No death penalty shall be pronounced for a
political crime.”[25]
2. In 1885, Article xxxii. of the Constitution was modified
so that drinking-places and the retail trade in spirituous
liquors should be excepted from the guarantee of freedom of
trade and of industry; but the Cantons might by legislation
subject the keeping of drinking-places and the retail trade
in spirituous liquors to such restrictions as are required
for the public welfare. And Article xxxii. _bis_ was added
authorizing the Confederation by legislation to regulate the
manufacture and sale of alcohol. In this legislation those
products which are intended for exportation, or which have
been subjected to a process excluding them from use as a
beverage, shall be subjected to no tax. Distillation of wine,
fruit, and the products of gentian roots, juniper berries, and
similar products are not subject to Federal legislation as to
manufacture or tax. After the cessation of the import duties
on spirituous liquors, as provided for, the trade in liquors
not distilled shall not be subjected by the Cantons to any
special taxes, or to other limitations than those necessary
for protection against adulterated or noxious beverages.
Nevertheless the powers of the Cantons defined in the
Constitution are retained over the keeping of drinking-places,
and the sale at retail of quantities less than two _litres_.
The net proceeds resulting from taxation on the sale of alcohol
shall belong to the Cantons in which the tax is levied. The net
proceeds to the Confederation from the internal manufacture of
alcohol, and the corresponding addition to the duty on imported
alcohol, shall be divided among all the Cantons in proportion
to population. Out of the receipts therefrom the Cantons must
expend not less than one-tenth in combating drunkenness in its
causes and effects. The Confederation shall provide by law
that for such Cantons or Communes as may suffer financial loss
through the effect of this amendment, such loss shall not come
upon them immediately in its full extent, but gradually up to
the year of 1895.[26]
3. In 1887, Article lxiv. of the Constitution was so amended
as to give the Confederation the power to make laws, “On
the protection of new patterns and forms, and of inventions
which are represented in models and are capable of industrial
application.”
All amendments to the Swiss Constitution are incorporated in their
logical place in the text immediately upon their adoption.
Much legislation called for by the mandatory provisions of the
Constitution, and suggested by the discretionary powers vested in
the Confederation, has passed into Federal statutory enactments. A
few may be mentioned. An elaborate law as to military service, tax
for exemption therefrom, and pensions; statutes regulating labor
in factories, containing a wide range of provisions for the health
and safety of employés; the practice of the professions of medicine
and dentistry; the construction and management of railroads; the
protection of literary and artistic property and patents; hunting
and fishing; the control of forests, dikes, and water-courses in the
mountainous regions; the election of members of the Federal Assembly
and organization of the Federal Tribunal; the method of taking the
_Referendum_; rights of citizenship and expatriation; banking and
bankruptcy; emigration and immigration. There are very comprehensive
laws also as to “civil capacity and obligations” and “marriage and
divorce.” The Federal law on “civil capacity and obligation” comprises
more than nine hundred articles, and deals with every imaginable kind
of contract except that relating to the acquisition and transfer of the
ownership of land; this forming part of the independent legislation
of the several Cantons. The law of “marriage and divorce” includes
registration of births and deaths, and presents a law which is a
carefully-prepared, scientific whole. The legal age of marriage;
degrees of consanguineous or other relationship; consent of parents;
rules for notice of intention; provision for verifying the facts
alleged; certification both of the fact and means of the dissolution of
a previous marriage, whether by death or divorce; strict requirements
for publication of the banns; restrictions as to locality within which
the marriage must occur; civil marriage made obligatory; and details of
the conditions under which marriages may be declared void and divorces
granted; these constitute some of the main features of the law.
The Constitution, with the evolution through Federal laws made
necessary by it, contains much detail, showing the mind of the
German race therein. It is not confined to an enunciation of general
principles, but determines specifically and at length, with some
confusion of repetition and at times distressing prolixity, many
things which, under a general provision, might have been clearly
interpreted to belong, as the case might be, to either the Federal
or Cantonal authority. It contains a large number of articles which
have no reference to the distribution or exercise of sovereign power,
but which embody general maxims of policy or special provisions as to
matters of detail, to which the Swiss attach great importance, and
which therefore they do not wish to be easily alterable. It goes far
beyond that of the United States in inscribing among constitutional
articles either principles or petty rules which are supposed to have
a claim of legal sanctity. It gives to the Federal authorities power
and supervision over a variety of special interests; a system that may
work well in a small country, but not in one so large as the United
States, with such diversified and local aspects. For these reasons the
text of the Swiss Constitution is not so brief,[27] nor its language so
terse, as that of the United States, which a famous English statesman
has called, “The most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time
by the brain and purpose of man.” The Swiss Constitution leaves little
room for contention in the construction of its phraseology, meaning
the same thing to-day, to-morrow, and forever. Its written provisions,
stipulations, and guarantees leave little room for the exercise of
“doubtful powers.” With such a mass of detail, the Confederation is not
competent to act directly; the execution of much is left to the Cantons
acting under the supervision of the Federal authorities, which only
interfere where the former neglect or refuse to fulfil their obligation.
The repeated and remarkable stipulations of the Constitution, reaching
almost every conceivable exercise of religious action and freedom,
present one of its most marked characteristics and radical departures
from that of the United States. The latter contains only two allusions
to the subject. The first in Article VI.: “No religious test shall ever
be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the
United States.” The second in the first amendment: “Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof.” Previous to the Swiss Constitution of
1874 there was no mention of individual religious liberty. That of
1848 guaranteed the free exercise of divine worship to the recognized
confessions, the Roman Catholic and the Reformed (_i.e._, the Church
Reformed by Zwingli and Calvin), but forbade the order of Jesuits. It
is manifest that the framers of the Constitution of 1874 were resolved
to effectually suppress the further exercise of the ecclesiastical
narrowness and sectarian antagonism which, as late as the Sonderbund
War of 1847, disturbed the peace and threatened the stability of the
Confederation. The extreme rigor with which these provisions of the
Constitution are enforced, and the latitude of action given under them
to Cantonal authority, do appear at times to be strained to an extent
deaf to both humanity and common sense. In 1888, “Captain Stirling,” of
the Salvation Army, a subject of Great Britain, was sentenced in the
Canton of Vaud to one hundred days’ imprisonment in Chillon Castle for
attempting to proselyte some children. The appeal made in her behalf to
the Federal Council was refused, and she was compelled to complete the
term of her sentence. Surely no danger was threatened that might not
have been averted by her removal to the frontier, or the offence atoned
for by a slight fine. The case presented an appeal to that unknown
quantity, the Swiss sense of the ridiculous. The sanctity of the law is
all very well; but when the law is one against persons who sing hymns
to children in the street, and its terrors are those of Bonnivard’s
prison, the plot of the drama seems hardly equal to the majesty of the
scene. To put a young lady, for so trivial an offence, under triple
bolts and bars for months is a piling up of the agony which indicates a
singular weakness of dramatic resource. Perhaps the military style of
the movements in these days of alarming concentrations on Continental
frontiers may have invested the “colonels” and “captains” in the
Salvationist train, even of the gentler sex, with undue importance
and alarm. It is difficult to reconcile Federal and Cantonal action
in Switzerland in this and other instances with the spirit of the
inviolability of freedom of faith and conscience guaranteed by the
Constitution. Religious liberty encounters no little restriction and
abridgment in several of the Cantons. Each Canton has still its own
established Church, supported and ruled by the civil magistrate. In
recent times free churches have been founded in Geneva, Neuchâtel,
and Vaud, and are showing a high degree of spiritual vitality and
liberality. It would be better if it could work out an entire
dissolution of the connection between Church and State throughout the
Confederation, and religion be allowed to take its natural course.
The Constitution of Switzerland is a conscious and sagacious
reproduction of the Constitution of the United States, with noteworthy
variations called for by the different conditions of the two
commonwealths. The Government of the United States is one of limited
and enumerated powers; “the powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved
to the States respectively, or to the people.” The restrictions under
the Swiss Constitution apply mostly to the Cantons. In Switzerland, as
in the United States, there is no single determinate sovereign body
or assembly, or any real sovereign other than the people themselves.
In the Swiss Confederation the popular will does everything; the
legislative power being directly exercised by the body of the people
by way of _Referendums_. In the Republic of France the tendency is
to centralize the direction of public affairs almost entirely in
the Chamber of Deputies. In the United States it is claimed, with
some color of truth, that the initiative and legislation are being
gradually taken away from Congress by a very occult, but authoritative,
government of committees.
The separation of persons and functions is most complete in the
United States; the Constitution enforcing a distribution of powers,
and directly or indirectly the powers of every authority existing
under it are defined, limited, and carefully regulated. In the
Swiss Constitution these respective powers are not at all clearly
distinguished; in fact, they seem to have been purposely left
indeterminate. There are none of the elaborate checks and interlocking
vetoes found in the United States. It is true the Swiss have the
three organs,--a Federal Legislature, a Federal Executive, and a
Federal Court; but they fail in the strict separation of each of these
departments from and its independence of the other. Said John Adams,
“Here is a complication and refinement of balances, which for anything
I recollect, is an invention of our own and peculiar to us.”
There is also an entire absence from the Swiss Constitution of any
provisions touching those personal rights and ancient muniments of
liberty designated as the “Bill of Rights;” such as are contained in
the first ten amendments of the Constitution of the United States;
those fundamental principles that guarantee to the individual a sphere
of liberty upon which the government may not encroach; a branch of
constitutional law which it has been the peculiar province of American
political science to develop. This omission from the Swiss Constitution
may have been for the same reason that it occurred in the original
Constitution of the United States; that these rights were sufficiently
implied and understood in any system of free government. These cardinal
rights are claimed by the Swiss to be expressly provided for in the
Cantonal constitutions. Again, it is held that all these inherent and
indefeasible rights are amply secured by the article of the Federal
Constitution requiring the organic law of the Cantons to “insure the
exercise of political rights after republican forms.”
Hamilton met the objection to the Constitution of the United States
containing no “Bill of Rights,” in the “Federalist” (No. 84), by
saying, “Bills of rights are, in their origin, stipulations between
kings and their subjects, abridgments of prerogative in favor of
privilege, reservation of rights not surrendered to the prince. It is
evident, therefore, that, according to their primitive signification,
they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the
power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives
and servants. Here in strictness the people surrender nothing; and as
they retain everything they have no need of particular reservations.”
But Jefferson expressed the prevalent opinion when he wrote, “The
executive in our governments is not the sole, it is scarcely the
principal, object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislatures is
the most formidable dread at present, and will be for many years.”
These restraints upon legislative power have proven most fortunate ones
in the United States; for the provision, “No person shall be deprived
of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” together
with those provisions which forbid the taking of private property
for public use without just compensation, and the enactment of laws
impairing the obligation of contracts, lies at the foundation of all
constitutional protection of private rights in the citizen. Thus a
body of constitutional law has been formed which is not yet completely
crystallized, but is being daily shaped by the decisions of the courts.
In annexing the “Bill of Rights,” the founders of the government may
not have had a correct idea as to what would be the full effect of its
provisions, but the object they had in view was perfectly clear. They
believed that wherever power was placed, it was liable to be abused.
They intended to restrain the impulse of popular majorities, and more
especially to prevent the legislature from becoming despotic and
tyrannous. But the number of rights which can be effectually protected
by the Constitution is very limited; and the legislature must always
retain sufficient power to disturb seriously all social relations,
if it is determined to make use for this purpose of the means at its
command. The utmost that a constitution can be expected to do is to
protect directly a small number of vested rights, and to discourage and
check indirectly the growth of a demand for radical measures.
The power of the general government in Switzerland, as that of the
United States, extends not merely to those affairs which are turned
over to it by the exact words of the Constitution itself, but also
to the relations whose control by the central government appears as
a necessity for its performance of the duties devolving upon it. In
a comparison of the Swiss Federal polity with that of the United
States, it must be borne in mind that the infinite variety in the
local and otherwise peculiar circumstances of different nations,
produces wide discrepancies between governments bearing a common
appellation. There exists, indeed, but little community of opinion
or uniformity of practice beyond the circumscribed limits of those
maxims in politics which are deducible by direct inference from moral
truths. The great mass of those rules and principles which have a more
immediate influence on practice, and give to government its tone and
peculiar organization, are of a description purely local; deriving
their force from local interests, and therefore, however just, are only
applicable in their full extent to the particular case. Hence it is
that constitutions, nominally and externally the same, have little or
no interior resemblance, and in many instances only so far correspond
as to justify us in referring them to one common standard. The United
States and Switzerland have republican states joined in a republican
union, with a division of powers between states and union approximately
the same; and they present the most completely developed types of
that federalism “which desires union and does not desire unity;” the
same problem upon which all civilized peoples have been working ever
since civilization began,--how to insure peaceful concerted action
throughout the whole, without infringing upon local and individual
freedom in the parts; to reconcile the welfare and security of the
whole with the local claims and diversified institutions of the
component parts. The Swiss Constitution blends these ends harmoniously
in a government not too centralized to act in the interest of the
localities; but a little too closely wedded to routine to adapt itself
to changing conditions. The federative principle implies the existence
of opposing tendencies, active within a superior agency, which is
capable of regulating their mutual aggression, and of securing their
harmony. Over the two historical forces, _Nationalism_ and _Localism_,
the federative principle asserts its supremacy, and gives them
simultaneous, correlated, and adequate expression. Under confederation,
both _Nationalism_ and _Localism_ by different processes increase
each its original determinative strength; and the danger arises that
either alone might force a union of but partial means and incapable of
the highest end. The federative principle by its own creative energy
chooses the time and method of its complete self-assertion, and brings
its factors to the work of “forming the more perfect union.” Thus
_Nationalism_ and _Localism_, though their methods are in constant
warfare, their aim is one,--the good of the individual, who in his dual
relation is an epitome of the controlling principle. A complete harmony
of the two elements of the federative principle can never be realized;
but the tendency is ever towards harmony, thus placing before our hopes
an ideal state. In constructing his ideal republic, Plato rejects
discordant powers and forces which would bring false harmony, and
leaves but two essential elements: “These two harmonies I ask you to
leave,--the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain
of courage and the strain of temperance.” In a republic, national will
and local self-rule--the one federative principle--constitute true
harmony.[28]
The question of government is a question of the application of means to
an end; that end being, in general terms, the happiness and prosperity
of the people. Government considered as comprehending those laws and
principles which regulate the conduct of the individual in his relative
capacity to the state, being continually present to his mind, must
invariably influence his habits of thinking and acting. The genius of
the organic law, the Constitution, is transfused into the national
mind, and in the character of the citizens we recognize the congenial
spirit of the laws.
The history of the Swiss Constitution is the history of a confederation
of free Cantons, uniting city and rural communities in a common
league; providing at once for separate autonomies, and for confederate
union and government; insuring mutual protection and a national
policy. It represents a wise and politic union; a union constituting
an honorable European state in the full enjoyment of its ancient
franchises; a union of strength and national life and enduring liberty.
Times and circumstances taught their own lesson; civil and religious
establishments were imperfectly produced, roughly moulded, and slowly
improved, but they were adequate to dispense the blessings of a
free government to a brave and artless people, in a state of great
comparative independence and honor, security and happiness.
A constitution is valuable in proportion as it is suited to the
circumstances, desires, and aspirations of the people, and as it
contains within itself the elements of stability and security
against disorder and revolution. Measured by this standard, the
Swiss Constitution is an excellent adaptation to the conditions of
a most varied and composite nationality. With a strong paternal
tendency, the Constitution takes cognizance of the citizen at his
birth by registration, and guarding him through life with legislative
scrutiny, vigilant and minute, it insures him a “decent burial.” Yet
this searching, far-reaching, central authority is administered in
a beneficent and patriotic spirit, with a jealous regard for all the
highest natural rights of man.
Federalism tends to conservatism; it is almost certain to impress on
the minds of citizens the idea that any provision included in the
organic law is immutable and, so to speak, sacred. History shows that
those states have been most stable and prosperous which, in casting
off an old allegiance or in ordering their political constitutions
afresh, made no more changes than were absolutely needful, and did not
violently snap the tie between the old and the new state of things;
that the best form of government will commonly be that which the events
of its history have given it,--a government which has arisen out of
the events and necessities of the country. Switzerland and the United
States are examples of commonwealths whose success has been largely
owing to the comparatively small amount of change which accompanied
their acquisition of independence. Each has that form of government
which the events of its history have made natural for it. In each the
existing political system is founded on the practical needs of the time
and place. Referring to the preamble of the _Declaration of Rights_,
wherein the prayer is made, “That it may be declared and enacted that
all and singular the rights and liberties asserted and declared, are
the true ancient and indubitable rights and liberties of the people
of this kingdom,” Burke says, “By adhering in this manner to our
forefathers, we are guided, not by the superstition of antiquarians,
but the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance
we have given to our frame of policy the image of a relation in blood,
binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic
ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family
affections; keeping inseparable, and cherishing with the warmth of
all their combined and mutually reflected charities, our state, our
hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.” Switzerland and the United
States in their organic law and its application, while presenting many
and essential differences, constitute the only two genuine and thorough
republics in existence; and each system better suits the position
of the nation which has adopted it. Switzerland, though beyond all
others a regenerate nation, was still an old nation; above all things
a system was needed which should preserve everything and jeopardize
nothing. She seized on a rare and happy moment, when all the despots
of Europe had enough to do at home, to reform her constitution without
foreign intermeddling; and she formed a system which exactly suits
the position of a small, free, conservative power, ready as ever to
defend its own, but neither capable nor desirous of aggrandizement at
the expense of others. The Swiss have a way of keeping their current
history to themselves; or the outside world has a way of not asking
for it, which is much the same thing. They are unique among civilized
people for the extreme modesty of their claim upon the attention of
mankind. This might imply the highest qualities or the lowest; but no
one who knows anything of the little republic will doubt to which of
them it is to be assigned. She lives, moves, and works without fuss or
friction; and is constantly solving in her own way some of the hardest
problems of politics. She has found out how to maintain perfect peace
between diverse races and conflicting creeds; to adjust and harmonize
discordant views and principles; and preserve to the several elements
of the confederacy a due proportion of constitutional authority. This
difficult task has been accomplished, not indeed without frictions,
not without armed collisions, and not until after many trials and
experiments; but it has been done, and on the whole successfully.
Nothing is so easy as to find fault in every form of government, and
nothing so hard as to show a perfect one reduced to practice. Most of
the plans of government seem to have been formed like houses built
at several times; for as the old parts of them always deface the new
and render them irregular, so upon the establishment of any new frame
something of the old is still preserved and enters into the frame of
the new, which is not of a piece with it, and consequently spoils its
symmetry. No one can look closely into the Constitution of Switzerland
and fail to discover that, in its provisions, the principles of a
democratic confederation find the elements of sound and vigorous health.
Enlightened freedom, governed and secured by law, upholds the fabric
of the Constitution; salubrious streams issuing from education and
patriotism, consecrated by religion, mingle with each other, and
unite in diffusing fertility through every channel of the state. The
everlasting league still lives on, to shame the novel and momentary
devices of the kingdoms and commonwealths which rise and fall around
it.[29]
CHAPTER III.
THE FEDERAL ASSEMBLY.
Bundesversammlung; Assemblée fédérale.
“A legislative, and an executive, and a judicial power comprehend the
whole of what is meant by government.”[30] We find in Switzerland this
general division of powers, with many interesting and instructive
peculiarities, which give the Swiss federalism an individual character.
The need for two chambers in a federal state has become an axiom of
political science. Where there is a twofold sovereignty, that of the
whole nation, and that of the states or Cantons, which are joined
together to form it, each sovereignty must be represented in the
legislature. With the two chambers, one representing the people as
a whole, the other the integral parts as constituent members of the
whole, each element is a check upon the other by the coexistence of
equal authority. By the Constitution of 1874, “With reservation of
the rights of the people and of the Cantons the supreme authority of
the Swiss Confederation is exercised by the Federal Assembly, which
consists of two sections or councils, to wit:
“1. The National Council (_Nationalrath_; _Conseil National_).
2. The Council of States (_Ständerath_; _Conseil des États_).”
Relating to the National Council, the Constitution has eight articles,
viz.:
1. The National Council is composed of representatives of the Swiss
people, chosen in the ratio of one member for each twenty thousand
persons of the total population. Fractions of upward of ten thousand
persons are reckoned as twenty thousand. Every Canton, and in the
divided Cantons every half-Canton, chooses at least one representative.
2. The elections for the National Council are direct. They are held in
federal electoral districts, which in no case shall be formed out of
parts of different Cantons.
3. Every male Swiss who has completed twenty years of age, and who
in addition is not excluded from the rights of active citizenship
by the legislation of the Canton in which he is domiciled, has the
right to take part in elections and popular votes. Nevertheless, the
Confederation by law may establish uniform regulations for the exercise
of such right.
4. Every lay Swiss citizen who has the right to vote is eligible as
member of the National Council.
5. The National Council is elected for three years, and entirely
renewed at each general election.
6. Members of the Council of States, or of the Federal Council, or
officials appointed by the latter, shall not at the same time be
members of the National Council.
7. The National Council chooses from among its members, for each
regular or extraordinary session, a President and a Vice-President. A
member who has held the office of President during the regular session
is not eligible either for President or Vice-President of the next
regular session. The same member may not be Vice-President for two
consecutive regular sessions. The President shall have the casting vote
in case of a tie; in elections, he votes in the same manner as any
other member.
8. The members of the National Council receive a compensation from the
federal treasury.
The qualification of the elector, as above described, is that of being
in the enjoyment of the “active right of citizenship,”--_i.e._, not
excluded from the rights of a voter by the legislation of his Canton.
This also applies to those who have been deprived of their civic rights
by virtue of the penal law, and in consequence of a judicial sentence;
and in some Cantons embraces insolvents and paupers. The limitation
of eligibility to “lay” Swiss citizens does not necessarily exclude
ecclesiastics, as illustrated in a recent case of a Bernese clergyman,
who, being chosen a member of the National Council, simply laid aside
temporarily, by resignation, his clerical robes; should he fail any
time of re-election he may return to the pulpit. Naturalized citizens
are not eligible until five years after they have become citizens. The
provision forbidding a member to hold the office of President for two
consecutive ordinary sessions makes it possible, during the life of
a National Council, for one-fourth of the Cantons (even counting the
half-Cantons) to be honored with this officer; and certainly gives but
little opportunity for the building up of a one-man power, just this
side of absolute. The power of the presiding officer of the National
Council is too insignificant to justify any parallel with that of the
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. A federal law
regulates in a uniform manner, and by ballot, the election for members
of the National Council; the execution of the law is entirely under
the direction of the Canton, and in immaterial details there is a
great diversity. There are registers in each Commune, in which every
citizen having a vote must be inscribed. These registers are open two
weeks before the day of the election, and close three days previous
to it. In some Cantons, a card from the Commune where the voter is
registered is left at his house; in others, he must present himself
at the proper office and obtain his card. The election takes place on
the last Sunday in October triennially. The polls generally are in the
churches, and no one is permitted to enter except upon the presentation
of the requisite proof as to his right to vote. Candidates must be
elected by an absolute majority of the votes cast. Should there be a
failure of election, a second ballot under the same conditions is had
the following Sunday. If a third ballot becomes necessary, the election
is again repeated the next Sunday, when the _scrutin de liste_ is
restricted to a number not exceeding three times the number of members
to be chosen; and these must be taken in order from those receiving the
largest vote in the previous _tours de scrutin_. In this final trial
the candidate or candidates, as the case may be, having a plurality
are elected. The members are elected on a general ticket,--that is,
“at large” for the district, not for the Canton. These districts are
called _arrondissements_, and the method of voting is known as _scrutin
d’arrondissement_.
The National Council at present consists of one hundred and forty-five
members, apportioned among forty-nine electoral districts. The
number returned from these districts varies from one to five members
each. The Cantons of Uri and Zug, and the half-Cantons of Obwald,
Nidwald, and Inner-Rhoden compose only one district each. Bern has six
districts and twenty-seven members; Zurich, four districts and sixteen
members. Every elector is entitled to vote for as many members as his
district is entitled to, but not cumulatively. A federal census for
the apportionment of representation is taken every ten years. Members
receive a compensation of twenty francs per day (about $3⁸⁶⁄₁₀₀) when
the National Council is in session,[31] and a travelling allowance of
twenty centimes per kilometre (a fraction under .03 per mile). A member
loses his _per diem_ if he does not answer the roll-call at the opening
of the day’s session, unless he should appear later and give to the
secretary a sufficient excuse for his dilatoriness. If subsequently,
during that day’s session, there is a vote by roll-call (_appel
nominal_), or if there is a count of the House to ascertain the
presence of a quorum, the compensation of the members whose absence is
disclosed is forfeited for that day. This law is not a “dead letter,”
but is strictly enforced, and with a frugal-minded people tends to keep
the members in their seats.
The Council of States (_Ständerath_; _Conseil des États_).
The space devoted to the Council of States in the Constitution is
one-half of that given to the National Council, and is comprised within
four articles:
1. The Council of States consists of forty-four representatives of the
Cantons. Each Canton elects two representatives, and in the divided
Cantons, each half-Canton elects one.
2. No member of the National Council or of the Federal Council may be
at the same time a member of the Council of States.
3. The Council of States elects from among its members a President and
Vice-President for each regular and extraordinary session. From among
the representatives of that Canton from which a President has been
elected for a regular session, neither the President nor Vice-President
can be taken for the next following regular session. Representatives of
the same Canton cannot occupy the position of Vice-President during two
consecutive regular sessions. When the votes are equally divided, the
President has a casting vote; in elections, he votes in the same manner
as the other members.
4. Members of the Council of States receive compensation from their
respective Cantons.
The constitution of the two Houses is manifestly borrowed from the
model of the United States; but it is apparent that the Council of
States does not so closely correspond with the Senate of the United
States as the National Council does to the House of Representatives. It
has no such clearly-defined character as the Senate in distinctively
representing the federal feature of the union between the Cantons.
For the mode in which its members shall be elected, the qualifications
which they shall possess, the length of time which they shall serve,
the salary which they shall receive, and the relations they shall bear
to those whom they represent, in fact, every element of their character
as representatives is left to the Canton, and a great variety of
provisions prevail.[32] The small Cantons in which the people assemble
annually (_Landsgemeinde_) have their members elected by this assembly,
by the raising up of hands for such or such a candidate. In other
Cantons, including Zurich, Thurgau, and Basel-rural, the whole Canton
forms but one district for the nomination of the members; the votes
are deposited in the ballot-box of the Commune, and are collected and
counted by a cantonal board. In the Cantons having the representative
system, such as Geneva, Freiburg, Ticino, and Bern, they are chosen
by the cantonal legislative body. The terms of the members vary from
one to three years; twelve Cantons elect for one year, twelve for
three years, with Valais holding to the mean of two years. Their
compensation, paid by the Canton, is the same as that received by the
members of the National Council, with the exception of Geneva, where
it is double the amount, or forty francs. When serving on committees
during recess, the members of the Council of States are paid by the
Confederation. The Vice-Chancellor serves as Secretary of the Council
of States.
The Council of States has no special executive powers apart from the
National Council like the United States Senate; which in some respect
give that body a further strength and dignity of its own. The Swiss
Senate rests solely on its general position as one necessary element of
the federal system. The two branches of the Assembly are co-ordinate,
standing in all respects on an equal footing. The work of each
session, so far as known at its opening, is divided between the two
Houses by a conference of their Presidents. The right of initiative
belongs to each House, and to each member of the Assembly. There may be
a shade of superior consequence and dignity attaching to the National
Council. It is designated first in order by the Constitution, it has a
fixed term of service, and when the two Houses are in joint session,
the President of the National Council takes the chair. In the National
Council are to be found the more ambitious and active men in political
life, for the members of the Federal Council are sure to be chosen
from this body. The members of both Houses equally enjoy the usual
privileges and immunities of members of representative bodies. The
two Houses act separately in all strictly legislative matters; coming
together for deliberation in common only for the exercise of certain
electoral and judicial functions.
The powers of the Federal Assembly are thus set forth in the
Constitution
1. The National Council and the Council of States have jurisdiction
over all subjects which the present constitution places within the
competence of the Confederation, and which are not assigned to other
federal authorities.
2. The subjects which fall within the competence of the two Councils
are particularly the following:
Laws pertaining to the organization and election of federal authorities.
Laws and ordinances on subjects intrusted by the Federal Constitution
to the Confederation.