The Swiss Republic

1 Müller, “Histoire des Suisses.”

2 “History of the Helvetic Confederation,” Lausanne, 1650.

3 See Appendix for original Pact and translation.

4 A federal executive officer resembling the French consul.

5 The history of Switzerland affords frequent instances of mutual succors for these purposes.

6 After this battle Francis stamped on his medals, “Vici ab uno Cæsare victos” (“I vanquished those whom Cæsar alone had before vanquished”).

7 It was only in 1857 that the anomalous condition of Neuchâtel ceased. The rights of the kings of Prussia as sovereigns date back to the cession made of it in 1707 by William of Orange to his cousin Frederick, first King of Prussia. In 1806 it was granted as a principality to Marshal Berthier, and so recognized by all the powers of Continental Europe. The Congress of Vienna restored it to the King of Prussia, making it, however, a Canton of the Helvetian Republic. In 1848 a revolution forcibly overturned the authority of the King of Prussia, and it so remained, in apparent conflict to what had been formally recognized by all the Great Powers, until 1857, when a treaty was signed between Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, Great Britain, and Switzerland, by which it was made independent, to continue to form a part of the Swiss Confederation, by the same title as the other Cantons.

8 Rufus Choate.

9 Book xxi., ch. 31.

10 The dog Barry, one day, found a little child in a half-frozen state; he began directly to lick him, and having succeeded first in restoring animation, and next in the complete resuscitation of the boy, he induced the child by his caresses to tie himself on his back. When this was effected, he carried the poor child, as if in triumph, to the hospice. The body of Barry was stuffed and placed in the museum at Bern, and may be seen there, with the little vial still hanging to his neck in which he carried a reviving drink for the perishing traveller.

11 Zwingli lost his life in 1531 in the battle of Cappel; though he fell under another banner than that of the Prince of Peace, he was acting in obedience to the law of the republic, and accompanied the army by the express command of the magistrates. He is represented as a man of great meekness and moderation and charity, and, amidst all the disputes, was a constant advocate for peace and reconciliation.

12 A hair-dresser of Geneva was imprisoned for arranging a bride’s hair with too much attention to vanity; and a woman was beaten for singing secular words to a psalm-tune; men were imprisoned for reading what were considered profane books, and children beheaded for striking a parent.

13 The old curator of the Bern Museum would say to the visitors, pointing to the portrait of Voltaire, “There is the portrait of the famous M. de Voltaire, who dared to write against the Republic and against God.”

14 Professor Fiske.

15 These words, it may be remarked, are from the same root, ligo, to bind.

16 Agreements to furnish soldiers to foreign countries.

17 There are many provisions regulating the rights of citizens and electors, Cantonal and Communal, which are given in Chapters 6 and 9, and “Chapter on Citizenship.”

18 It reads in the French text, “From his natural judge,” the natural or constitutional judge being the one provided by the terms of the judicial Constitution, and as contradistinguished from an exceptional Court created after the appearance of the case to be adjudged.

19 See amendment of December, 1887.

20 See amendment of June, 1879.

21 Homeless persons, Heimathlosen. These comprise not only foreigners who have lost their nationality of origin without having obtained another, but also natives who are not members of any Swiss Commune.

22 The Constitutional provisions relating to these are fully given in chapters severally devoted to these Departments.

23 The Constitution is officially published in Romansch and Ladin, in addition to the three “national languages.”

24 That the Constitution-making and amending power should be vested in a bare majority of the voting citizens, coupled with a majority of the Cantons, is considered by some as wanting in that solidity and security which are the most vital attributes of a fundamental law. But none of the enactments contained in the Swiss Constitution can be legally abolished or modified without the employment of the Referendum. And no law which revises the Constitution, either wholly or in part, can come into force until it has been regularly submitted by means of the Referendum to the vote of the people, and has been approved by a majority of the citizens who on the particular occasion gave their votes, and also by a majority of the Cantons. It is also provided, that under certain circumstances a vote of the people shall be taken not only on the question, whether a particular amendment or revision approved by the Federal Assembly shall or shall not come into force, but also on the preliminary question whether any revision or reform of the Constitution shall take place at all. And the Referendum in all such cases, in the language of the Constitution, is “obligatory.” The self-imposed checks of the Constitution of the United States, in this respect of amendment, have been described as “obstacles in the way of the people’s whims, not of their wills.” The system of the Initiative for the Swiss constitutional revision (by 50,000 citizens), though modelled upon one of the alternative methods by which amendments to the United States Constitution may be proposed, contains one significant modification of it; the people in the former appear in their national character and independent of state lines; the same holds true of the ratification of amendments.

25 In 1480 fifteen hundred executions took place in Switzerland.

26 By a Federal law to carry out this amendment, the distilled liquors are sold for cash by the Confederation in minimum quantity of a hundred and fifty litres (0.88 quart), and the price to be fixed from time to time by the Federal Council; but it shall never be less than one hundred and twenty francs nor more than one hundred and fifty francs per hectolitre (twenty-two gallons) of pure alcohol. Denaturalized spirits to be sold at cost price for technical and household use.

27 The Swiss Constitution contains 7700 words and 127 articles (including temporary provisions); that of the United States, 5300 words, divided into 37 sections.

28 “American Historical Association,” vol. i., p. 37. Professor Scott.

29 It was the original purpose of the writer to include, as an appendix to this volume, a translation of the Swiss Constitution; a faithful search having failed to discover any publication of it in English. But having ascertained that during the current year two such translations had appeared, one by Professor Edmund J. James, University of Pennsylvania, the other by Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard, copies were obtained, and found to meet, in a most satisfactory and excellent manner, every possible demand for such a work. However, every important provision, and, in fact, almost the complete text of the Constitution, appears in the copious citations from it in the chapters on the Federal Departments, Cantons, Communes, and the Army.

30 John Adams, Works, iv., p. 186.

31 Previous to 1874 the members received only twelve francs a day.

32 Woodrow Wilson, “The State.”

33 Federal legislation may confer upon the Assembly the election or confirmation of other federal officials.

34 This power was exercised in connection with the Neuchâtel revolution of 1856, the Royalist prisoners and deserters being amnestied in 1857.

35 In 1874 it was fixed by a federal law that the Assembly should convene on the first Monday in June for the first, and on the first Monday in December for the second portion of the regular annual session.

36 The remuneration of these officials in 1848, when the system was inaugurated, was much smaller; the President receiving only 6000 francs a year and each of the other members 5000 francs.

37 This election occurs during December of each year on a day agreed upon by the Assembly.

38 Although the Assembly cannot exactly turn out the members of the federal executive during their term of office, it enjoys such extensive power of supervision and control over their acts, and, in fact, exercises so large a part of what is called executive discretion, that it can practically have very little reason for desiring to remove them.

39 “All such laws are adopted by the people, either tacitly or through the referendum; and the judiciary must submit their judgment on constitutional questions to the will of the people.”—Dubs, “Das Oeffentliche Recht der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft.”

40 Marbury vs. Madison, 1 Cranch, 137. Mr. Madison disregarded the obiter opinion of the court, and Mr. Jefferson treated it with contempt. “The federal judges,” he said, “declared that commissions signed and sealed by the President were valid, though not delivered. I deemed delivery essential to complete a deed, which as long as it remains in the hands of the party is as yet no deed. It is in posse only but not in esse, and I withheld delivery of the commissions.” (Letter to Judge Roane, September 6, 1819. Works, vol. vii. p. 135.)

41 “Political Science Quarterly,” June, 1890. C. B. Elliott.

42 See also Professor Bryce, “American Commonwealth,” i. p. 237.

43 Kent’s Commentaries, i. p. 453.

44 Burke.

45 A common standard of weights and measures was adopted in 1835, but the question of the coinage remained unsettled until 1848.

46 It was customary, formerly, to deduct from five to ten per cent. from all property going out of the Canton by inheritance or marriage. It was also usual, when a person wished to sell land, to recognize a right in his relatives, or even neighbors, or fellow-citizens of the Canton, to take the property at an arbitrated value.

47 Communities include school, church, and political territorial divisions, and only the latter are designated as Communes.

48 Repealed in 1879, relegating it to the discretion of the Cantons except as to “political offences.” Since then eight of the Cantons have re-established capital punishment in their codes. They are the small Cantons, and represent only twenty per cent. of the Swiss population. No execution, however, has taken place in any of these Cantons since 1879; two sentences of death have been passed, but in both cases they were commuted to imprisonment for life.

49 Professor Dicey, “Law of the Constitution.”

50 These horns are made to imitate the human voice, and have a most mournful bellow.

51 This is done to secure religious equality and to provide for the representation of the Catholic population in the Communes in which they are in the minority.

52 Et in corruptissima republica plurimæ leges.—Tacitus.

53 Professor Dicey.

54 Numa Droz.

55 See chapter on citizenship.

56 Thomas Jefferson.

57 See chapters on “Constitution” and “Cantons.”

58 This includes, also, birth abroad of children of American citizens temporarily residing or travelling in other countries (Rev. Stat. U. S., Sec. 1993).

59 “Citizenship of the United States,” Richman,—“Political Science Quarterly,” March, 1890.

60 “A citizen of a State is now only a citizen of the United States residing in that State; citizenship of the United States is the primary citizenship; State citizenship is secondary and derivative, depending upon citizenship of the United States.” (Slaughter-House cases, 16 Wallace.)

61 The difficulty of obtaining citizenship, at one time, in the pastoral Cantons, is shown by the fact that no one had done so in lower Unterwald from 1664 to 1815.

62 The successful issue of this suit was due to the vigorous and determined efforts of the United States consul at Zurich, George L. Catlin.

63 These peasant proprietors do not live scattered amid the fields which they till, but are disposed to gather in the centre of the Commune, forming numerous small hamlets.

64 Called in the Roman law legitima portio, legitimate portion; but the German law has a better designation for it,—Pflichttheil, duty part.

65 In the district of Saffelare, a part of East Flanders, which nature has endowed with an unproductive but easily cultivated sandy soil, the territory is composed of 37,000 acres and has to nourish 30,000 inhabitants, all living by agriculture; and yet these peasants not only grow their own food, but they also export agricultural produce, and pay rents to the amount of from fifteen to twenty-five dollars per acre. (Krapotkin, “The Forum,” August, 1890.)

66 In the matter of these capitulations the Cantons claimed that, first, they never granted troops to any prince or state but by virtue of some preceding alliance; second, they granted troops only for the defence of the state they were given to, and not to act offensively; third, that the sovereign never received any subsidy or other advantages from it. The Cantons contented themselves with giving such auxiliary troops as were stipulated by their alliance and procuring a beneficial service for their subjects, without reserving profit to themselves. But in spite of the contention that these mercenaries espoused only a just quarrel, such service was a source of social no less than of political ills, and seriously impaired, for the time, the dignity and standing of the country.

67 Primi in omnibus prœliis oculi vincuntur.—Tacitus.

68 Even the Cantons, from the first institution of their governments and up to the time the Confederation assumed control of the military service, never kept in pay any standing troops. During the wars with the House of Austria the service was performed by militia, who were paid by the respective Cantons while kept in the field, and dismissed as soon as the campaign was ended.

69 The minimum height for a recruit in the United States army is five feet four inches, weight one hundred and twenty-five pounds, and chest measure thirty-two inches.

70 United States Revised Statutes, Sec. 1625, makes subject to enrolment in the militia “every able-bodied male citizen of the respective States, resident therein,” etc.

71 “When the citizens of Geneva were alarmed in the night [the Escalade of December 12, 1602], in the depth of winter, by the enemy, they found their muskets sooner than their shoes.”—Rousseau.

72 The report of 1887 for the Canton of Bern gives 1,925,580 francs expended on the cantonal and communal schools, not including the university.

73 In July of this year (1890) a statue of Pestalozzi was dedicated at Yverdon, on the Lake of Neuchâtel, for it was there that, after many struggles with adversity, he founded, at the beginning of this century, the school which was perhaps more deeply and lastingly useful than any school that ever existed, by spreading the educational tenets and methods of its famous master throughout Europe, and later across to America, with contagious force. The unveiling of the monument was accompanied with a Cantate patriotique by a choir of a thousand children. The statue represents Pestalozzi with a boy and girl whom he is instructing by his side, and bears the simple inscription, “Henry Pestalozzi, 1746-1827. Monument erected by general subscription 1890.”

74 The University of Geneva, at the close of the last century, known as the College of Geneva, and which exerted a wide influence in Europe, being temporarily suppressed during the revolution which had taken place, proposed, through its faculty, the transplanting of the college in a body to the United States. To Washington, who had in view the devoting of a quite large amount of money to the founding, or to the support, of institutions of learning, Jefferson wrote a letter on February 23, 1795, in which he laid before him the plan for the transferring of this institution to the national capital; and in the letter Jefferson characterized the College of Geneva as one of the eyes of Europe in matters of science, the University of Edinburgh being the other.

75 Zurich has made its city forest, the Sihl-Wald, a great public pleasure-ground that pays large sums annually into the city treasury, besides yielding inestimable dividends in the shape of health and happiness to the citizens. This forest has been owned by Zurich ever since 1309, and has been carefully administered for centuries, and is now managed on the most approved scientific principles by corps of trained foresters. Last year the net profits were something over eight dollars an acre, or a total of about twenty thousand dollars, for the city treasury. Half the annual yield of wood is from thinnings alone. In the economic treatment of the forest, its value as a pleasure-ground is not forgotten; the landscape is preserved unharmed, and the place made thoroughly and pleasantly accessible.

76 Early in the seventeenth century a king of Spain came to see a clock which had been made by Jacques Droz, who resided at Locle, and whose automatons were much noted. Upon the clock there were seated a shepherd, a negro, and a dog. As the hour was struck the shepherd played upon his flute, and the dog fondled gently at his feet. But when the king reached forth to touch an apple that hung from a tree under which the shepherd rested, the dog flew at him and barked so furiously that a live dog in the street answered him. One of the courtiers of the king ventured to ask the negro, in Spanish, what time it was. There was no reply, but when the question was repeated in French, an answer was given. All of them at once voted that the clock was the work of an evil one.

77 It is estimated that 200 francs’ worth of steel will make 525,000 francs’ worth of common watch-springs.

78 On the new federal palace at Bern, in progress of construction in 1890, men were employed to act as turnspits, in immense wheels, for elevating the large blocks of stone.

79 Adams and Cunningham, “The Swiss Confederation.”

80 The Fête des Vignerons, which occurs once in fifteen years at one of the villages on the Lake of Geneva, is the most brilliant festival held in Switzerland, and is accompanied with all the light, joyous mirth of the ancient Bacchanalian festivals. It is graphically described in Cooper’s “Headsman.”

81 The word Alp is a provincialism, and means an elevated pasture, and hence the name of the mountains on which the pastures exist.

82 Liquid manure fills an important part in the economy of Swiss husbandry, under the name of Jouche or Mist-Wasser in the German Cantons, and of Lisier in the French Cantons. They collect in large casks the drainage of their manure-piles, stables, and hog-pens, and bring it in carts to the fields, where it is drawn off into wooden tubs fitted to the shoulders of men, and sometimes of women, who, walking along the furrows, distribute it in due proportion to each plant, by stooping to the right and left, the coffee-colored nectar pouring over their heads. It would be impossible to perform an uncleanly task in a more delicate manner.

83 The great projector did not live to see the accomplishment of his grand work.

84 The construction of the St. Gothard railway stopped this indemnity.

85 A report, made in connection with the Swiss National Exhibition of 1883, calculated that up to 1880, 1002 inns had been built for the special use of travellers, and that they contained 58,137 beds, an average of 58 apiece. The capital value of the land, buildings, and furniture belonging to these was estimated at 320,000,000 francs; the gross profits on which were 53,000,000 francs, or seventeen per cent.; this was reduced by deduction of working expenses to 16,000,000 francs, or five per cent. Of these 1002 inns no fewer than 283 are situated in positions above three thousand four hundred feet, and 14 are actually above six thousand five hundred and sixty-two feet in elevation.

Switzerland only became a “play-ground” within the last century. The first English guide-book appeared in 1818, by Daniel Wall, of London. The first of any kind was published in 1684, by Wagner, a Zurich naturalist, and called “Index Memorabilium Helvetiæ.”

86 Ruskin.

87 When these storms break upon the mountain, be it night or day, the bells of the village churches are vigorously rung to exorcise the evil one, and bring the pious villagers on their knees in prayer.

88 These are made of maple, linden, and pine by the shepherds themselves, who bestow much time on their manufacture. The ladles are made in the shape of shells. The milk-strainer, the measures, and the milk-hods are all elegantly shaped and very clean.

89 The chamois is a small species of antelope, somewhat resembling a goat. Its hoofs are remarkably cloven, with a protruding border, which enables it to climb almost perpendicular declivities. Its muscular power is great: it can leap chasms twenty feet wide, and jump down rocks the same distance to platforms with only just room enough for its four hoofs. In the autumn, when strongest and fattest, it is black, in the early spring gray, and in the summer red.

90 It measures four and one-half feet in length and nine to ten feet from wing to wing extended, weighs as much as twenty pounds, and is of a rusty brown color. It is a fierce enemy of sheep, goats, dogs, hares, etc., and has been known to carry off young children.

91 The Swiss infant is bandaged into a large piece of cloth,—to be kept straight, it is explained,—and resembles a pappoose. In the country churches can be seen old paintings of the Virgin holding the infant Christ swathed in just the same manner.

92 A French writer, Picot, went so far as to say of the peasants of Valais: “The Valaisans, far from desiring to attract attention from the world, are jealous of their obscurity, of their ignorance, and even of their poverty, which they believe essential to their happiness.” Many localities have their written existence in song or story. The words of the Vaudois poet, Juste Olivier, “Vivons de notre vie,” have sunk into the hearts of a number of writers who, under their own public alone, are cherishing and seeking to reproduce the life about them, dwelling especially upon those local and traditional phases which they feel daily to be giving way before the march of progress.

93 The winds, refrigerated in their passage over fields of ice and snow, meet there a warm aerial current coming from the plains of Italy.

94 Longfellow’s “Hyperion.”

95 Virgil.

96 The Rhone is made to serve useful as well as æsthetic purposes; the great water-power of this river has been utilized by diverting that part passing on the left of the island into a canal, which conducts the water into a building containing twenty turbines, with four thousand four hundred net horse-power; this power is utilized in a variety of ways, from running sewing-machines to supplying power for an electric light plant; it is an enterprise very profitable to the municipality of Geneva.

97 See Chapter on “Constitution.”

98 In the Canton of Vaud, a short distance back from the lake is Avanche or Avanches, the ancient capital of Helvetia; near this place the Helvetians were defeated by one of Vitellius’s lieutenants, and “many thousand were slain and many sold as slaves, and after committing great ravages the army marched in order of battle to Aventicum, the capital of the country.” (Tacitus.)

99 The first steamer on a Swiss lake was the “Guillaume Tell,” in 1823, on the Lake of Geneva.

100 Whirlwinds of snow, or tourmentes (known in the Grisons), are tossed aloft by the gale, like the sandy vortices of Africa formed by the simoom; they are dangerous by blinding the traveller and effacing the track.

101 On this passage of Helvetian history, there is a poem of exquisite beauty, by Mrs. Hemans, the “Record of Woman:”

102 This place is evidently a fragment, some seventy-five or one hundred acres, that has fallen from the mountain, and, lying between the lake and the rocks, it offered a good point of rendezvous.

103 It is a curious fact that Schiller made Franz, the hero of his “Robbers,” say, “In order to become a finished rascal one must have a certain national bent; he must live in a certain climate and breathe a certain rascally atmosphere; so I advise you to go into the Grisons, for that is, in these days, the Athens of pickpockets.” Schiller was obliged to apologize, the Council of the Leagues threatening to withhold the money they had promised to lend the Duke of Wurtemberg if the offending poet was not punished; he also received an order “never to write more of the same.”

104 In 1796 there appeared in New York an opera in three acts, adapted by William Dunlap from a dramatic performance published in London in 1794, called “Helvetic Liberty.”

105 A rude weapon much used by the early Swiss, consisting of a club ending in a massive knob, with spikes protruding in every direction so as to suggest the name of “morning star.”

106 Although it is alleged that five similar feats to Winkelried’s are on record in Swiss history, only one is recognized and commemorated by the Swiss. In the village square of Stantz is a marble group representing Arnold Winkelried in the act of pressing the Austrian spears into his heart and holding them down, while a second figure pushes forward to take advantage of the gap.

107 The Æneid, vi. 660.

108 At the art exhibition held in Bern this year (1890) there were forty plaster models of statues of William Tell competing for the one it is proposed to erect at Altdorf, 150,000 francs having been appropriated for that purpose.

109 Lamartine.

110 The Aar is perhaps the most interesting water system in Switzerland, especially if we include its great tributaries, the Reuss and the Limmat. Rising among the metamorphic wilds of the Finsteraarhorn, thundering through the granitic dikes of the Grimsel, breaking its way to the Handeck, and plunging in mad career over the falls, it dashes on to the clear profound of Brienz, to the softer beauties of Interlaken and Thun, and, after watering the fertile table-lands of Bern, receives the sister waters of the Reuss and Limmat, which it carries, in one dark-green flood, into the main artery of the Rhine.

111 The market for fowls has one feature worthy of imitation everywhere. In the centre of it stands a man with a miniature guillotine, who for one centime (a fifth of a cent) will behead the fowl, and it is done deftly and free of all bloody exposures; the fowl is firmly held and muffled to prevent outcry, the decapitation instantaneous, the falling of the head and bleeding concealed, and when life is extinct and flow of blood ceases, the fowl is nicely wrapped in paper by the executioner and replaced in the market-basket; it is certainly a humane substitute for wringing off the neck.

112 Means weather-peak, and it is an established barometer in its neighborhood.