[1748-1767 A.D.] French minister, and arch enemy of Genevan independence, the spirit of freedom awoke with all its ancient strength in Geneva, and the burghers arose to break their slavish fetters. But the recital of the subsequent occurrences must be postponed until we come to notice the train of events fired by the French Revolution.

TUMULTS IN NEUCHÂTEL

The little principality of Neuchâtel, the succession of which had descended in the same line since the era of the second Burgundian monarchy, came, in 1707, into the hands of the king of Prussia, as next heir to the ancient house of Chalons. In 1748, Frederick II displayed that love of economy which distinguished all his measures, by farming out certain parts of the public revenue arising from tithes, ground rents, and the crown lands; from the former administration of which many of the inhabitants had enjoyed considerable profits. The loss of these, of course, was felt as a grievance by the losers; but what was viewed with more concern by the mass of the inhabitants was the prospect of still further innovations. Accordingly five communes of the Val de Travers transmitted their remonstrances through a delegate to Berlin; and their example was soon afterwards followed throughout the principality. The arrival of two commissaries, despatched by the king to Neuchâtel, was viewed with discontent as an encroachment on its immunities. Shortly after their coming, an attempt was made to put in execution the proposed financial system, of which the only result was to provoke a tumultuous popular movement. On the 7th of January, 1767, the burgher assembly of Neuchâtel passed a resolution of exclusion from the rights of citizenship, against all who should farm or guarantee the farming of the revenues. this the royal commissary, Von Derschau, brought a suit before the council of Bern, against the town of Neuchâtel; and the advocate-general, Gaudot, who had formerly been a popular favourite, much to the surprise of his fellowcitizens, seceded to the royal side, and thenceforwards gave his active assistance to the commissary.

On

The cause was decided at Bern (with some limitations) in the royal favour. With regard to the resolutions of the Neuchâtel burghers, already referred to, it was decreed that they should be cancelled in the presence of the burgher assembly, and a public apology made to the vice-governor. The costs of the whole process to be paid by the town. Gaudot, who had attacked the civic immunities both by word and writing, naturally became an object of popular indignation. By way of compensation, however, he received a lucrative government office, along with the functions of procurator-general, from which another man had been removed who possessed the popular favour. He returned to Neuchâtel from Bern with the royal plenipotentiaries. These and the vice-governor advised him to take up his residence in the castle; but, in spite of their recommendations, Gaudot thought fit to repair to his own residence. The same evening, clamour and disturbance took place around the house, which the magistrates were forced to protect by military force.

The next morning the mob returned in increased numbers, and was still further exasperated by missiles being thrown down upon them. A carriage, escorted by servants in the royal livery, which had been sent by the king's commissary for Gaudot, was knocked to pieces by the infuriated multitude. Gaudot and his nephew now imprudently fired from the windows, and their shots took effect, fatally for themselves." The exasperated populace forced its way into the house; Gaudot was killed by three shots, and the mob dis

[1780 A.D.]

persed after the deed, with cries of "Long live the king!" The chief actors in this tragedy escaped, and could be executed only in effigy. The whole affair was ultimately compromised by the benevolent moderation of the great Frederick; and terms of pacification were accepted by the communes, which provided alike against arbitrary government and popular turbulence.

On this occasion, Frederick displayed more generosity than would have been shown by any cantonal government; and his conduct seemed to justify the general reflection, which must often occur to the student of Swiss history that when administrative abuses are introduced into a monarchy, it only requires a well-disposed and enlightened prince to crush the gang of official oppressors and extortioners; because such a prince is powerfully backed in such measures by the public opinion. Whereas, when the majority of the ruling class in misnamed republics is corrupted so far as to speculate on the profits of malversation, it generally takes care to recruit its ranks with new accomplices; or, at all events, only to promote to public offices such men as will at least shut their eyes to public abuses. The magnanimity of Frederick was but ill repaid to his successor by the tumults which ensued in Neuchâtel on the commencement of the French Revolution; and we have lately seen the same misunderstandings, as in the last century, arise between the now canton of Neuchâtel and its Prussian sovereign.

ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY

The democratical cantons, where the assembled population exercised the supreme power in their landsgemeinde, held the lowest station, in almost every respect, amongst the confederates. Narrowness of mind and ignorant hatred of all innovation withstood every proposal of improvement; while passion and prejudice, aided by the artifices of demagogues, often occasioned acts of crying injustice. Judicial proceedings were in the highest degree arbitrary; confession of crimes was extracted by torture, which, indeed, was often employed when nothing more remained to confess. Capital punishment, even for minor offences, was by no means rare. Public offices, particularly that of bailiff or land-vogt, were commonly conferred not on the worthiest but on the highest bidder; and the proceeds of this ignominious traffic went to the public treasury. Was it to be wondered at if these functionaries in their turn set justice up to auction in their bailiwicks, and endeavoured to recover their advances to the government by every sort of oppression of its subjects?

Mental cultivation was extremely neglected in these cantons, scientific establishments were rare, and those for education were, for the most part, in the hands of the capuchins; whose esprit de corps was at least on one occasion beneficial, by preventing the admission of the jesuits into the canton of Schwytz in 1758. Elsewhere, however, similar influences produced worse effects. In Glarus, so late as 1780, an unfortunate servant girl was executed as a witch, on the charge of having lamed the leg of a child by magic, and having caused it to vomit pins. Credulous souls were even found to believe the affirmation that the girl had administered pin-seed through the medium of a magical cake, which had afterwards borne its fruit within the body of the child. The political relations of these cantons, in the period now before us, were of little importance.

The constitutions of the aristocratical cantons had all of them this circumstance in common, that not only the capital towns assumed the rule of the whole canton, but the burghers of those towns themselves were divided into ruling and non-ruling families, of which the former monopolised admis

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sion to all places of honour. But the governments of these cantons deserve to be treated of more at length.

Bern, which, in the first period after its foundation, had no domains of any importance outside its walls, possessed in that immediately preceding the French revolution a territory containing more than 400,000 inhabitants. This considerable tract of land was administered by 250 ruling families, of which, however, only about sixty were in actual possession of the government; and these again were divided into so-called great and small families, and did not easily suffer others to rise to an equality with them. The sovereign power resided in 299 persons, of whom the great council was composed. A little council or senate of five-and-twenty formed the executive. The rural districts and the Pays de Vaud were governed by land-vogts or bailiffs. It was chiefly there that discontent prevailed against the Bernese government. The nobles of the Pays de Vaud were rendered wholly insensible to the real and solid advantages secured to them by that government, by resentment of their exclusion from all public employments. The peasants of that district, for the most part subjects or bondsmen of the nobles, sighed under the weight of feudal oppression and its accustomed offspring, poverty, neglected culture, mental and moral abortion.

Davel

A singular attempt at revolt was made in 1723 by Major Daniel Abraham Davel, a well-intentioned man, of excellent character, but a decided political and religious enthusiast, possessed with the idea that he was called by inspiration to emancipate the Vaud from Bern. He assembled the regiment of militia which he commanded, under the pretext of a review, and with these troops, who were altogether ignorant of his real design, and unprovided with stores or ammunition, he surprised the town of Lausanne at a point of time when all the Bernese land-vogts had gone to Bern for the annual installation. Davel offered his aid for the restoration of independence to the hastily assembled town council. He found, however,no kindred spirit in that body; and the cautious citizens put him off with fair words till a force was under arms sufficient to crush him. Meanwhile his troops had discovered the real object of their commander, and shrank from him in surprise and consternation. He himself was arrested, cruelly tortured for the discovery of accomplices, of whom he had none, and lastly beheaded.

A certain contempt of scholastic acquirements seemed the prevailing tone at Bern; and school education naturally came to deserve the low esteem which it met with. Accordingly those patrician youths who did not serve in the army remained for the most part unemployed until they obtained places under government. The establishment of what was called the "exterior state" afforded but a superficial substitute for more solid attainments, and initiated youth only too early in the petty intrigues and jealousies of faction. This institution, which was also known by the name of the “shadow state," was intended to give the youth of the ruling families opportunities for acquainting themselves with the forms at least of public business, and of acquiring an unembarrassed address, so important for republicans. It parodised the dignities and offices of the state, the election of avoyers, councillors, and senators, had its secretaries and functionaries of all ranks, and distributed by lot 120 vogtships, which for the most part took their names from ruined castles.

Without any sufficient evidence, some would refer to the era of the

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Burgundian war the origin of this institution, which received the sanction of government in 1687, and for which a council-house, far more splendid than that which belonged to the actual government, was built in 1729. The seal of this "exterior state" bore an ape astride on a lobster, and looking at himself in a mirror. These and similar traits of humour seem to owe their descent to an era exceedingly remote from the measured formality of later times.

The government of Lucerne, which with Solothurn and Fribourg formed the remaining pure Swiss aristocracies, consisted of a little council of sixand-thirty members, which, reinforced by sixty-four others, held the sovereign authority. With regard to intellectual cultivation, the most contradictory features were observable at Lucerne. On the one hand, learning, enlightenment, and patriotism were hereditary distinctions of some families; while, on the other hand, the mass was imbued with ignorant fanaticism. On the one hand, the encroachments of the papacy were resisted with inflexible firmness; while, on the other hand, the clergy kept possession of a highly mischievous influence in the state. On the one hand, a series of saints' days and holidays was abolished, as being dedicated to dissoluteness more than devotion; while, on the other hand, we are horror-struck by the burning of a so-called heretic. In 1747, a court, consisting of four clergymen, sentenced Jacob Schmidli, a man of blameless life, to be strangled, and then burned with his books and writings, because he had not only read the Bible for his private edification, but had explained and recommended it to others as the sole true basis of religion. His wife, his six children, and seventyone other persons were banished, his house was burned to the ground by the hands of the public executioner, and a monument raised on its former site, to perpetuate the ignomy (query: of the victim or of his judges?).

The appearance of two pamphlets in 1769, on the question "whether removal or restriction of the monastic orders might not be found beneficial to the Catholic cantons?" excited terrible uproar at Lucerne, where certain classes were constantly scenting danger to church or state from some quarter. The town and county clergy, and the bigots in the council, were rejoiced to get so good an opportunity to persecute the holders of free principles, and raised a deplorable howl, as if the canton were on the verge of destruction. The whole population was plunged in consternation and astonishment by thundering sermons and rigorous prohibitions of the obnoxious work. Free-thinkers were fulminated against by name from the pulpits; and Schinznach, which had witnessed the formation of the Helvetic society, was denounced as the focus and headquarters of heresy.

This society, which aimed at the diffusion of useful knowledge, public spirit, and union throughout the Helvetic body, without reference to varieties of religion, rank, or political system, was founded by a knot of patriotic and instructed men, in the pious hope of arresting the decline of the confederation. At its commencement it consisted of no more than nine members, but added to its numbers with astonishing rapidity. The society was soon viewed with an evil eye by the cantonal governments, which dreaded all independence of feeling and action in the people. At Bern, political dangers were anticipated from it, as symptoms of refractoriness were exhibited shortly after its formation by the nobles in the Vaud; while at Lucerne it was regarded as a conspiracy for shaking off the Catholic religion, and assisting the supposed ambition of Bern to gain ascendency over the whole confederation.

The aristo-democratical governments next come under our notice, and

[1780 A.D.]

in these, as in most of the purely aristocratical, the metropolis had obtained unlimited power over the whole canton. In these, however, particular families did not engross the sovereign power; the collective body of citizens had maintained themselves by means of the regulations of their guilds in the possession of considerable influence over the public affairs. Accordingly the magistracy favoured the monopolies which enriched the metropolitan traders, and imposed restraints on the industry and invention of the surrounding country. Thence the subjects of these towns were much more harshly governed than those of the aristocratical cantons. Their ancient charters fell into oblivion, and were withdrawn as far as possible from public inspection; they were not only excluded from civil and military, but even from ecclesiastical functions; and the exercise of many branches of industry, and the sale of their productions in the towns, was wholly cut off by corporation privileges. Moreover, since the commencement of the century of which we are treating, no mode of acquiring the rights of burghers remained open; they were only conferred on extremely rare occasions to reward eminent merit; or when the times became troublesome to conciliate influential burghers. Hence that discontent and disaffection which broke out at the close of the century found a principal focus in the heart of the mixed aristocracies. In the larger cantons the public administration was for the most part incorrupt; and that of justice was liable on the whole to fewer complaints than in many other European countries. The pay of public servants, with few exceptions, was extremely moderate. Men who had devoted their whole lives to public affairs, and who had filled the highest offices in the state, lost more than they gained by the bounty of their country. At Zurich, the expenses of the government were wholly defrayed without the imposition. of taxes, properly so called, from the revenues and interests of the national lands and capital, from ground-rents, tithes, the salt monopoly, and the produce of the premium paid by the several guilds of traders in return for their exclusive privileges. The same description is applicable to the government of Bern, excepting that here the course of justice was tedious and expensive. The superior financial resources of the latter canton enabled her to execute more for public ends than Zurich. Bern invested considerable sums in foreign securities, particularly in the English funds; and, besides, amassed a treasure amounting to some millions of dollars, which became, as we shall presently see, and as Mably had predicted, the booty of rapacious and powerful neighbours.

Very different was the condition of the free or common bailiwicks, particularly those of the democratical cantons; here most of the land-vogts sought by every species of extortion to indemnify themselves for the sums for which they had in fact bought their places from the general assemblies of their respective cantons. Many made an open traffic of justice; took presents from both parties; helped delinquents to evade deserved punishment who could pay for exemption, and exacted contributions from the wealthier class whenever and wherever they could. Even farther than in the German domains of Switzerland were abuses of this kind carried in the Italian bailiwicks, and most of all in those of the Grisons. The inevitable tendency of such treatment was to debase the popular character in those districts, and its effects have left unequivocal traces even to this day.

In those towns of which the constitution was grounded on corporate bodies, the privileges of the burghers and their guilds received progressive extensions. Propositions were made which would hardly have been conceivable in monarchical states, and could only, in fact, take place where