The legend of Tell has a companion piece doubtless as mythical to the

sceptical, being of the same historic period, and occurring at the

battle of Sempach. This was one of the great battles which terminated

the long and obstinate struggle begun at Rütli, and, like all other

famous achievements, is remembered in connection with a special example

of personal self-sacrifice; still it passes historical scrutiny

unchallenged, though no better authenticated, and in many respects

more contentious than the heroism of Tell. On the 9th of August, 1386,

Duke Leopold was marching against Zurich to fight the last battle

which Austria presumed to try against the Forest Cantons. He had the

flower of the Austrian nobility, 4000 knights and barons, each with his

own vassals, forming an army of veterans in columns 20,000 strong. A

handful of brave Swiss, numbering 1400 stout and fearless mountaineers,

went out on foot to meet them; they came up with the enemy at Sempach.

The mail-clad warriors, dismounting from their steeds, presented a

solid and impregnable barrier of lances; the Swiss were rudely armed

with halberds and _morgensterne_.[105] According to their ancient

custom, they knelt in silent prayer; arising, they placed themselves

in column, presenting an angle, and charged. Again and again they

dashed against these protruding lances that stood as firm as a wall

of stone. Out of their little number sixty had died in vain; hearts

seemed ready to fail; the Austrians were beginning to open in order to

surround them. At this crisis Arnold Winkelried, “a trusty man amongst

the confederates,” dropped his weapon, and, rushing forward, cried out,

“I will open a way to freedom; protect my wife and children!”[106]

Being of great size and strength, he clutched as many of the enemy’s

lances as his arms could embrace, gathered their points and buried them

in his bosom, and as he fell drew his enemies with him. Before the

Austrians could extract them his companions took advantage of the gap,

rushed over his expiring body into the ranks of the enemy; a breach

being made in the wall of mailed warriors, what seemed an inevitable

defeat was turned into glorious victory. “Heed not the corpse,” says

Byron’s Saul to his warriors and chiefs, admonishing them as to what

they are to do should the lance and the sword strike them down in the

front. Sempach is a story of thrilling heroism, and in little over half

a century was followed by the battle of St. Jacob in 1444, when 1600

Swiss met a predatory invasion of the French, a corps of 8000 horse and

a large detachment of infantry, in all numbering over 20,000, called

Armagnacs, the disbanded mercenaries of the English war, led by the

Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI. Though they might have retreated without

loss, the Swiss determined rather to perish on the spot, and fought

with heroic fury, tearing the enemy’s arrows from their wounds to send

them back dripping with blood. Their valor and terrible sacrifice never

were surpassed. The Dauphin lost 6000 men; and of the 1600 Swiss,

only ten lived to tell the tale, and they were immediately proscribed

throughout Switzerland for having deserted their comrades. A monument

is erected near the Birs, on the battle-field, consisting of a figure

of Helvetia at the top with four dying soldiers on the pedestal, with

the inscription: “Our souls to God, our bodies to the enemy.” At

Morgarten, in 1315, 1300 Swiss routed Leopold’s army of over 20,000,

killing 9000, when

“There were songs and festal fires

On the soaring Alps that night,

When children sprung to greet their sires

From the wild Morgarten fight.”

Then there is the battle fought near Wessen, in the Canton of Glarus,

where 350 Swiss attacked 8000 Austrians and gained the field. Eleven

pillars are erected on the field of battle to mark the places where

the Swiss rallied, for history says they were repulsed ten times,

but, rallying the eleventh, broke the enemies’ line and put them to

flight with great slaughter. This victory is celebrated every year;

the people, in procession, fall upon their knees at each pillar, sing

a _Kyrie_ and thank God for so signal a victory. When they come to the

last pillar, one of their orators makes a eulogy of the three hundred

and fifty, and, when he has finished, reads over a list of their

names,--just as the Spartans caused the names of their three hundred to

be cut in brass, to transmit their memories to posterity. There are,

in addition, such duels of individual valor recorded as men fighting

when mortally wounded, like Fontana, of Grisons, who cried out, “Do not

stop for my fall, it is but one man the less;” or like John Walla, of

Glarus, who met alone and put to flight thirty horsemen. These events,

and many others well authenticated and unhesitatingly accepted in Swiss

history, sound infinitely more of knight-errantry than the story of

Tell.

Macaulay holds that intense patriotism and high courage are peculiar

to people congregated in small spaces. Acts of unflinching bravery

and of a noble self-immolation in the cause of conscience, duty,

and freedom have been conspicuous in Swiss history. As habits of

courage are formed by continual exposure to danger, the hazardous

state, the perils and hardships which they hourly encountered, braced

their nerves to enterprises of hardihood and daring. Turbulent times

created a necessity for great sacrifices and daring exploits, and on

the same principle, that the supply of a commodity in transactions of

commercial life is generally found to be commensurate with the demand,

the frequent call for heroic achievements raised up the patriots who

were to perform them. There may be something in the deeply religious

character of the Swiss favorable to this virtue. Cicero maintained that

a belief in the immortality of the soul and a future state of rewards

and punishments was indispensable to the steady sacrifice of private

interests and passions to the public good. Some, perhaps, in their

brighter visions of fancy, would aspire to those blessed abodes amidst

the laurel groves of Paradise, which the poet of Mantua has assigned to

the self-devoted victims of patriotic enthusiasm:

“Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi.”[107]

The renown, likewise, of the heroes of ancient stories is indebted for

no inconsiderable portion of its brightness to their mode of warfare,

which, by rendering personal courage more effective, rendered it at

the same time the object of higher estimation. Prodigies of valor, by

which the fate of a kingdom is decided, are now rarely performed, and

victory inclines much more to the side of skill than either of physical

strength or individual prowess.

With the Swiss no fable hangs about the deeds of William Tell and

Arnold Winkelried or the battles of Morgarten, Sempach, and St. Jacob.

They are the common glory of the people, their most cherished heritage;

but it is in William Tell their pride centres. His very name to this

day stirs the Swiss heart with the deepest emotions of pride and

patriotism.

All the mementoes connected with his history are cherished with the

fondest affection and veneration. Tell’s chapel is the Mecca of all

Switzerland. The admiration for his character is an unbounded national

passion. Every emotion of patriotism, national gratitude, and ardent

love of liberty seems to find its readiest mode of utterance in

passionate expressions regarding this heroic man. Ballads are sung to

his memory, and in every popular gathering one may hear the familiar

words from the old Swiss song,--

“William Tell, he scorned the hat,

To death condemned was he for that,

Unless an apple, on the spot,

From his own child’s head he shot.”

In canvas and marble his effigy adorns the national and cantonal

capitals and the public buildings generally. On mountain, rock, and

lake his history is carved indelibly.[108] “It cannot be otherwise,”

says the honest peasant; “it did so happen, and I believe it; not to

believe it would be treason to my country.” In 1760, a pamphlet, under

the title of “Fable Danoise,” was issued by a clergyman of Bern named

Freudenberger attacking the historical character of this legend. It so

aroused the patriotic indignation of the people that no one dared to

give it circulation, and the government of the Canton of Uri caused the

book to be publicly burned.

In the presence of so many memorials of the deeds of this hero,

sustained by evidences of an antecedent and general popular conviction,

and feeling that these things are entitled to have some weight, it is

difficult to feel any sympathy with the doubts which bookish students

have suggested as to the reality of Tell’s existence. No one can visit

the lake, the rock, the fountains, the chapel, read the story painted

on wall and tower, hear the local traditions in every man’s mouth,

witness the annual festivals, study the history of Switzerland, and

consider the character of its people, then think of Tell as a myth,

more than he would say that Switzerland and all its heroic people

have been a fable since Uri’s handful of patriots rid it of Gessler’s

despotism. No! The simple story bears a striking analogy to the

primitive and pastoral people who commemorate the name and actions of

this hero. They know that no character of the thirteenth and fourteenth

centuries is better attested in their history, and will religiously

regard him as one of the noblest men that ever lived, so long as the

Finsteraarhorn and Jungfrau present themselves in the vast firmament

as the ever-enduring symbols of liberty. “The artlessness of Tell’s

history resembles a poem; it is a pastoral song in which a single

drop of blood is mingled with the dew upon a leaf or a tuft of grass.

Providence seems thus to delight in providing for every free community,

as the founder of their independence, a fabulous or actual hero,

conformable to the local situation, manners, and character of each

particular race. To a rustic, pastoral people like the Swiss is given

for their liberator a noble peasant; to a proud, aspiring race, such as

the Americans, an honest soldier. Two distinct symbols, standing erect

by the cradles of the two modern liberties of the world, to personify

their opposite natures; on the one hand, Tell with his arrow and the

apple; on the other, Washington with his sword and the law.”[109]

The doubt thrown upon the existence of Tell came from an influence

that bears upon things of a graver import. They originated at the

time when religion was dead, and when rationalism, with an appearance

of erudition, was rife. Many critics formed theories of their own in

regard to Homer and the ancient writers and heroes in general. Book

after book was issued from the press filled with the most absurd

theories. Every student who came from a university had the ambition

to write a book. Each one thought himself a veritable Daniel come to

judgment; nearly every historical character was a being of imagination.

They did not stop with human characters, they laid hold upon the Word

of God. Moses became a myth in their hands; and Job was a mere story

in poetry, like the Arabian Nights; Ecclesiastes was the blating of

an Epicurean philosopher no longer young. Good, however, came out of

this evil. The best men were led to examine the basis on which the

truth stands, and to study more profoundly than ever the “faith once

delivered to the saints,” and the result was the overthrow of this

school of specious reasoning and crude theories. The details of Tell’s

story, at last, do not signify much; they form only the drapery of

the figure, which stands to this day one of the few heroes who have

been able so to forget themselves, and so to inspire other men with

self-forgetfulness, as to obtain with them a nation’s freedom. And thus

Tell lives, safely, in the people’s songs and in the faithful hearts of

his countrymen.

Ideals, the symbols of the truth which we conceive, of the beauty

which we imagine, and of the good which we long for, have as great an

influence in the world as _ideas_, if not even greater. High ideals

and loyalty to them are virtues which are requisite to the existence

and safety of a progressive society. We cannot afford to surrender the

least of our high and pure ideals to the iconoclasm that would declare

every grand historical character to be apocryphal; a spirit that revels

in the breaking of images simply for the pleasure of breaking, even if

chiselled by the hand of Praxiteles; a folly not content with robbing

us of Tell and his apple, but would deprive us of Newton’s apple, too,

and vainly talks of a cryptogram lurking in Shakespeare’s dramas,

which points to his mythical existence. We have too few immortal names

identified with their country’s glory. Let us not seek to inquire too

minutely into their title to fame, to see if it is embarrassed by vague

and contradictory traditions; but let us rather associate their names

with the greatness, the virtue, the durability of their race, and

invoke blessings on them down “to the last syllable of recorded time.”

In this day, so given to materialism, pitiful rivalries, and ignoble

ambitions, we want more hero-worship, a greater reverence of heroism, a

more just and delicate appreciation of individual worth, the traditions

of noble deeds, and the “passion of philanthropy;” and not to believe

that all men are much of a sameness, and the old days in which the

gods lived on earth are forever gone. There are certain great events

embalmed in tradition that it will not do to question, and which, if of

doubtful historical support, it is unwise to disturb, as they are so

many incentives to noble deeds, and should be cherished in our hearts

even as an inspiring fiction. It is easy for cynics to deride heroism,

and scoff at the superiority of ideal existence over the facts of life.

But it is not good to be confined to what the physical eye can see, and

refuse to use the eye of faith and imagination. Enthusiasm lives and

flourishes with imagination and idealism; and together they purify,

as well as ennoble, every nature they touch. They paint the world and

men as they should be; all that human heart can do; all of which human

nature, at its highest, is capable. The craving for the real is good

and healthy, but it ought by no means to be set in opposition to the

craving for the ideal, for

“A deeper import lurks in the legends told our infant years

Than lies upon the truth we live to learn.”

CHAPTER XIX.

BERN.

From the end of the thirteenth century Bern was the great,

influential, and growing town of Switzerland; rich, enterprising, and

self-asserting. For the sake of securing their friendship, it made

citizens of many of the nobility who lived far from the city walls, and

established guilds with many valuable privileges. Some of these guilds

still exist, and a membership is quite an expensive privilege, costing

from 8000 to 10,000 francs; besides the applicant must possess property

to the value of 15,000 francs. In early times Bern held a firm grasp

on the lands from Aargau to Lake Leman. Besides conquering them, it

largely bought out the neighboring territorial nobility. It was the

feudal idea, taking root and growing in mediæval times, that the right

of government was as property, and the possession of landed property

was looked on as carrying with it a kind of right of government. The

whole early history of Bern is the greatest example in modern times

of an inland city ruling over a great collection of subject towns and

districts. It was an aristocratic republic, having been founded as

a refuge for the inferior nobility from the oppression of powerful

counts. The rapid development of industry within its substantial

walls attracted also peasants, artificers, and tradesmen, who flocked

in from the neighborhood. The burghers secured many privileges, and

were eligible to the highest offices; but they generally concurred

in the election of members of the patrician family. These young

patricians were literally apprenticed to political life by the singular

institution of the _Ausserstand_, a copy of the real commonwealth, with

councils and magistrates of its own, and the _Schultheiss_, or chief

magistrate of the mimic republic, was commonly elected a member of the

Great Council of the real one.

The French Revolution submerged the aristocracy in a general Helvetian

republic, and, when the flood had passed, the ancient landmark could

only be partially restored. The Bernese, however, continued to

acknowledge the ascendency of these noble families, what few were left

to them, whose ancestors had been the founders of the city, and whose

courage, virtues, and patriotism had secured the confidence of the

people. It was not until 1847, under the influence of the Sonderbund

excitement, that the last vestige of class privilege was abolished, and

perfect equality of all citizens before the law established; political

rights granted to every male citizen over twenty years of age,

civil administration and justice organized after modern democratic

principles, guaranteeing the rights of man, and promising trial by jury.

Tradition has it that Bern was founded by Berchtold V., Duke of

Zähringen, in 1191. Being persistently opposed both by the Alpine

and the Burgundian nobles, who took up arms against him, he met and

defeated them twice in the field, and then began to look about for a

suitable site, at an equal distance from both parties, where he might

build a town larger and more important than any that yet existed.

Different derivations are given for the name of Bern; some etymologists

say it is a corruption of the Celtic name of Verona; but the only one

that satisfies the Bernese is that given by the old recorder Justinger,

who wrote at the end of the fourteenth century, “How the town was

called Bern:” There were many wild animals in the oak woods, and Duke

Berchtold determined that the town should be called after the first

that was caught there; so the first that was caught was a bear, and the

town received its name from _Bären_, the Swabian for bears; and the

Duke also gave the burghers a shield and armorial bearings, namely, a

black bear on a white field. A bronze statue of the Duke is erected in

the cathedral promenade, upon which is the inscription, _E bellua cæsa

sit urbi futuræ nomen_ (“from a monster slain, let there be a name to

the future city”). The Emperor Frederick II. declared Bern a free city

of the empire in 1218, and confirmed its privileges by a charter, which

is still preserved in the archives. Its first prominence was in 1339,

when in June of that year the Bernese, under Ulric von Erlach, were

completely victorious over the allied forces, and struck the death-blow

to the feudal nobility of western Helvetia. In 1405 the greater part

of the city was destroyed by fire, but was soon rebuilt on the same

site. In 1798 it was plundered by the French. Immediately after their

entrance into the city, the French soldiers made themselves masters

of its treasure, which, no doubt, was one of the motives and most

immediate cause of the invasion and attack. The exact amount taken was

never ascertained, but by the most moderate estimate made it reached

20,000,000 francs; everything of value that could be taken away became

the prey of the victors.

From the date of its accession to the Confederation, in 1351, Bern

has been one of the most conspicuous and influential of Swiss towns.

The history of the city is the history of the Canton, and in some

measure it is the history of the Confederation. From 1798 to 1815 the

Federal Diet met in turns at Zurich, Bern, Luzern, Freiburg, Solothurn,

and Basel. From 1815 to 1848 the three cities of Zurich, Bern, and

Luzern were the seats of the government, the Diet sitting biennially

in each place in turn. This system of having three capitals did not

work satisfactorily, and the necessity for the country possessing one

centre was generally seen. Zurich and Luzern surrendered their claims,

and Bern became the central and fixed capital of the Confederation in

1848, the Canton assuming the cost of erecting the necessary public

buildings. It is also the capital of the largest and most populous

Canton, which has a population of 539,305, out of a total for the

Confederation of 2,933,612, or nearly one-fifth. It is the most

important of the sisterhood by its territory, wealth, and population,

and may be called the Empire Canton of the Confederation. The city

itself contains a population of about 50,000, with a superficial

surface of an American village of 2500 people. No great city in

Switzerland overtops the rest and draws them into moving around it

by its mass and weight. Population and wealth are not concentrated

in “enormous and apoplectic heads upon a bloodless body,” as great

cities were designated by Mirabeau. The largest Swiss towns would be

fifth-rate towns in the United States. The Swiss villages are on the

declivities of the Alps; the towns either on advanced promontories

or on the borders of the lakes. They are all small, and contain

none of the monuments which mark the luxury of great nations. They

are municipalities rather than capitals, to whom the nature of the

country and the smallness of the population have denied the power of

increase. Many of these towns are located with a view to the natural

defence, furnished by the topography of the site, and were originally

walled places of refuge. They resemble those towns of prehistoric Italy

described by Virgil, as “perched on precipices of rocks, with rivers

gliding beneath their antique walls.” Bern occupies a bold promontory

of sandstone rock, seventeen hundred and ten feet above the sea, and

its position in early times entailed great strategical advantages.

It is nearly surrounded by the Aar, a bold, strong tributary of the

Rhine, which rises in the southeast mountains of Bern, and carries to

its mouth the waters of fourteen Cantons. A sudden bend of the stream

encloses the town on all sides but one. The magnificent slopes to this

rapid river are in some places covered with turf, and supported in

others by lofty terraces planted with trees.[110] It is not an easy

matter to account for the first impression you receive on entering

Bern; you certainly feel that you have got to an ancient and remarkable

place. Passing under any of its old gate-ways for the first time, one

feels as if he had strayed upon a stage conscientiously prepared for

the playing of a mediæval comedy or tragedy. No town in Switzerland has

been so preserved from the hands of the spoiler and the restorer; the

whole town is a sort of informal museum of archæology. A small portion

that has grown up around the Federal Palace, which was erected on the

outskirts of the old town, when it was made the permanent capital in

1848, is modern in appearance. That which constitutes the town proper

is composed of ancient houses of an early age, with curiously frescoed

and carved fronts, and many remnants of ancient architecture. The main

streets are broad and regular, the houses constructed of sandstone of

a grayish-blue color, found in the adjoining hills; in other streets,

the tall, thin houses are clustered together as if to use as little as

possible of the margin which nature and industry have drawn so closely

around them. These houses are six, seven, and eight stories high. Every

floor, with the exception of the first, which in all probability is

used for business purposes, accommodates a family, and, among the poor

classes, several families. It would be difficult to find a town where

every part of the house is so fully put to use and little waste or idle

room. It is doubtful if a dozen families in Bern each occupy an entire

house, and a very small number more than a flat of one floor. All the

houses, including the most ancient, are admirably constructed for this

multiform occupancy, and Swiss domestic life, as practised in Bern, is

a fine art of many centuries’ growth. The walls being very thick, the

front windows are made to serve the purpose of verandas. They have neat

iron railings encircling them, swung on hinges, and when thrown outward

are both a protection and a rest for inclining against. In all pleasant

weather these are the favorite places to sit. Furnished with bright

red or orange cushions, and probably those on no two floors being

uniform in figure, they present from the street a novel and variegated

spectacle; touching up the projecting balconies, highly worked and of

a glossy black, and complementing the green Venetian shutters. These

houses preserve a mediæval physiognomy; the pomp and strength of feudal

Switzerland are called up before our mind when we look at the solid

walls, at the buttresses which support them, and their steep peaked

roofs.

The streets are kept scrupulously clean, as much so as the floor of a

well-kept house; a gang is constantly at work sweeping and carrying

off the dirt as soon as any can be found. Entering the town from the

south, two gate-ways are passed, at short distances from each other,

beneath towers which mark epochs in the extension of its walled period.

In the upper portion of these gate-ways, still standing over the empty

arches, where there is no longer a gate to shut, peaceful pigeons have

a cote. They are the only wardens and watchful sentinels to challenge

the passer-by. The fronts of the houses rest upon arcades, which form

covered walks and are lined with shops. The heavy piers of the arcades

exclude the sun, making the shops dark, and the arcade as damp as it is

gloomy. All these objections are felt to be more than compensated by

the protection furnished from the long winter’s snow. The streets are

provided with numerous public fountains of strange devices. They are

sculptured and decorated, as if the people loved the water and wished

to heighten the pleasure of seeing, welcoming, and using it. This water

is brought a great distance from mountain streams, and ceaselessly

pours its limpid stream through the open viaducts, and at convenient

places is diverted into gigantic stone basins; it is never muddy, and

is always delightfully cool. Through each of the principal streets flow

additional subterraneous streams of this water, furnishing the best of

sewers. This is one of the most pleasing sights common to the smallest

Swiss village,--the abundance of good water with which it is supplied;

it is ever in sight; overflowing, sparkling everywhere, for every use

of man and beast. These fountains resemble those of an Eastern well;

to them daily come all the women of the village for the water they

will require for their families; and they have other uses, the milk

vessels and the cooking utensils are for the most part washed there,

and on certain days they are surrounded by groups of _blanchisseuses_.

Here, too, the daily news of the village is discussed. Besides their

beauty and convenience, these fountains are a species of living

records of the taste and manners of past ages. Many date from the

sixteenth century, and are ornamented with colossal representations of

Swiss warriors, clad in steel, with wasp-shapes and stuffed breasts,

wearing diminutive caps, contrasting with their vast exuberance of

beard and stern countenances; then come goddesses, archers, bagpipers,

and one--the terror of children--the _kinder-fresser-brunnen_, or

“child-gormandizer-fountain.” Upon the top of a stone pillar, ten feet

high, is seated an obese-looking old man; he has the head and shoulders

of one poor baby in his gaping mouth, in the very act of swallowing;

a bag full of similar choice morceaus hangs around his neck, and they

are apparently struggling to escape the fate of their comrade. In one

hand of this ogre are the lower extremities of the child whose head he

is masticating, and in the other a basket full of urchins to finish his

repast; two or three of these have gotten out of the basket, and are

scampering off around the pedestal. There is a very beautiful fountain

in front of the Federal Palace, adorned with a statue of Berna. But

it is the effigy of the bear that perpetually recurs to the eye in

various forms and armor; it is the ensign of Bern, its heraldic animal,

and cherished with religious care as the palladium of the state. On

a fountain in the street of Justice, the Canton is represented in a

militant attitude, by the figure of a bear in armor, with sword, belt,

and banner; another fountain has a bear attending a cross-bowman as his

squire; and the equestrian statue of Rudolph von Erlach is supported

at the corners by four life-sized bronze bears as helmet-bearers. From

the day of the legend connecting Bruin with the city’s foundation

the bears have played a prominent part in local heraldry, that sage

and grave beast being cunningly reproduced in print, coin, stone,

wood, and confectionery of great artistic and amusing caricatures.

The effigy appears upon the cantonal coat-of-arms, and is inseparably

connected with the conquests of the warlike burghers. As a memorial

of the seven hundredth anniversary, in 1891, of the foundation of the

city, the municipal council intend opening a competition for designs

of the statue of a bear more modern than that which has already

existed for seven centuries. Every visitor to Bern is certain to see

the _Bärengraben_, the bears’ den, containing the live animals. It is

told that a whimsical old lady left a handsome estate to the town to

maintain a family of bears. In 1798 they became associated with the

spoliation of Bern, as they had been with its rise and prosperity.

They were transported to Paris by Napoleon’s troops, the huge cage

containing the father of the family having upon it an inscription not

yet forgotten by the Bernese, “_Avoyer de Berne_.” For some time these

bears, like the eagles of Geneva, held their court in the _Jardin des

Plantes_, where the Gallic cock flapped his new-fledged wings and

crowed over all the beasts in Europe--whether rampant or couchant--upon

the field of honor. Only one lived to return to his home at the general

restoration of the spoils; but this one was the aristocrat _Martin_,

whose descent was traced directly from the pair given to the town by

Réné of Lorraine, the ally of Bern in the war against Charles the Bold.

Others were subsequently presented by friends of the town in Russia,

and the family circle now numbers half a dozen. During the summer

they enjoy a great feast from the constant stream of tourists, who

persuade them to perform many antics by throwing them bread, fruits,

and vegetables, of which they are fond; they literally lay themselves

out for your amusement, catching these things lazily as they roll about

on their backs. In the centre of the dens a pine stem is erected, and

renewed annually; on this the bears take air and exercise, and practise

a variety of gymnastics, to the great amusement of the spectators.

Probably next in interest to the bear-pit comes the _Zeitglockenthurm_,

or clock-tower. A minute or two before the hour strikes, a wooden

chanticleer, as large as life, seated on a projection of the tower,

flaps his wings and crows a warning twice, and at the corresponding

time after the striking of the hour he repeats his salutations. A

figure, representing Father Time sitting on a throne, marks the hour

by reversing his hour-glass, a mail-clad figure strikes the hour on

the bell at the top of the tower, then a circle of bears emerge and

move round Father Time, who at every stroke of the bell slowly opens

his mouth and inclines his sceptre as if he himself were rather bored

with Time. Of other objects of interest there may be mentioned the

military depot, erected at a cost of 5,000,000 francs, and used as

a drilling-school for that military district; the Federal Palace, a

handsome stone structure of the Florentine style, and though only in

use since 1852, will soon be relegated to subordinate federal offices

and a more modern and capacious building, now under construction, will

take its place as the federal capitol; a public library, founded at

the time of the Reformation, and containing more than fifty thousand

volumes; a museum where is to be seen the stuffed skin of the famous

St. Bernard dog Barry, who rescued and saved the lives of more than

twenty persons overcome in snow-storms and drifts; botanical garden;

mint; University, with its faculties of law, medicine, theology,

science, languages, etc.; art gallery, and numerous scientific

collections, and societies; arsenal with its mediæval treasures,

and a most complete system of charitable institutions, including

foundling, orphan, blind, mute, and lunatic asylums. The Münster, or

Cathedral, is an immense Gothic structure, dating from 1421, with a

most elaborate sculptured group on the principal portal, representing

the last judgment and the wise and foolish virgins; it is otherwise

adorned with endless carvings in stone and flanked with two lofty

square towers, which still remain in an unfinished condition; few

sacred edifices on the continent are better calculated to make a

strong impression. In front of the Cathedral stands the fine bronze

equestrian statue of Rudolph von Erlach, the brave defender of Bern at

Laupin; it is a name celebrated in the Confederation for five hundred

years. An ancestor led his countrymen in the fourteenth century, and

Rudolph led the forces of the Canton against the French invasion at the

close of the eighteenth century; descendants of the name still live

in Bern and enjoy the highest respect and esteem of the people. The

Cathedral _platz_, a small well-shaded park, raised and walled at a

great expense, a hundred and eight feet above the river, overhangs the

lower town, built on the narrow margin of the rapid Aar. The outer wall

bears an inscription that, in 1654, a young student’s horse, frightened

by some boys, plunged over this precipice with his rider, the horse

being killed, but the rider escaped with only a broken arm and leg, and

survived the accident thirty years as a preacher.

On market day, Tuesday in each week, the streets of Bern are crowded

with booths and tables exposing for sale every sort of merchandise,

garden and farm products, and live animals, from a goat to a cow, a dog

to a horse; pigs and lambs are held in the embrace of their owners,

happy and contented with the nursing-bottle. The _Abattoir_, just out

of the town, on the banks of the river, with its handsome buildings

and beautiful grounds, sooner suggests to the passer-by an attractive

pleasure resort than a public slaughter-house.[111] Much of the garden

truck and all the dairy product are brought into market in small carts,

heavy and stoutly built, pulled by two dogs, one on each side of the

shafts, between which is the woman to uphold and guide it, and for

this motive power a woman and a dog or a boy and a dog tug together

in friendly yoke-fellowship. Dogs are used throughout Switzerland for

all light draught purposes; and not always very light, for these dogs

have been bred through generations for this purpose, until they have

almost the bone and strength of a small horse or ox. They do not seem

to be of any distinct canine family, varying much in size, color, and

appearance,--

“Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,

And curs of low degree.”

They serve the twofold purpose of beasts of burden and vigilant

guardians; the moment the woman stops and puts down the shafts of the

cart the dogs go beneath it and lie down, but their eyes never leave a

stranger who comes near, and he would find it dangerous to attempt to

touch anything in the absence of their mistress. In the evening, when

readiness is made to return home, these dogs express their pleasure

with a deep-mouthed barking, forming a chorus of corresponding variety

to their breeding; as in procession they pass through the streets

this barking becomes a deafening yelp; in their struggle to pass one

another, the carts being lightened of their loads, often the women are

unable to check them with their own force and that of the brakes, with

which the cart is provided, and a general stampede occurs. The dogs

are highly valued and kindly treated by their owners; passing along

at noon, when the women and the dogs are taking their dinner side by

side from their respective tin buckets, you will find that the dogs are

not eating of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table, but are

furnished with rather a more generous repast. The law limits how many

pounds these dogs shall pull, but the woman may pull all she can.

Though Bern is the national and cantonal capital, it has an essentially

small-town, provincial system of life. There is no capital in Europe

more remote from the stir and impulse of the world’s activities.

Isolated by its insignificance rather than by any geographical

position, free from all extraneous influences, it maintains a mummy

condition, bound up in the swaddling-clothes of quaint customs and

antiquated ideas. It has been within this generation that a butcher

of the town made the advertisement that “all persons, without respect

of religion, can have fresh meat every day.” To the stranger, life in

Bern soon stagnates into a fearsome weariness. There is absolutely

nothing to break the _tædium vitæ_ unless you devote yourself to the

task of doing it. From the first of December to the middle of April

there is an annual hibernation. Silence reigns in the streets, and

the tradesmen will tell you they do not make enough to pay for their

light. Amusements are few and too poor to lure one from his melancholy,

and, tired with all things else, the weary heart must seek new life

and joy in nature. Yet the very silence and absence of bustle, a

certain stateliness and reserved demeanor in the inhabitants, showing

it not to be a money-making town, imply that its importance at some

time must have sprung from more solid and permanent sources than

trade can afford, and that another spirit animated its inhabitants.

Aristocratic pride is still excessive, and the antique simplicity of

its magistrates, the plain and easy manners they uniformly preserve in

their intercourse with the people, are not by any means at variance

with the assertion. For that external simplicity and affability

to inferiors is one of the characteristics of the aristocratic

government; all assumption of superiority being carefully avoided

when real authority is not in question. Zurich suggests the idea of a

municipal aristocracy; Bern of an ancient one. In the one we think we

see citizens of a town transformed into nobility, in the other ancient

nobles who have made themselves citizens. By the side of those gigantic

terraces, of those fine fountains, those massive arches and noble

shades you now see none but simple and solid dwellings, yet scarcely

any beggarly ones; not an equipage to be seen, but many a wagon,

with a fine team of horses or oxen, well appointed in every way. The

aristocracy of Bern, in times past, was distinguished by its elegant

accomplishments and the splendid ornaments and furniture of its houses,

heirlooms of the wall and of the cupboard, which were the pride of

generations. The value of the furniture of a Bernese patrician, called

Zeguti, was ascertained by his last will, A.D. 1367, to be equal to

the public revenue of the city for one year. The aristocratic Bernese

officials of those days had under their door-bells written: “_Ici on

sonne et attend._” Bern is in the centre of one of the most beautiful

landscapes in Europe; the country is broken, but cultivated like a

garden, and so well wooded as to resemble a vast park. Every town

in Switzerland possesses some feature of originality, and none are

destitute of lovely and refreshing walks; but there is none richer in

umbrageous roads, or where they are kept in better repair, than Bern.

Graceful foot-paths wind among the fields, which are little encumbered

with fences or hedges, and roads as good as those which are seen in

pleasure-grounds. The fine wood of Bremgarten, with its magnificent

avenues of trees, extends almost to the very gates of the town, and is

reached by a boulevard lined on each side with limes, which in their

season perfume the air. A more beautiful or highly-cultivated region

is scarcely to be found than the banks of the Aar in its vicinity. The

environs abound in views over hill and dale, over wood and river; and

the most unobservant cannot fail to remark how superior in brilliancy

of color and elegance of form even the wayside flowers appear; the very

weediest of weeds seem attractive and ornamental. In the rare pure air

of this mountainous section the whole plant population becomes, as it

were, refined and aristocratic. Then Bern looks from her peninsula on

the beauties and snows of her Oberland, a continuous chain the most

regular in all Switzerland, and the most imposing and pompous panorama

that can be found in the whole realm of mountains. In the grand barrier

which separates Bern from the Valais there are six celebrated peaks,

commencing on the east with the Wetterhorn,[112] then the Schreckhorn,

the Finsteraarhorn, the Eiger, the Mönch, and the Jungfrau, ranging in

height from twelve thousand to fourteen thousand and twenty-six feet.

They all pierce the empyrean, but the Finsteraarhorn overtops all the

others. They look so sharp and wildly precipitous that the bare thought

of standing on any one of them would make you shudder. The horizontal

extent of this range is vast, the grouping magnificent, the scene

unparagoned. They present bold outlines cut sharply against the sky,

summits veiled with clouds, crests alternately gently rounded or rugged

and broken, noble slopes, steep precipices, outlines of mingled grace

and boldness.[113] In the course of a clear day there is a beautiful

variety of aspect, bright, pure, rich, harmonious,--from the dark

shadows cast by the rising sun, the brilliancy of mid-day, the violet

hues at sunset, and the ashy and almost ghostly paleness of evening.

Imagine frozen snow piled in the heavens and stretching miles across

the boundary of an otherwise beautiful view, having its sides shaded

by innumerable valleys, with here and there a patch of hoary, naked

rock, and the upper line all tossed into peaks and swelling ridges,

like the waves of a colossal ocean. The grandest scene of all, and seen

in greater perfection at Bern than any other point in Switzerland, is

that brief period when the majestic architecture of the Alps, with its

capitals and bastions, is flushed with the warm light of the lowering

sun; when the _Alpenglühen_[114] (_Abendglühen_) bathes the stern faces

of the ramparts with a flood of light and shade such as only nature

can produce from the rarest tints of infinite beauty. As the sun sinks

lower the ruddiness of his light seems to augment until the filaments

resemble streamers of flame; when the sun sinks deeper the light is

gradually withdrawn, all is cold and gray again; the stars come out all

at once and leave the mountain like a desolate old man whose

“Hoary hair

Stream’d like a meteor in the troubled air.”

The vapor at times causes a great deal of refraction, and above the

clouds rises the whole of the Oberland to an altitude which seems

greater than usual; every peak and all the majestic formation are

clearly visible, though the whole range appears to be severed from the

earth and to float in the air; the line of communication is varied,

and while all below is enfeebled by the mist, the snow and ice above

throw back the fierce light of the sun with powerful splendor. The

people of Bern, of all conditions and ages, may be seen, day after

day, waiting and watching for the _Alpenglühen_. As the hour of sunset

approaches, the numerous little parks which furnish a view begin to

fill up with the old and young; with the first announcing ray of the

_Alpenglühen_ the children cease to be boisterous, the fingers that ply

the knitting-needle are still, the laborer at work pursues his vocation

sedately, and all gaze in silent admiration. Bern abounds in these

humanizing, tranquillizing, and health-giving parks or promenades,

ornamented with beds of bright flowers and provided with comfortable

seats. Although the Alps are not necessary to render the views from

these parks pleasant, yet there they are, to add a background of

sublimity to a foreground of surpassing loveliness. The Aar flows

towards Bern in a northwest direction, through a valley of some width

and several miles in length: to this fact the Bernese are indebted

for their fine view of the Oberland Alps, which stretch themselves

exactly across the mouth of the gorge at a distance of forty miles in

an air-line. There is a story of a king, who said he dearly wished he

had never had any picture or statue in his palace so that he could once

again have, even for a moment, the crude, sincere delight of a boy

staring at a wax-work group. The Bernese will never have need to frame

such a wish. To them their Oberland will always be new, a picture that

can never fade, a strain of music which can never sound tuneless or

harsh.

But in this sin-cursed world

“The sea of fortune doth not ever flow;

She draws her favors to the lowest ebb;

Her tides have equal times to come and go;

Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web.”

This same _Alpenglühen_ casts its kaleidoscopic rays directly at the

foot of the Oberland on eyes that are incapable of appreciating the

wealth of beauty that is around and above them. Here are a most sadly

afflicted people; here prevail, to a remarkable degree, _goitre_ and

_cretinism_. We find in Juvenal, “_Quis tumidum guttur miratur in

Alpibus?_” (“Who wonders at goitres in the Alps?”) Congenital cases

are not infrequent, but, in a majority of instances, it makes its

appearance on a child at about the age of twelve or fourteen. The size

these goitrous growths may attain is extraordinary, hanging down on the

breast, enormous and unsightly things, recalling the description in

“The Tempest,”--

“When we were boys,

Who would have believed that there were mountaineers

Dew-lapp’d like bulls, whose throats had hanging at ’em

Hideous wallets of flesh.”

In some portions of this district, the goitre or swelling of the

thyroid gland in front of the neck is so prevalent that

“Optimus ille est

Qui minimus urgetur.”

It is not painful, and not always apparently inconvenient, and the

few who are free from it are laughed at and called “goose-necked.” A

stranger once entering a church in the neighborhood where but few were

absolutely free from these unseemly appendages, during service the

congregation betrayed improper curiosity, and the pastor, after a sharp

reproach for their want of manners, reminded them that it was not the

fault of the poor man “if he had no goitre.” By some it is actually

considered, in a mild form, to be desirable; for it possesses a

positive money value in furnishing exemption from military service. Now

and then these monstrous excrescences become too large to be borne, and

the poor victims crawl on the ground because they cannot walk upright

under the weight. There is a popular as well as scientific belief

that water is the vehicle of the poison that produces it; that it is

impregnated with _tufa_ or _tuf_ a calcareous matter, whose tendency

to concrete among the glands of the neck, aided, perhaps, by stagnant

evaporation of narrow villages, produces these wenny protuberances.

This goitrous condition is often accompanied with an imperfect or

arrested state of mental development known as _cretinism_, a distinct

and most distressful form of idiocy. The _cretin_ has an enormous head

that drops listlessly on the breast; a vacant countenance; goggling

eyes; thick tongue hanging out over moist, livid lips; mouth always

open, full of saliva, and exposing decayed teeth; limbs misshapen;

and wanting at times even the power of articulation. Many are deaf

and dumb,--in fact, physical abortions, with every sign of bodily

and mental imbecility. Few of these poor creatures can do any work,

and many are even incapable of taking care of themselves, and not

safe to leave alone. These distorted, mindless people, of semi-human

attributes, excite a pitying disgust by their loathsome appearance,

lolling tongue, obscene gestures, degraded appetites, and senseless

gibberish as revolting as their aspects. The word _cretin_ is thought

to be derived from the older _cretins_ of the Alps, whose name was a

corruption of _Chrétien_ or _Christianus_, and who, being baptized, and

idiots, were supposed to be “washed from original sin” and incapable

of actual sin. Cretinism is regarded by physicians as hereditary, for

it appears in the most pronounced type in successive generations of

the same family. This unfortunate district borders on the most fertile

and beautiful valley in Switzerland, the Emmenthal, the rich plain in

the northern part of the Canton of Bern, noted for its cheese and its

_schwingfeste_ (winnowing-festivals). Here the peasants are sturdy and

strong of aspect, and on Sunday the men may be seen walking among

their acres like lords of the soil, in their immaculate shirt sleeves

of a fulness suggestive of episcopal dignity. It was the neat houses,

comfortable dresses, highly-cultivated and generous soil, giving a

cheerful and prosperous look to the face alike of the people and the

country in this section, that caused so high an authority as Burke to

write, “That he had beheld throughout Switzerland, and above all in the

Canton of Bern, a people at once the happiest and the best governed on

earth.”

CHAPTER XX.

SWITZERLAND THE SEAT OF INTERNATIONAL UNIONS.

It is not a little surprising--when we consider the great and rapid

advance that has been made during the last century in diplomacy,

jurisprudence, statesmanship, and political economy, and, indeed, in

the multifarious branches of knowledge,--that international relations,

upon which depend to such an extent the most precious interests of the

nations and of all mankind, should remain so long in a condition very

crude, indefinite, and incomplete. The “mills of God grind slowly,”

but the mills of human government seem even more tedious and rusty.

Now that, in the advance of intelligence and civilization, the nations

have passed from the self-subsistent stage of national life into the

dependent one; now that, through the great discoveries of modern times,

the nations have been brought together, compacted into one community,

and the interests of all have been blended; now that “the separate

threads of national prosperity have been entangled in the international

skein,” publicists have found it necessary to enlarge their opinions

and judgments, so as to represent, not the narrowness of local

prejudice, but the breadth and depth of the whole mind of civilized

mankind. This tendency has found practical expression in international

treaties, with objects neither sectarian nor political; concerning not

individuals alone, not nations alone, but the whole community of man.

With aims the most comprehensive, desirableness and practicability

manifest, they are founded in a philanthropy seeking to promote the

honor and welfare of every nation, and to bring additional blessings

to every home and every heart in the wide world. International unions,

with their noble and beneficent objects, constitute the fellowship of

nations, under the dominion of law, in the bonds of peace. Central

bureaus are required for the management of these unions, and it needed

but little reflection to discover that the Swiss republic presented

peculiar advantages for their location. Its neutrality stood guaranteed

by the powers; it could not come under any suspicion of political

ambition or territorial aggrandizement; it was thus mapped out to be a

neutral state, with every reasonable prospect of this _status_ being

sustained. This neutrality, with its strong assurance of immunity from

“all entangling alliances” and the untoward complications of war or

foreign occupation, and the central position in Europe with convenience

of communication with the principal European capitals, were in

themselves sufficient to recommend Switzerland. Then the Swiss possess

perhaps the most marked genius of any people for the administration of

an office; the government itself is surely the most laborious, the most

economical, the least pretentious, yet withal systematic, thorough,

and efficient; the same sobriety of demeanor, conscientious discharge

of duty, with painstaking, patient labor at their desks, pervade

the entire Swiss bureaucracy; these were distinct and all-important

advantages. And, last, the supposition that affairs which influence

the conduct and affect the interests of nations might be discussed

amid its mountains with a calmness and candor which the contemplation

of nature inspires, contributed no little to the cheerful consensus

as to the propriety of its selection for the seat of the bureaus.

There are now a sufficient number of these unions, with their central

bureaus or seats established in Bern, to confer upon the Confederation

a singularly conspicuous position of distinction and usefulness.

Uncontaminated by the ambitions of its neighbors, Switzerland offers to

contending nations a quiet spot in which to settle their disputes by

the peaceful means of arbitration. It is not only a place of occasional

conventions, but also the official headquarters of a host of continuous

international agreements, commercial treaties and unions, which render

peace and freedom necessary, and therefore secure within its borders.

The first step from which resulted the concentration of these bureaus

in Switzerland was taken in 1863. In that year a private committee,

composed of different nationalities but animated by one noble impulse,

assembled at Geneva to consider the practicability of making some

better provision for the protection of the wounded in battle, the

inadequacy of existing official means to meet the humane requirements

of the sick and wounded soldiers in great wars having long been

painfully apparent. It will always redound to the honor of Switzerland

that upon its soil the first formal international conference was held

with a view to the mitigation of some of the horrors of war. On that

occasion the institution of national aid societies was organized, and a

few Swiss gentlemen were formed into an international committee for the

purpose of constituting, on their neutral territory, an intermediary

for the aid of similar societies in all countries. This committee

soon discovered that their movement was everywhere attracting the

attention and winning the warm approbation of all humane people, and

determined to place it upon a broader and firmer basis. They requested

the Swiss Federal Council to propose to such other governments, as

it deemed expedient, that a diplomatic conference should be held

in Switzerland, to discuss and, if possible, give the undertaking

international character and support. The Federal Council promptly

acceded to the memorial of the committee, and the invitation, as

desired, was officially extended in the name of the Swiss government.

Many of the leading powers accepted the invitation, and accredited

delegates to the conference, which assembled the following year in

Geneva. This conference was brought to a successful conclusion by the

signing of the memorable “Geneva Convention of August 20, 1864,” by

the representatives of sixteen governments. Within four months it was

ratified and formally acceded to by eight European states, and at the

present date has been joined by a grand total of thirty-three states.

This convention embraces a wide field of practical philanthropy, being

designed to remove soldiers when sick or wounded from the category

of combatants, affording them relief and protection without regard

to nationality. This protection extends to all persons officially

attached to hospitals or ambulances, and to all houses so long as

they contain invalid soldiers. Inhabitants of a locality occupied

by a belligerent army, and who are engaged in the care of the sick

and wounded, are likewise included; provision is also to be made for

the return of invalid soldiers to their respective homes. “While the

gun-carriage bears its death-dealing burden across the battle-field,

in the ruts which rushing artillery wheels have torn up follow quickly

the ambulance wagons of this Christian brotherhood, bringing hope

and succor to the wounded.” The insignia of hospital and ambulance

is the Swiss flag, with its colors reversed, a red cross on a white

ground; and individuals in their employment wear a white armlet

with a red cross, and every red-cross flag must be accompanied, in

time of war, by the national flag of those using it. It is no mean

distinction for the Swiss Confederation that its national emblem is

so intimately and exclusively associated with this great exhibition of

international humanity. It is a grand and elevating education, a wise

and philanthropic conception embodying the best principles of social

science, and that true spirit of charity which counts it a sacred

privilege to minister to one’s fellow-men in time of suffering. To

supply material wants, great as this may be, is not all of its mission;

it seeks to carry to men’s hearts the message of universal brotherhood,

with “peace on earth, good will to men” as its ensign. The United

States gave their adhesion to this convention in 1882, and in the

conferences had since that date, among the large number of delegates

assembled, composed of royalties, nobilities, military and scientific

celebrities, no one commanded more respectful attention or contributed

more to the deliberations than a lone feminine delegate who bore the

credentials of the United States. The name of Clara Barton is known

the world over in connection with the burning cross on a snow-white

field. To her labors are largely due the widening of the scope of the

red-cross activities, and the assimilation of its workings to the

advance plans already put in execution in her own country. These plans

were chiefly of her own suggestion, and she had been instrumental in

their reduction to successful use, for which she found opportunity in

the late civil war, and subsequently during the Franco-German war,

when she followed the German army into Paris, working faithfully alike

in French and German camp; when all the nations of Europe rang with

praises for her splendid work. She then first became acquainted with

the Red Cross Society, and at once united with it; returning home with

the iron cross of Baden on her breast, she organized the Red Cross

Society of the United States, and was made its president. Her influence

mainly contributed to the favorable action of the United States in

joining this convention in 1882.

In 1865, one year after the conclusion of the Red Cross Convention,

occurred the initiative of the International Telegraph Union upon the

signature of the Convention of Paris. For a time the Union dispensed

with a central administration, and at the conference held in Vienna in

1865 the policy of having a shifting administration, as between the

capitals where the conferences took place, was seriously considered,

but the necessity for a fixed and central administration was finally

conceded, and the Swiss Confederation was asked to take charge of it.

The central office was organized without delay at Bern. Correspondence

was opened with thirty-seven telegraphic administrations, twenty-six

of which belonged to the contracting states and eleven to private

corporations. The last report from the bureau-director shows the

number of state administrations corresponding with the central

office to be forty; in addition to these are ten cable or submarine

companies and eleven private land companies. The budget for 1888

reports the total expense of this bureau at 84,000 francs, or about

$16,500, an incredibly small outlay for so important and responsible a

work, involving an extensive line of correspondence and at times the

adjustment of very technical questions. The bureau issues an official

gazette, _Le Journal Télégraphique_. To this union the United States do

not belong, having no government control over the telegraph companies.

Next came the Postal Union in 1874, and immediately upon the exchange

of ratifications of the convention a year later the central office

was likewise organized at Bern. Correspondence opened with twenty-one

postal administrations, which have now increased to forty-seven;

the annual budget is $15,700, making the contributive share of a

first-class state only a little over $600 per annum, and about half

that sum for a second-class state; certainly a very inconsiderable

tax for so essential a service. The chiefs or directors of the two

above-mentioned unions possess administrative ability that would

readily command in the United States three times the sums paid them.

A journal, _L’Union Postale_, published monthly, in three languages,

English, German, and French, is conducted by the bureau, and enjoys a

large circulation among those interested in knowing something of this

clearing-house process of international mail-matter.

Passing mention may be made of two more limited but very useful

conventions concluded in Switzerland,--one for the extermination of

phylloxera and the other for the regulation of the transportation of

goods by railway. The first had its origin at a conference of persons

interested in the culture of the vine, held at Lausanne in 1877,

and a convention to establish a union was signed at Bern in 1878 by

several states, with the object of promoting joint protection against

a disease which had caused such serious losses to vine-growers. Bern

was agreed upon as the seat of all future meetings, and this union,

which continues to obtain adhesions, is in active and beneficial

operation. The Railway Transportation Union is, from the very nature

and difficulty of the matters involved, one of slow evolution, but

conferences are from time to time held, and its friends do not despair

that it will ultimately result in the text of an international union

with its bureau at Bern; this union, however, cannot expect to embrace

any but the continental states.

A most important event in the history of these unions was the

conclusion, at Paris, in 1883, after ten years’ negotiation, of

the Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, with a

supplemental protocol signed at Rome in 1886. By the terms of the

convention Switzerland assumed the responsibility for the management of

the central administration, and the bureau joined the others at Bern.

There are sixteen states in this union, the last accession being that

of the United States, which was made on the 30th of May, 1887.

Lastly, and one very properly following close on that for the

protection of industrial property, came the Union for the Protection

of Literary and Artistic Property. This, the result of conferences

in 1884, 1885, and 1886 at Bern, was secured by the signature of

the convention on the 9th of September, 1886, and the ratification

exchanged 5th of December, 1887, with ten adhering states. The central

bureau, like those preceding it, was placed under the high authority

of the Swiss Confederation, and is consolidated with its sister Bureau

of Industrial Property. It issues an ably edited monthly journal, _Le

Droit d’Auteur_.

The failure of the United States to adhere to this convention, it

was apprehended by many, would deprive the Union of much of its

contemplated value and practical results. This sentiment found

expression in terms of the most sincere and respectful regret on

the part of the delegates representing the signing states. At the

Bern Conference of 1886, to which the writer was commissioned as a

consultative delegate, he submitted the following statement explanatory

of the attitude of the United States towards the conference:

“Through a circular note of the Swiss Federal Council the United States

have been invited, in concert with the other powers represented in the

Copyright Conference held here in September, 1885, to instruct and

empower a delegate to attend this conference, and to sign on behalf

of the United States the International Convention for the General

Protection of Literary and Artistic Property, drafted _ad referendum_

by the conference last year, and a copy of which draft convention,

with additional article and _protocole de clôture_, had been submitted

to them. The United States again find it impracticable to depute a

delegate plenipotentiary, and are constrained to withhold from any

formal participation, as a signatory to the International Convention

which resulted from the deliberations of 1885, and the transformation

of that convention into a complete diplomatic engagement. To exhibit

their benevolence, however, towards the principle involved, the

United States desire, with, the pleasure of this conference, to be

represented here, and has conferred upon me the honor to attend this

conference as such representative, provided that my attendance is fully

recognized and admitted to be without plenipotentiary powers; but under

the limitation and reservation that the United States, not being a

party to the proposed convention, reserve their privilege of future

accession, under provisions of Article XVIII. thereof, which declare

that ‘countries which have not joined in the present convention, and

which by their municipal laws assure legal protection to the right

whereof this convention treats, shall be admitted to accede thereto

on their request to that effect.’ While not prepared to join in the

proposed convention as a full signatory, the United States do not wish

thereby to be understood as opposing the measure in any way, but, on

the contrary, desire to reserve without prejudice the privilege of

future accession, should it become expedient and practicable to do

so. Should any question exist that the representation of the United

States here, though under the specific and express limitation of a

consultative delegate, is such a participation as would suffice to

exclude them from the category of the ‘countries that had not joined in

the present convention,’ and therefore to deprive them of the privilege

of future accession, in event they desire to avail themselves of it,

I wish to reiterate and emphasize the fact, that the course of the

United States in commissioning a delegate is in nowise intended or

to be construed as a participation in the result of the conference,

either by acceptance or rejection. The position and attitude of the

United States is one simply of expectancy and reserve. The Constitution

of the United States enumerates among the powers especially reserved

to Congress, that ‘to promote the progress of science and the useful

arts, by securing for limited terms to authors and inventors the

exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;’

which implies that the origination and limitation of measures to

those ends rest with the legislative rather than the treaty-making

powers. Copyright and patents are on the same footing of regulation

by federal legislation, and the executive branch of the government

cannot be unmindful of the continued pendency of its consideration

by the legislative department, or disregard the constitutional

right of that department to conclude international treaties on this

important subject. The question of international copyright is one of

great interest to the United States. In fact, few other countries

can lay claim to greater concern than that naturally felt by people

distinguished for enlightened, extensive, and growing intellectual

life, and while not infringing upon the constitutional prerogative

of Congress to initiate and conclude copyright legislation, likewise

to define the rights of aliens and citizens within its jurisdiction,

the Executive, in his first annual message to Congress, inviting

its attention to the conference of last September, said, ‘action is

certainly desirable to effect the object in view;’ and the Secretary of

State for foreign affairs, in his official despatches relating to this

conference, freely expresses his concurrence with the principle sought

to be enunciated by the proposed convention, and conveys the hope that

the time is not distant when rights of property in the creation of

the mind may be universally secured under conditions favorable alike

to the author and to the world’s right to share in the diffusion of

ideas. That the brain that creates is entitled to and should receive

its just and full compensation, is a sentiment having its origin in

the inherent sense of honesty. Literary property has been to some

extent recognized in all ages, and is to-day guaranteed in almost every

State by domestic legislation. This recognition and guarantee should

be without distinction of nationality and without regard to political

frontiers. It is a matter of congratulation, and redounds much to

the credit of the Swiss government, through whose active efforts

this movement was successfully inaugurated, and supplemented by the

patient and intelligent labor of the several conferences assembled

here at its invitation, that a just and permanent settlement, once for

all, of the grave question of the protection of works of literature

and art, so long and unjustly denied, is about to be realized by the

instrumentality of a uniform, efficacious, and equitable international

convention.”

At the close of these remarks the president of the conference thanked

the delegate from the United States, and assured him that the

“accession of the United States would be received at any time with joy

by all the contracting states, and he but reflected the sincere wish of

all present in hoping that within a measurable time the United States

will request that a place be made for them in the Union.”

It is time that the position of the United States on this important

subject should be set free from the thraldom of that short-sighted

selfishness which has hitherto fettered and degraded it. The Congress

of the United States should seek suggestion from those sentiments of

elevated justice and public honesty which are the sources of judicial

counsel, and should act in that spirit of permanent and comprehensive

wisdom, justice, and right which alone gives assurances of deep and

expanding benefits, as well to nations as to individuals. In the

absence of international copyright, just and fair compensation for

native literary and artistic property is out of the question. American

authors ask no protection, they demand no aids, no bounties; they

simply ask not to be subjected to this discrimination against domestic

talent that puts them at a cruel disadvantage with foreign competitors,

the fatal usage of whose cheap reprints, “without authorial expenses,”

has become an inveterate and crushing system. They ask only the

privilege of meeting these competitors on equal terms in a fair

contest. Literary property is the only kind of personal property not

protected by the law when the owner is not a citizen of the United

States. To the foreign owners of patents and trade-marks, which are

so analogous to copyright, protection ample and easily enforced is

accorded. It is half a century since Prussia first set the example of

granting international copyright. In 1837 a law was passed that every

country might secure copyright for its authors in Prussia upon granting

reciprocity. This was followed by England in the succeeding year.

France set the example, during the Empire, of forbidding the piracy of

books and works of art of foreigners, before obtaining reciprocity.

Property in ideas, dating back in England to the Statutes of Anne,

was recognized in the Constitution of the United States, and is now

conceded in every civilized country by legislative enactment. The same

legal protection in the matter of ideas which is given to the natives

of the state, is now accorded to the foreigner and outsider by all

nations of high civilization except the United States. The right to

profit by the product of the brain should secure for the author “that

justice which is not a matter of climates and degrees.” The principle

of copyright being admitted, it cannot logically be confined to state

lines or national boundaries. Grant that it is difficult to give

literary rights the well-defined nature and tangible form of what is

known, technically, as real or personal property; still, outside of the

ethical or abstract right, copyright is a modern development of the

principle of property which commends itself to every sentiment of honor

and justice, regardless of any obscurity which may have surrounded or

inspired its conception. Who steals a man’s book may, indeed, steal

trash, but, at least, it is his own trash, more closely his own than

his purse. In a high state of civilization, a man’s book should be

everywhere regarded as his property, and should ever be protected as

scrupulously as if it were a pair of shoes, upon the construction of

which he has also expended his time, his thought, his patience, and

such talent and skill as he possesses. The sophistical plea that the

culture and education of our people are to be imperilled, and the cost

of books to be placed beyond the reach of the masses, is the mere weak

subterfuge of those who are unwilling to be disturbed in their wrongful

appropriation of the labor of others. The reverse of this claim has

been abundantly shown. France has had an international copyright law

for years, and series of books are issued there for five cents, and

even two cents a number; it is the same with Germany; and these cheap

publications represent all that is best in the literature of their

respective countries. The spirit of literary ambition and activity is

daily becoming greater and more diffused among the people of the United

States, quickening and nourishing into life the seeds of a vigorous

and vast native literature. It is impossible to determine the elements

which must conspire to form and build up a native literature. It is

a mystery, not solved to the satisfaction of scholars, why it should

have put forth so early and transitory a bloom in Italy; why it should

have ripened so late in Germany and Scotland; why in England alone it

should know no vicissitudes of seasons, but smile in eternal spring.

But we may be confidently assured that a people to whom Providence has

given a stirring history, a land abounding in landscapes of beauty and

grandeur, and a high degree of mental activity, extending the range of

knowledge and scattering its seeds among all classes without price,

cannot and will not remain long without an extensive and superior

native literature. The literature of a people is the noblest emanation

and truest measure of the intellect and earnestness and progression of

that community. But there can be no decided literature, national in

its basis, original in its character, independent in its aim, in any

country where authorship is not a firm, reliable, and safe possession.

Already the peer of the proudest in military achievements and material

prosperity, truth, freedom, and civilization never presented a richer

field and a brighter future for intellectual laborers than is to be

found in the United States. Inexhaustible materials sleep in the womb

of the morning, awaiting the forming hand of letters to seize and

vitalize these mighty elements. The day must come when the pre-eminence

of the United States in the field of material products will be rivalled

by the existence of a literature as aspiring, as copious, and as

brilliant as the spirit, resources, and destiny of the country; an

American literature, breathing American ideas, and teaching respect

and admiration for American government, furnishing to the young men

and women of an impressionable age books which are American books, not

foreign books; not the cheap books of fiction dedicated, as Matthew

Arnold has said, to the “Goddess of Lubricity.”[115]

The international unions, indicated as having their seats in Bern,

it must not be forgotten, are practically the only ones which the

world has to show. The _Bureau du Mètre_ in France, the only cognate

institution in another country partaking of an international character,

cannot be reckoned in the same class, being scientific and not

commercial. It is noteworthy, as evidence of the high consideration

given to these international unions, or rather to the location of their

central bureaus in Switzerland, by its statesmen, that the directorship

of the Postal Bureau was on its establishment accepted by an eminent

member of the Federal Council, who thus voluntarily surrendered

virtually a life-tenure position of the highest dignity, coupled with

the certainty of succeeding to the Presidency of the Confederation,

to assume a more laborious and responsible post, with little, if any,

increase of salary. The acquisition by Switzerland of these important

bureaus, with the world-wide scope of their operation, is properly

regarded as forming a more effectual guarantee for its preservation

as an independent state than any other that could be devised. These

unions cannot fail to be also productive of a progressively improving

understanding among all the states composing them, enabling their

several systems to be compared, useful discoveries shared, legislation

simplified and assimilated, the science of statistics facilitated, and

efforts, not merely for the development of commercial, but also of

the intellectual needs of their respective people, wisely stimulated

and directed. These beneficent consequences must favorably reflect

on the state furnishing the safe and common ground upon which this

great work can be peaceably and skilfully prosecuted, and elevate

it to an exceptional plane of importance and security, giving it an

international function which is interesting to note. It will not

do, in connection with these international bodies and episodes in

Swiss history, to omit reference to the fact that the first great

international court of arbitration of modern times had its sessions

in Geneva, in 1872, by virtue of the Treaty of Washington between

Great Britain and the United States to arbitrate what was known as

the “Alabama Claims.” Over this most memorable court a distinguished

citizen of Switzerland was chosen to preside. It was such an imposing

spectacle, and the results were so important, as to give an old process

a new dignity and reputation; and to awaken a fresh interest in the

project of a permanent international high court of arbitration. To this

project the Swiss Federal Council has been frequently addressed to lend

its kindly offices. It is a project that every philanthropic publicist

would be happy to see made practicable. Insurmountable difficulties

seem to interpose, yet the fact of great states submitting their

disputes to a body of impartial arbitrators for decision, and not the

arbitrament of war, is not a new one, but of very ancient origin, old

as history. As a principle, it has received the approval of sovereigns

and statesmen, parliaments and congresses. The chief powers of Europe

gave their sanction to it by the Treaty of Paris in 1856, and the

government of the United States has, upon more than one occasion, given

approval to it as the means of settling international controversy.[116]

Barbarians and early people fought because they liked it, as the

chivalrous Maoris did, and the Mussulmans, and the ancient Greeks. The

romance and poetry of these people are all about war; it was their

sport, their industry, their occupation; there was no other way to

wealth and the heart of woman. Even the ancient Teutones regarded war

as a great international lawsuit, and victory was the judgment of God

in favor of the victor. Civilized people fight because they cannot help

it, not because they like it. Civilized nations of to-day are supposed

to act from motives of justice and humanity, and not upon calculations

of profit, or ambition, or in the wantonness of mere caprice. Nations

are now regarded as moral persons, bound so to act as to do each other

the least injury and the most good. There is a growing international

consciousness that, considered in the abstract, unconnected with all

views of the causes for which it may be undertaken, war is an evil, and

that it should yield to some plan of adjusting international quarrels

more consonant with the present boasted Christian civilization. War, it

is true, has its great conquests, its pomps, its proud associations,

and heroic memories, yet there is murder in its march, and humanity and

civilization, genius and statesmanship, are things to blush for if they

fail to realize that

“Peace hath her victories

No less renown’d than war,”

and that these words convey a profound principle, and not merely an

abstraction too refined to be reduced to practice.

The trend of events is towards a peaceable settlement of international

differences. National temperaments are being levelled by the ease of

intercourse. The world is more and more assimilating to a condition

like that of a great family, in which the individual nations, as

members, are linked together by interests, which disputes ending in

wars only impair and cannot benefit. The principle in early Roman law

was that every stranger is a public enemy. The opposite prevails

to-day with civilized peoples, that the normal relation between nations

is one of peace and friendship. Unconquerable time itself works on

increasingly, bringing the nations nearer to one another in the

natural and orderly development of close international intercourse,

strengthening the community of mankind. A deep meaning and philosophic

truth is contained in the words of Vattel, “International justice is

the daughter of economic calculations.” These international unions are

most powerful auxiliaries in removing the hinderances that lie between

nations; through them the lesson is being objectively taught that great

nations are so dependent upon each other, that any disturbance in a

particular one is felt by the others, and that when their friendly

relations are interrupted, the civilized world suffers. Through

this influence nations are beginning to take a wider view of their

mutual duties and relations, and appeal to reason and conscience in

international dealings finds a response and an application which could

not have been expected earlier. These unions generate a spirit that

turns its regard to the circuit of the globe, and to an inspiration in

which international relations obtain a higher form and a more assured

security, with no purpose to interfere with particular states or their

complete autonomous organism, or to oppress nations, but the better

to secure the peace of the one and the freedom of the other. The best

human arrangements cannot completely insure the world against civil

war. This ideal can be only approximated. It would be vain to look for

a political millennium, for a time when the “only battle-field will

be the market open to commerce and the mind open to new ideas,” when

nations shall enjoy the boundless blessings offered them in the perfect

freedom of human industry and in the reign of a perpetual peace,--

“When the war-drum throbs no longer and the battle-flags are furled

In the parliament of man, the federation of the world.”

The latest movement, on the part of Switzerland, in the inauguration

of international legislation, relates to “international law” and the

“interest of the working-classes.” The former was organized, in 1888,

at Lausanne, the seat of the Swiss Federal Tribunal, and formed the

“Institute of International Law;” the subjects discussed comprised the

common features of the conflict of civil laws; the conflict of the laws

relative to marriage and divorce; joint stock companies; encounters

at sea; extradition; occupation of unclaimed territory, according

to provisions of the Treaty of Berlin; international regulation of

railways, telegraphs, and telephones in time of war; and the manner

and limit of expulsion of strangers from the territory by governments.

The second, relating to the “interest of the working-classes,” was

foreshadowed by an article from the pen of M. Numa Droz, the chief

of the Foreign Department in the Swiss Cabinet, and published in the

_Revue Suisse_ of February, 1889. In this article M. Droz announced

that Switzerland was about to invite the other nations of Europe to a

congress, in which projects for improving the condition of the laboring

classes of Europe would be discussed. He expressed his confidence that

only good could come from such an official gathering, and stated that

Switzerland would consider it “as a great source of pleasure to offer

cordial hospitality to the first European conference in the interest

of labor legislation.” The distinguished and official authorship of

this article caused it to attract much attention, and it received very

favorable comment from the continental press. As indicated by M. Droz,

within a short time after the appearance of his article, the Swiss

Federal Council issued an invitation to the European manufacturing

states to send representatives to a conference in September, 1889, at

Bern, to consider the “well-being of the working-classes,” and the

organization of an “International Labor Congress.” At the same time

it suggested the following questions for consideration: Prohibition

of Sunday work; fixing of a minimum age for the employment of children

in factories, and a limitation of working-hours for young people;

prohibition of the employment of minors and women in peculiarly

unhealthy or dangerous industries; limitation of night-work; the

adoption of a settled plan for the attainment of these objects. The

second annual session of this conference was recently held at Berlin,

by the invitation of the Emperor, who recognized that he could no

longer depend on the army to repress industrial discontent. Should

these conferences succeed in ameliorating the condition of the laboring

classes throughout Europe, and thus lift from those countries the

darkest and most angry cloud that now hangs over them, it will be the

brightest jewel in the crown of Switzerland’s hegemony in the great

work of international unions.

It can no longer be denied that it is possible to unite the whole

globe in such organizations, now that international law, with its

hypothesis of the union of many states in one humanity, extends over

the greater part of the inhabited earth. There is a steadily-increasing

interdependence of the nations of the world, especially of those which

give themselves to commerce and manufactures, and alike of those

which need a foreign field for a share of their capital. These ties

unite them alike for good and evil, and render the prosperity of each

dependent on the equal prosperity of all the rest. When this great

truth is well understood, it may, perhaps, become the peacemaker of

the world. Nations have their defects and passions like individuals,

and well-established international laws, conventions, and unions

are necessary to protect the weak and helpless from the strong and

ambitious.

CHAPTER XXI.

SWITZERLAND AND THE EUROPEAN SITUATION.

Switzerland has no small influence on the affairs of Europe, as well

by its situation as by its warlike genius. There is much of history,

but still more political anomaly, written in the very conglomerate map

of Switzerland. It is a land of unfulfilled destiny. The eye traces

its great water-courses into the most important countries of civilized

Europe, and recognizes the lines down which potent influences, social

and political, are to descend. Its political boundaries do not coincide

with those of nature; they are erratic, the result of wars and

political vicissitudes. On the one hand, France shoots out spurs of her

territory into Switzerland, and Switzerland, on the other hand, by the

force of circumstances, has overlapped Italian ground, taking in Ticino

south of the main chain of the Alps, which is Italian in climate and

flora; a large part of the Grisons is east of the Rhine, and of the

ranges separating it from Tyrol; while Schaffhausen and a couple of

villages in the Canton of Basel are altogether on the north side of the

line, the German town of Constanz is to the south of the line. Again,

if a Swiss wishes to pass from the Rhine valley to Geneva by the south

bank of the lake, he must cross French territory in order to do so. The

southwest frontier of Switzerland stops at Geneva, instead of extending

to the Jura, which forms its natural frontier. Military writers have

pointed out that the easiest route for an investing force from Germany

would be through Switzerland; and similarly for a force from France,

over the Jura, by Zurich, to the Rhine at Schaffhausen. “That a power

which was master of Switzerland could debouch on the theatre of

operations of the Rhone, the Saône, Po, or Danube; from Geneva an army

could march on Lyons, from Basel it could gain the valley of Saône by

Belfort, from Constance the Danube could be reached; Italy could be

invaded, and the lines of defence of that country against France and

Austria turned.”[117]

This potential position of Switzerland, a prominent point of moral

and political contact between powerful and somewhat antagonistic

powers, on the one side confining the limits of the German empire, and

on the other setting bounds to the French republic, naturally gives

rise to many speculations. The gamut of these is frequently run by

the newspapers; Germany making overtures for a treaty undertaking to

protect Switzerland’s neutrality; France negotiating for the occupation

by Switzerland of the Chablais and Faucigny districts, in Upper Savoy,

in accordance with the treaties of 1815 and 1830, thus preventing the

intervention of Italy as against France; then the right of Switzerland

to occupy certain districts of Savoy, in case of war, is held by the

German authorities to have been settled by the Congress of Vienna and

needs no further discussion; on the other hand, it is alleged that this

right was subsequently denied by Napoleon III., after the annexation

of Savoy to France; and as a culmination, Germany makes a serious

proposition to Italy for the partition of Switzerland, but Italy

declines the offer, preferring to have a little neutral and friendly

republic than a great military empire as her neighbor; the proposition

is submitted to France in turn, and also declined, as the greater

portion of Switzerland being Teutonic in race and tongue, France

could get but a small fragment and Italy a still smaller. The theory

is also advanced of making Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg,

and Belgium into a sort of federated block of neutral territory, the

inviolability of which all the rest of Europe should solemnly pledge

itself to accept. Regardless of these diplomatic tergiversations

Switzerland continues to be governed according to the choice of its

own people, and not according to the _bon plaisir_ of foreign powers.

The sort of negative which the Swiss government practises, and which

is what the position of the country specially requires, is displayed

both in the theory and execution of the Swiss federal system, and by

a great prudence in foreign policy. Its policy since the beginning of

the sixteenth century has been neutrality. The object of the Congress

of Vienna in guaranteeing the neutrality of Switzerland was primarily

strategical; it was also felt to be essential that steps should be

taken to prevent any one power from gaining possession of the line of

the Alps upon the breaking out of a fresh war.[118] The appreciation

of this danger was strongly expressed by the First Consul of France,

in an address issued in 1803, wherein he announced: “I would have gone

to war on account of Switzerland; I would have sacrificed a hundred

thousand men, rather than allowed it to remain in the hands of the

parties who were at the head of the last insurrection; so great is the

influence of its geographical position upon France. The interests of

defence bind Switzerland to France; those of attack render it of value

to other powers.” Switzerland bears relations to the great powers of

contemporary civilization, in some respects, even more remarkable than

those which the little strip of soil along the Jordan, at the meeting

of the continents, bore to the civilizations of antiquity. Like that

of Palestine, its situation, while affording small temptation to

aggression upon its neighbors, is supremely advantageous for defence,

for isolation from foreign influence; and yet, at the same time, for

the exercise of effective influence outward upon the coterminous

nations. To these advantages it adds another, in its polyglot

facility of communication with the most important nations of Europe.

Preserving its ancient character, content within itself, constituting

a confederated republic, which, by its good order and industry,

morals and laws, rivals in age the oldest monarchy with its stability

of self-government,--the greatest of these monarchies cannot afford

to despise its friendship. Not only securing and protecting its own

liberty, but it has been the arbiter of the fate of other people. It

has given examples of those qualities by which men may be so ennobled

that they are respected even amid their comparative poverty and

weakness; heroes, though too few to be feared by the weak, they are too

brave to be insulted by the strong.

In Europe, powers of apparently inconsiderable greatness have usually

brought about its most decided changes, or at least have most

influenced its historical course. Thus did Venice in the times of the

Crusades, and Switzerland during the Burgundian and Italian wars; as

Holland at the commencement of the eighteenth century gave a new form

to Europe, so did Sweden predominate in the seventeenth century, and

in the earlier half of that age surpass France herself in splendor.

It seems to be a capital necessity of great states to have something

placed between them that may relieve the severity of their mutual

friction; an arm of the sea; an impassable mountain; a small neutral

state, one not strong enough to play a great part in foreign politics,

but, with a modest policy, absorbed in domestic affairs; any of these

may be of great importance to limit and moderate the dangerous currents

of great politics. This was illustrated by the action of Austria,

after the partition of Poland and the consequent juxtaposition of

Russia, offering to restore its part of Poland for the purpose of

reconstituting that kingdom. The present age in Europe differs entirely

from that of the Middle Ages. Then the general tendency was to small

states, now it is to large ones. Then there existed a number of petty

monarchies and republics; the unity of the Roman empire was ideal

rather than actual. The tendency to form larger states began with

England, and is seen on the continent after the latter part of the

fifteenth century, and has not yet reached its limits. Everywhere there

is a tendency to the formation of large and important states, speaking

for the most part one language throughout their whole territory. It

is promoted by the quickened impetus of trade and commerce, increased

military and financial resources, improved and extended communication,

and by the entire development of modern civilization. This progress

towards the establishment of extensive and consolidated nationalities

is conspicuously found in the present German empire. Though in no sense

a restoration of the Holy Roman Empire, it is a real restoration of the

ancient German kingdom, and the Kaiser fairly represents the German

kingship from which the thirteen ancient Cantons gradually split off.

Russia is practically the only Slavonic state; Italy comprises nearly

all the Italians, except a few resident upon the head and eastern side

of the Adriatic Gulf; France has by her losses in the Franco-Prussian

war become more French, since neither Alsace nor Lorraine is inhabited

by people of the Gallic race; Spain and Portugal comprise the entire

Spanish Peninsula; Austria is a great mongrel state and represents no

national aim, but is composed of fragments of various nationalities.

The national question in the British Islands is not settled, and may

end in separation or more probably in the formation of a federation.

The smaller semi-independent principalities of Servia, Roumania,

Bulgaria, East Roumelia are simply materials out of which a second

Slavonic state may at some time be formed, perhaps under the authority

of Russia. The natural fate of Holland is absorption into Germany;

of Belgium, absorption into France. Turkey--how this cumberer of

the earth can be disposed of without kindling a general European

conflagration is a question that puzzles the wisest statesman. This

unification might be made to play a beneficial part in checking war and

improving the European situation; but so far it has merely essayed a

science of combination, of application, and of deception, according to

times, places, and circumstances. In the process of absorption there

has not been shown much disposition to take questions of ethics into

consideration in dealing with weaker peoples; even self-interest seems

at times to be a less strong motive than the desire to annoy one’s

neighbors. Bentham somewhere proves that there is such a thing as

“disinterested malevolence;” and if it exists at all, it is certainly

to be discovered in the action of these great European powers. Many of

them present vicious systems of military and coercive governments; vast

empires resting upon bayonets and semi-bureaucracy, an anachronism and

an incubus upon the true development of national life. All these great

powers are monstrous outgrowths of warlike ambition and imperial pride

in different degrees and under different conditions. On nearly every

battle-field great questions of dynastic and national reconstruction

have hung in the balance; military operations have been the decisive

factors. Huge military systems are abnormal, the morbid results of the

spirit of war and domination, of national selfishness and revolutionary

violence. The game of kings has become the impact of armed peoples.

The Congress of Vienna settled the affairs of Europe upon a basis

which endured with but few changes for almost fifty years; the great

treaty of Berlin of 1878, in form an act of restitution as well as of

peace, has become as dead a letter as the treaty of Paris of 1856.

Principles of older date and less questionable validity than treaties

patched up with premature jubilation obtain; and the solemn irony of

Prince Talleyrand, that “non-intervention is a diplomatic term, which

signifies much the same as intervention,” has become axiomatic. It is

no exaggeration to speak of Europe as an armed camp, with the dogs

of war pulling heavily on their chains. Armies of men stand scowling

into one another’s eyes across a fanciful frontier, marked by a few

parti-colored posts. In spite of all European assurances of “cloudless

political horizons” and “luxuriant international olive-branches,”

the perfection of armaments and the augmentation of already enormous

armies go faithfully on. Every one who visits Europe must be amazed

at the military influence that everywhere dominates, especially on

the continent. “Above the roar of the city street sounds the sharp

drum-beat of the passing regiment; in the sweet rural districts the

village church-bell cannot drown the bugle peal from the fortress on

the hill. France sinks millions in frontier strongholds, Russia masses

troops in Poland and on the Pruth, Austria strengthens her fortresses

in Galicia, and Germany builds railways to the Rhine and bridges

to span its yellow flood.” There is no European peace, except that

peace described by Hosea Biglow, which was “druv in with bag’nets.”

Montesquieu, the upright magistrate, who, living under despotic rule,

nevertheless insisted that by the Constitution of France its king was

not absolute, sought in the records of history to discern the tendency

of each great form of government, and has left his testimony that

“_L’esprit de la monarchie est la guerre et l’agrandissement; l’esprit

de la république est la paix et la modération_” (“the spirit of

monarchy is war and aggrandizement; the spirit of a republic is peace

and moderation”).

An armed truce is preserved out of mutual terror; if tranquillity

exists, it is not the repose of reasonable, kindly powers, but the

crouching attitude of relentless rivals dreading the enemy whom they

hate, and afraid of the destructive weapons which support modern

warfare, making the “mowing down” no longer figurative, but horribly

literal. Sheer force holds a larger place than it has held in modern

times since the fall of Napoleon; and the will to take, without better

reason than the power to hold, is naked and undisguised. One of the

most melancholy forms which this aggression has taken, and seems

destined to occupy so much of the future energies of imperialism,

is the partition and exploitation of the vast African continent and

the defenceless islands of the Pacific. It is done in the name of

“civilization,” and called _l’occupation des territoires sans maître_.

In the Pacific Ocean the work has been nearly completed, Samoa and

Hawaii remaining as almost the last abodes of aboriginal sovereignty.

Colonial extension and annexation is a veritable European Pandora’s

box; war is constantly threatened for the sake of localities whose

very names were previously unknown, and whose possession would seem

of no practical importance. Since Dido tricked the Numidian king in

her survey and purchase of a site for Carthage,[119] the world has

been in constant trouble upon the subject of boundaries, and a very

large proportion of the wars between nations, like lawsuits between

individuals, have arisen over disputed boundary lines. The cry of

“fifty-four forty or fight,” the national watchword of the United

States in 1846, has found an echo in every age. Between England and

Russia smoulders the Central Asia and Turkish empire question; between

England and France the matter of Egyptian occupation; Italy and France

have their quarrel over Tunis and Tripoli, and the Mediterranean

generally. Then there is the crux of the Balkan peninsula, where

Austria and Russia glower at each other across the Carpathians; this

Eastern question is opened as often as the temple of Janus, and, like

that temple, its opening means war. So it goes; when pushed under

at St. Petersburg, alarm makes its appearance in Paris; and when

silenced on the Rhine, it causes itself to be heard among the Balkans.

Russia lowers across Europe from the east, patiently waiting, and not

fearing central European alliance, confident some day, by natural

expansion, of overshadowing all eastern Europe, and gathering at will

and in its own good time all the Slavonic people under its suzerain

guardianship. France casts a dark shadow from the west, while the

“_furor Teutonicus_” and the “_furie Française_” flourish perennially

in the blood-feud which has Alsace-Lorraine for its bitter badge.[120]

France looks with natural uneasiness at the iron circle in which

the unity of Germany and Italy is circumscribing her influence and

expansion. The tremendous struggle with Germany, with its crushing

defeat and the provinces torn away, left a wound that will not heal,

but with its gloomy memories and poignant regrets, with its latent but

unfailing suggestion of revenge, too frequently guides her policy.

While a united Germany made short work with the French emperor, it left

France exasperated, and probably in a less unsound condition than at

any previous moment since 1789.

Germany, with the huge mass of Russia on one side and the lithe

strength of France on the other, must sleep in armor; during any

respite from the partisans of _la revanche_ on the one frontier or a

murmur of Panslavism from Moscow, Germany confronts serious problems

with her congeries of states. It remains to be seen how Germany will

get on without the large, comprehensive, incomparable skill and the

mettle of unyielding determination with which the Iron Chancellor

laid all international questions under tribute to the _Vaterland_.

This continental entanglement points to England as holding the

balance of power; jealous of Russia’s encroachments in the east,

jealous of Austria, jealous of the power of Germany, worried with a

certain uneasiness that “the circles of the morning drum-beat” may be

broken, England finds in this situation much food for contemplation

and conjecture. All European movements, especially on the part of the

Great Powers,[121] profess to have no other object than to preserve

their “political equilibrium” or the “balance of power.” Excepting the

wars of religion, most European wars of the last three centuries have

sought justification in this pretext, which is but another phase of the

boundary question. Up to a very recent date the English Parliamentary

grants for supplies needed to support the army were expressly recited

to be made for the purpose “of preserving the balance of power in

Europe.” The “European Concert,” with its brood of auxiliaries, in the

_modus vivendi_, _status quo_, and _entente cordiale_, interlarded with

numerous _pourparlers_, separating _re infecta_, is not the harmonious

institution its musical title would indicate; but disagreements are

constantly arising as to who shall be _chef de musique_ and who shall

play second fiddle. It is a mere decorous synonyme for “European

discord.” When not having in view a general scheme of spoliation,

it is looking to the carving out the shape, the conditions, and the

destinies of the remaining small states, with a cynical indifference

as to the weal or wish of the populations. European powers are simply

racing in the absurd and ruinous rivalry for the mightiest battalions

and the heaviest budgets. Under the plea of _si vis pacem para bellum_

each one is striving to steal a march upon its neighbors, absolutely

blind to the obvious fact that with each fraction of accelerated speed

in one all the rest perforce quicken their pace. The danger of this

much misused axiom, which advises the securing of peace by preparing

for war, brings a crushing burden of apprehension; it involves conduct

that betrays designs of future hostility, and if it does not excite

violence, always generates malignity with a sly reciprocation of

indirect injuries without the bravery of war or the security of peace.

From such a condition some chance tide rather than any chosen course

may any day cause a rupture. Nations drift into war, and peace is

rarely disturbed by serious matters. The commercial necessities of

Europe cannot much longer bear the severe strain of this unnaturally

swollen and crushing militarism, a conscription so ruthless which

demands one inhabitant out of every hundred and takes one producer

out of every twenty, transferring him from the ranks of tax-payers to

the ranks of tax-consumers. This strain must be lessened or it will

infallibly snap; the people are merely the soldiers of an army, they

are drilled rather than governed; the workman is getting tired of going

to his labors carrying a soldier upon his back; the masses are coming

to regard appeals to their patriotism as full of bitter mockery, being

mere appeals to kill their neighbors or distant races that they and

their children may be more permanently enslaved at home. A universal

revolt is inevitable against exactions so intolerable, idiotic, and

inhuman. If those alone who “sowed the wind did reap the whirlwind”

it would be well, but the mischief is that the madness of ambition

and the schemes of diplomacy find their victims principally among

the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for

every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp, like the torrent

which originates, indeed, in the mountain, but commits its devastation

in the vale. If there is no check on this increasing demand upon

the lives and property of the masses, “this devouring mischief of

militarism which is consuming the vitals of Europe,” the mightiest

potentate may find that he has to face a combination of the toiling

and suffering classes against which all his weapons will be futile.

“Great,” says Carlyle, “is the combined voice of men, the utterance

of their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts; it is the

greatest a man encounters among the sounds and shadows which make up

this world of time.” There is no constitution and no despotism which

could stand against it for a moment. The modern emperor is only an

apparition in comparison with the imperial muscle and bone of his

ancient prototype; no longer he is regarded as the “deputy elect of

the Lord,” whom the “breath of worldly men cannot depose.” A revolt,

political in its aims but economic in its origin, will take place; an

economic revolt tending to change the economical conditions of the

masses and a political revolt tending to modify the very essence of the

political organization, demanding that these vast armies be disbanded,

the swords turned into ploughshares, and the victory of the industrial

over the military type of civilization be established. A revolution

toward the final abolition of feudalism with its arbitrary privileges

for the few and its excessive burdens for the many, toward the fuller

participation of the people in the work of government and their more

efficient protection in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor.

Otherwise the dilemma is a sad one,--to remain a colossal arsenal or

become a wild field of devastation; war would mean destruction of human

life and of the elements of national prosperity beyond precedent.

Whether these immense armaments will be peacefully discontinued or war

ensue as the only solution, and if so, what will be its effect on the

map of Europe, are all momentous questions beyond the ken of man. The

powers leagued together in the Triple Alliance may, if favored by the

wealth and maritime power of England, serve as a potent guarantee for

the maintenance of peace. This European drama is unfolding its actions

slowly, so that no one can tell what it will bring forth; constantly

new novelties are being introduced upon the stage with an increasing

number of hints of stranger things to come. The prominent persons

in the play, though preserving a romantic air of mystery, manage

constantly to throw off a multiform mass of suggestions, speculations,

and visions. What is developing astonishes the mind while it fascinates

the imagination, for it seems to be nothing less vast and portentous

than the passing away of the whole existing order of things almost

without notice, certainly without comprehension. What proportions this

gigantic, this politico-social movement will assume, how much of what

is old it will leave standing, what the new order will be like, these

are questions which Europe’s brain has not yet fairly grasped, much

less tried to answer.

There is a strong continental opinion that in the event of war

Switzerland can hardly hope to successfully maintain the position

assumed by it in 1870; that it occupies too small a space in the great

chart of European political and military calculations to have much

weight attached to its views. With less confidence in treaty guarantees

than in the maxim of Cromwell, whose Ironsides were taught to “put

their trust in God and keep their powder dry,” Switzerland will heed

the advice given in the reply of the German chancellor, when asked

in 1870 to what extent Swiss neutrality would be observed, said, “to

the extent to which you yourselves respect the device of the Scottish

Order of the Thistle, ‘_nemo me impune lacessit_.’” Switzerland can no

longer rely upon its mountain wall, which for so many ages, combined

with other geographical advantages, formed a safe breastwork against

the invader. Nature herself seemed to have thrown her arms around

Helvetia to protect her from the invader; and by encompassing her

with inaccessible mountains, tremendous precipices, and stupendous

masses of eternal ice, to make her, as Frederick the Great of Prussia

described the lords of Savoy, “kings by virtue of their locality.” The

craggy escarpments, bastioned with horrid precipices, parapeted and

battlemented with eternal snow, were the ramparts of the cradle of her

liberty; they played a great part:

“That like giants stand

To sentinel enchanted land.”

Then Switzerland was self-contained, and enemies could not get at it.

It could say with the Psalmist, “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills,

from whence cometh my help.” “We did not fear,” said the shepherds

of Uri, “the armies of France; we are _four hundred_ strong, and if

that is not sufficient, _four hundred_ more in our valley are ready

to march to the defence of the country.” In the same spirit wrote the

Council of Bern, “A handful of Swiss is a match for an army; on our

own soil, with our mountains behind us, we can defy the world.” The

Helvetic Confederacy made the greatest and most powerful nations of

Europe tremble in the fifteenth century; but Switzerland is no longer

defended by natural frontiers; its two great cities, that of Geneva on

the one side, and Basel upon the other, lie open to the invader, and

the occupation of two or three points upon its railway system (which

but for its army could be easily reached) would paralyze its defence;

the strength with which nature had endowed Switzerland under the old

condition of things has been wellnigh cancelled by the grand appliances

of modern science, wealth, and organization. Modern Switzerland is

now no stronger than any other part of Europe. Defence no longer can

be intrusted to natural ramparts, the Alps, and mountaineers, led by

the sound of the horn, and armed with the bow of Tell. The strength

of Switzerland is exactly proportioned to its armed force; numerical

strength preponderates in military fields, and victory attends the

largest army. This implies no impeachment of Swiss courage and

patriotism; that love of country, wrought into a great and noble

sentiment, which summons to its aid every better portion of human

excellence; that exalted power which gives vigor and efficacy to our

exertions as citizens, which strengthens our constancy and animates

our valor, which heightens our contempt of danger and inflames our

impatience of oppression. There is no safer criterion of the virtue and

happiness of a people than the height to which their attachment for

their country is raised, and the difficulties which they are prepared

to encounter in rescuing it from danger or exalting it to glory. As

patriotism is always more intense in small states, where union for the

purposes of self-preservation is more indispensably necessary, so the

same institutions which have engaged the affections of the Swiss will

likely inspire them with the courage and wisdom requisite for their

defence. Switzerland will be prepared in event of a rearrangement of

the map of Europe, by which it is likely to be effected, to demand a

voice in the general summing up. Even to the diplomatist, who, wanting

to reach an understanding, must have something behind it to command

attention and respect, and exclaims, “Don’t trouble me with your

arguments, tell me with what force you will back them,” Switzerland

is not without an answer. The republic is not unprepared for war, as

already shown in the chapter on the army; every man in shop and field

would start into a soldier at the bugle’s call; a soldier armed,

equipped, and ready for the march. Great sacrifices are willingly made

in order to keep on foot an admirable democratic army. All the adjuncts

for making this army a mobile factor in the field are under the Swiss

system complete and in thorough working order. It could put into the

field and maintain effectively 200,000 men, to prove that Switzerland

was not a “mere geographical expression,” but a very formidable entity.

The Swiss General Dufour, in a letter addressed to the French minister

of war, just before the war broke out in 1870, after giving the size

of the Swiss army, added: “Beyond all these defences we can count upon

the national spirit in the heart of every citizen; a resolution to

protect our independence and neutrality, let the storm break on us from

whatever side it may.” What 200,000 brave Swiss sharpshooters might do

defending their liberty in those mountain fastnesses no European army

would care to learn by close experience. Their stout hearts and hardy

arms will be ever ready, as in preceding ages, to vindicate against

countless hosts their personal liberty and the independence of their

country.

The Swiss government is not unaware that its neutrality may at any

time be endangered; that a small state is always in danger when it

stands in the way of the arms or the ambition or the greed of the

great ones, that if its territory offers a convenient route for the

rival armies, they would not hesitate to brush away its neutrality, in

spite of all guarantees, as the Allies did in 1814. Accordingly for

years past the government has been quietly but steadily preparing to

defend the country in such an event. The plan, so far, consists in the

fortifications of the summit of St. Gothard; the plateau of Andermatt

commands not only the base of the St. Gothard, but the valleys, and

whoever is able to hold it can prevent any passage across Switzerland

from south to north. Since 1885 nearly 10,000,000 francs have been

spent on the strengthening of this commanding position; forts have

been placed so as to confront each of the four roads by which alone

the stronghold can be passed, and it is thought that a large force

of troops make it convenient to be cantoned in the vicinity, ready

to make the most of the facilities for repelling intrusion when the

occasion requires. They certainly could offer stubborn resistance to

any junction being effected between portions of the German and Italian

armies. The military Alpine roads, Furka, Ober-Alp, and Axenstrasse,

are all kept in good condition by liberal appropriations.

Ever since 1830, when the religious refugees from France, England,

and Flanders sought shelter there, and who, Sismondi relates, were

wont to fall down on their knees and bless God when they came in sight

of the Swiss mountains, the _right of asylum_ has been a difficult

question for Switzerland, occasioning constant diplomatic collision.

In 1838 the demand of the French government for the expulsion of Louis

Napoleon, which was declined by Switzerland, almost led to war, and

it was probably only avoided by his voluntary departure. Switzerland

has never flinched from this sacred and most embarrassing duty of

hospitality to the oppressed. The influx of political fugitives from

the despotic countries of Europe, seeking shelter from their pursuers,

has involved it in many a bitter discussion with powerful neighbors,

but it has stood firm in maintaining the sanctity of its principles and

soil, in the face of their overwhelming force and domineering spirit.

A determined rejection of foreign interference in its domestic affairs

has been maintained, and when in 1847 the blockade or cordon was

established, all access to the rebel district was forbidden to foreign

agents. Under the constitution the federal authorities have the right

to expel from Swiss territory any foreigners whose presence endangers

the internal or external security of the Confederation. An asylum is

offered to the members of all parties suffering political persecution,

as long as they show themselves worthy of such consideration by

peaceful conduct. The republic, however, grants them no asylum, if,

while on its territory, they continue their intrigues and attacks on

the existence and security of other states. It preserves a faithful

regard for its international obligations, and, as an evidence of its

firm determination to fulfil them, keeps a federal official, known as

the _Procurator General_, whose duty it is to prosecute any foreigners,

socialists, nihilists, and _agents provocateurs_, and other dangerous

types, who abuse the hospitality of the country for the shelter and

promotion of schemes endangering either its international peace or

internal security. In July, 1890, Germany gave notice to Switzerland

that the treaty between the two countries, regulating the “settlement

of foreigners,” would not be renewed at its expiration, which occurs

at the end of 1891. This question of asylum involves in its handling

the utmost skill and judgment; anything like bravado or anything

like servility would be equally out of place. A dignified and wise

discretion is necessary to enable Switzerland to continue to offer

a safe refuge to the proscribed victims of the endless political

revolutions and counter-revolutions of the surrounding nations, but

it is believed, complicated as it is with delicate entanglements of

diplomatic relations, and suspicions of countenancing schemes of

anarchy, it will continue to meet every exigency of the question with

an honest and fearless policy.

If the acquisition of power has a certain tendency to weaken the ties

of federal union, we should expect that a Confederacy, deprived by

natural as well as adventitious circumstances of all pretension to

political power, would for that reason possess in a superior degree the

merit of stability. Everything that sets in motion the springs of the

human heart, engages the Swiss to the protection of their inestimable

privileges. Bold and intrepid; a frame fitted to endure toil; a soul

capable of despising danger; an enthusiastic love of freedom; an

abhorrence of the very name or emblem of royalty illustrated in ages of

heroic and martial exploits, that with steadfast and daring enterprise

built up a nation and a state; with these qualities they will, if the

necessity comes, bear in mind the warning of their own Rousseau, “Ye

free nations, remember this maxim, freedom may be acquired, but it

cannot be recovered.” In the moment of peril the Swiss will be moved

by the spirit of their brave old Landammann, who answered the Duke of

Burgundy: “Know that you may, if it be God’s will, gain our barren and

rugged mountains; but, like our ancestors of old, we will seek refuge

in wilder and more distant solitudes, and when we have resisted to the

last, we will starve in the icy wastes of the glaciers; men, women, and

children, we will be frozen into annihilation together, ere our free

Switzer will acknowledge a foreign master.”

There may be a deeper danger awaiting Switzerland, to which no

spirit, however vigorous and resolute, can be commensurate--a danger

from within and not from without. The nation which, by the adverse

circumstances of numerical inferiority, poverty of means, or failure

of enterprise, cannot sustain its own citizens in the acquisition of a

just renown and material welfare, is deficient in one of the first and

most indispensable elements of strength. A small state is apt to waste

its strength in acts too insignificant for general interest, frittering

away its mental riches, no less than its treasure and blood, in

supporting interests that fail to enlist the sympathies of any beyond

the pale of its own borders; glory and strength, like riches, finding

themselves, and being most apt to be found, where their fruits have

already accumulated. If from any source evil should come to this little

republic, in the patriotic words of its latest historian, “Generations

will point to the spot where it arose and flourished, and will say,

Here once lived a free, self-governing people, a small but active

republic, with remarkable institutions, with a famous and memorable

history.”

POPULATION AND SOIL, CENSUS, 1888.

+------+--------------+----------+---------+-----------+-------------+

|Order | CANTONS |Population| Total | | |

| | | | area | Productive| Unproductive|

+------+--------------+----------+---------+-----------+-------------+

| | | | [*] | [*] | [*] |

| 1 |Zurich | 339,014 | 1,724.7 | 1,616 | 108.7 |

| 2 |Bern | 539,305 | 6,889 | 5,385.7 | 1,503.3 |

| 3 |Luzern | 135,780 | 1,500.8 | 1,369 | 131.8 |

| 4 |Uri | 17,284 | 1,076 | 477.7 | 598.3 |

| 5 |Schwyz | 50,396 | 908.5 | 660.2 | 248.3 |

| 6 |Unterwalden | | | | |

| | Obwald | 15,032 | 474.8 | 399.4 | 75.4 |

| | Nidwald | 12,524 | 290.5 | 217.9 | 72.6 |

| 7 |Glarus | 33,800 | 691.2 | 448.6 | 242.6 |

| 8 |Zug | 23,120 | 239.2 | 194.3 | 44.9 |

| 9 |Freiburg | 119,562 | 1,669 | 1,469.6 | 199.4 |

| 10 |Solothurn | 85,720 | 783.6 | 717.8 | 65.8 |

| 11 |Basel | | | | |

| | Stadt | 74,247 | 35.8 | 30.4 | 5.4 |

| | Landschaft | 62,133 | 421.6 | 405.6 | 16 |

| 12 |Schaffhausen | 37,876 | 294.2 | 281 | 13.2 |

| 13 |Appenzell | | | | |

| | Ausser-Rhoden| 54,200 | 260.6 | 253.6 | 7 |

| | Inner-Rhoden | 12,906 | 159 | 144.4 | 14.6 |

| 14 |St. Gallen | 229,441 | 2,019 | 1,713.5 | 305.5 |

| 15 |Grisons | 96,291 | 7,184.8 | 3,851.6 | 3,333.2 |

| 16 |Aargau | 193,834 | 1,404 | 1,341.7 | 62.3 |

| 17 |Thurgau | 105,091 | 988 | 835.6 | 152.4 |

| 18 |Ticino | 127,148 | 2,818.4 | 1,880 | 938.4 |

| 19 |Vaud | 251,296 | 3,222.8 | 2,728.8 | 494 |

| 20 |Valais | 101,837 | 5,247.1 | 2,409.9 | 2,837.2 |

| 21 |Neuchâtel | 109,037 | 807.8 | 572.3 | 235.5 |

| 22 |Genève | 106,738 | 279.4 | 232.9 | 46.5 |

+------+--------------+----------+---------+-----------+-------------+

| | Total |2,933,612 |41,389.8 | 29,637.5 | 11,752.3 |

+------+--------------+----------+---------+-----------+-------------+

[*] Square kilometres.

MONEY, WEIGHTS, MEASURES.

Franc Cents, 19.3.

One hundred centimes One franc.

Metre, equal to 1.094 yards.

Kilometre, equal to .621 mile.

Metric quintal, or metre

centner, equal to 100 kilogrammes, or 2

cwt. nearly (1 cwt.

3 qrs. 24½ ƚbs.).

Square kilometre, equal to .386 square mile.

Hectare, equal to 2½ acres nearly (2 acres,

1 rood, 35½ poles).

Centner, equal to about 110¼ ƚbs.

Cubic metre, equal to 1.308 cubic yards.

Litre, equal to .88 quart.

Hectolitre, equal to 22 gallons.

CENSUS OF 1888.

AREA--PRODUCTIVE AND UNPRODUCTIVE LAND.

_Productive Land._

Forest 7,714.2 square kilometres.

Vineyards 305 ” ”

Cultivated 21,618.3 ” ”

--------

Total 29,637.5 ” ”

_Unproductive Land._

Glaciers 1,838.8 square kilometres.

Lakes 1,386.1 ” ”

Cities, villages, and outer buildings 161.8 ” ”

Area of railroads, turnpikes, etc., }

rivers and rocky wastes } 8,365.6 ” ”

--------

Total 11,752.3 ” ”

_Population as to Confessions._

Protestants 1,724,869

Catholics 1,189,662

Jews 8,384

Others 10,697

_As to Languages._

German 2,092,479

French 637,710

Italian 156,482

Others 8,565

ORDER AND DATES OF THE ENTRY OF THE TWENTY-TWO CANTONS INTO THE

CONFEDERATION.

Order of

entry. French name. German name. Year.

1 Zurich Zürich 1351.

2 Berne Bern 1353.

3 Lucerne Luzern 1332.

4 Uri Uri 1291.

5 Schwytz Schwyz 1291.

6 Unterwalden Unterwalden 1291.

Le haut Obwald

Le bas Nidwald

7 Glaris Glarus 1352.

8 Zoug Zug 1352.

9 Fribourg Freiburg 1481.

10 Soleure Solothurn 1481.

11 Bâle Basel 1501.

Ville Stadt.

Campagne Landschaft.

12 Schaffhouse Schaffhausen 1501.

13 Appenzell Appenzell 1573.

Rhodes-Extérieures Ausser-Rhoden.

Rhodes-Intérieures Inner-Rhoden.

14 St. Gall St. Gallen 1803.

15 Grisons Graubünden 1803.

16 Argovie Aargau 1803.

17 Thurgovie Thurgau 1803.

18 Tessin (It. Ticino) Tessin 1803.

19 Vaud Waadt 1803.

20 Valais Wallis 1814.

21 Neuchâtel Neuenburg 1814.

22 Genève Genf 1814.

APPENDIX.

COPY OF THE LATIN “PACT OF 1291” IN THE ARCHIVES OF SCHWYZ.