New Switzerland

“ The draft of a new constitution for Switzerland was presented at Lucerne in July, 1832, by the moderate party, but it failed, as so many other attempts have done which clashed with the selfishness of those cantons, that thought more of the question of cantonal home-rule than of the weal of the country as a whole. A far-seeing policy required that the central government should be strengthened, that the Diet should be made thoroughly capable of protecting Swiss interests, both in the country itself and abroad. ”

“ With the glorious grandeur of these wondrous hills, rising and falling playfully around the main ranges, the marvellous tree growth, the delicate contrasts of the formidable peaks and the dainty, cultivated valleys, and the face of Nature everywhere absolutely unmarred, Switzerland could in no way compare. ”

“ He thought of his old nurse and her tales of the Alpine scenery, and of the knolls and vales of his own home. It is no wonder that the Swiss are free and brave and strong. The waterfalls, cliffs, and cloud-piercing mountains fill the soul with a sense of grandeur and glory which tends toward great deeds and fervent patriotism. Who can recall the eternal snows, the towering shafts of rock, the roaring caverns, and sweetest of blue lakes, without the most thrilling emotions! If there are any travellers upon whom the memory of Switzerland brings no such feelings, they are the exceptions. ”

“ The Swiss struggled onwards through the conflicts of political development, and battled against all that was a hindrance to them in the constitution of 1815, the Powers looking on with misgiving if not with dismay the while not understanding the signs of the times. Yet, by 1848, when the thrones of Europe were again shaken by revolutions, Switzerland had gained that for which it had been struggling, and had settled down into a peaceful and regenerated Bundestaat. We have shown how the settlement of 1815 was in many ways a return to old lines in both Church and State. ”

“ Is it that the living among these stupendous surroundings has somehow dwarfed the people, or has Nature, by one of her inimitable contrasts, made the human part of Switzerland so insignificant in order to set off the vastness of peak and snowfield? Certainly the glib commonplace that national character is influenced and formed by national surroundings is here gloriously contradicted, since, as far as I am aware, no Swiss has ever attained to eminence in anything. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As you walk across the little valley which stretches down from the hills to the lake where Brunnen is, you remember that it is the town of Schwyz you come to, where dwelt once the hardy, valorous little colony which gave its name to Switzerland,—famous in the annals of this stout-hearted mountain-land for the "peculiar fire" with which they have always fought for their ancient freedom,—worthy to leave their name, in lasting token of the service they did to their fellows and to mankind. ”

“ Barren and uninviting is the waste of politics in Switzerland at this period of our story, and it seemed as if the republic was quietly crumbling out of active existence. But the literary and scientific renaissance runs through it all like a fertilizing stream, and saves it from utter sterility. Feeble though it was politically, Switzerland yet produced on all sides men of mark in science, in literature, in philosophy. ”

“ We are nearing the period of their history most dear to the Swiss, the period when the Eidgenossenschaft is forming, but before reaching it we have still to make our way as best we can through a short era of chaotic feudalism and political confusion generally, preceding the great struggle for Swiss independence. On the extinction of the House of Zaeringen Switzerland fell a prey to the designs of vassal princes who had started into eminence on her soil, and now contended for supremacy over her. ”

“ His own speeches showed an intimate acquaintance with Swiss matters, and whilst full of practical wisdom, also evidenced his real interest and sympathy with the little republic. He pointed out that Switzerland was quite unlike any other country in its history, its geographical position, in its inclusion of three nationalities and three tongues. The characteristics and the advancement of three nations had, in fact, to be considered and maintained. Nature itself had clearly intended that it should be a federal state. ”

“ We have seen how a tiny confederation of three petty states has grown into a league of eight, and then of thirteen [Pg 421] independent districts, and how this has developed into the federal state of twenty-two cantons of our own day. Lastly, some of the institutions of the country, notably the Initiative and the Referendum, are well-nigh unique of their kind, and certainly are of the greatest interest to the student of political history and development; whilst Switzerland's noble efforts for the amelioration and benefit of mankind at large cannot but command our admiration. ”

“ Circumstances, which are absolutely sovereign in a matter of this kind, for there is no possibility of resisting them, carried other countries out of this state of things, while they kept Switzerland in it. If a thousand, or five hundred years ago, some Titans of the race that undertook to set Ossa upon Pelion, and to roll to the top of the pile Olympus with all his forests, had run a mountain-crusher over Switzerland and flattened in its Alps, then the system of common pasturage could no more have existed there down to our time than in the plains of Lombardy or the vale of Aylesbury. ”

“ The history of French Switzerland has not yet been touched upon, and that for good reasons. It is difficult to realize that down even to the sixteenth century the French Swiss were still languishing under the ancient forms of feudalism, and this at a time when their German brethren had long been enjoying the blessings of national independence, and had filled the world with their military renown. But, in truth, the French were slow to awaken to republican freedom, and looked to East Switzerland rather than to themselves for deliverance from political bondage. ”

“ I am old"—he was seventy—"and my task is heavy, for the enemy is powerful, but I trust I shall carry on my mission in the name of the God of our Rütli, who has never ceased to protect our Fatherland." Such has ever been and ever will be the love of the Swiss for their native soil, a love [Pg 402] not based merely on the beauty of their land, nor on the perfection of its institutions, but on the knowledge that it is a stronghold of noble freedom, and one of their own rearing. ”

“ Grandson, Morat, and Nancy stamped the Eidgenossen as the enfants gâtés of Europe, and as a nation of the highest military standing on the Continent, nay, even as an umpire in continental politics, and a guardian of the peace. Everybody lavished flattering praises on the prowess of the Swiss. Nation after nation made overtures to them—France foremost, Italy, the Pontiff, the Emperor, distant Hungary, and even England, this last desirous of breaking the French alliance. ”

“ And until this general political education is completed, no one can judge with any certainty of the republican form of government. Switzerland is as yet young in her public life. It is only a few years since its union established its form of government on that of the North American States. Is it not under the shelter of its republican freedom that Switzerland has already produced so many men remarkable for their influence on the development of mankind in almost every branch of human culture? ”

“ For many reasons, some of which are obvious to the least thoughtful, the history of Switzerland is peculiarly interesting, and not least so to English-speaking peoples. In the first place, the "playground of Europe" is every year visited by large numbers of British and Americans, some of whom indeed are familiar with almost every corner of it. Then to the Anglo-Saxon race the grand spectacle of a handful of freemen nobly struggling for and maintaining their freedom, often amidst enormous difficulties, and against appalling odds, cannot but be heart-stirring. ”

“ Switzerland has no climate, properly speaking, but an assemblage of every climate, from Italy to the Pole; the vine wild in its valleys, the ice eternal on its crags. The Swiss themselves are what we might have expected in persons dwelling in such a climate; they have no character. The sluggish nature of the air of the valleys has a malignant operation on the mind; and even the mountaineers, though generally shrewd and intellectual, have no perceptible nationality: they have no language, except a mixture of Italian and bad German; they have no peculiar turn of mind ”

“ If the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed the glorious rise of the Swiss people, the seventeenth and eighteenth saw the political decline of the Republic. Even the Reformation itself led the way to this decline by lodging all power—political, fiscal, moral, and educational—in the Protestant cantons in the hands of the governments. ”

“ Among the rank and file of the people in the German cantons of Switzerland, there seem to be three classes:—those who have come in contact overmuch with tourists and have been spoiled by it; the low-browed, stupid type, surly and hostile; and the honest, intelligent, fresh-cheeked, unspoiled, who are never effusive, but frank always and friendly to those who seem to deserve it, staunch, reliable, independent, self-respecting, in every way admirable,—the bone and sinew and hope of Switzerland. ”

“ Switzerland alone, with her institutions, maintains, like an everlasting flower, her place in the light of the sun.
“This is a remarkable fact, especially for those who understand Switzerland. Diverse races, languages, manners, the most dissimilar interests—it would be thought impossible to form a body-politic out of these varied nationalities. In the heart of the Alps, the people are the old Goths and Rhetians; on the plains the Allemanni; in the west Burgundians mingled with Romans. On the banks of the Aar the German tongue prevails, around Lake Leman the Romande. ”

“ Zurich, now the greatest authority on the subject in Switzerland, the lakemen left their watery settlements about the date just given, and began to fix their habitations on terra firma. Various tombs already found on land would bear witness to this change. When these peculiar people had once come on shore to live they would be gradually absorbed into neighbouring and succeeding races, no doubt into some of the Celtic tribes, and most likely into the Helvetian peoples. Thus they have their part, however small it may be, in the history of the Swiss nation. ”

“ Behold, then, what the Swiss have in common, from the Rhine to the Rhone, from Geneva to the wild valleys of ———.
“The annals of Switzerland have shown their vocation for independence.
“ ‘Helvetia,’ said our fathers, ‘is a confusion which God regulates.’ They taught us not to doubt God; their history, never to despair of our native land. The great nations subsist by their masses, we, by our faith and love. ”

“ When one speaks of Switzerland one instinctively thinks of Mont Blanc, and it seems an unfair advantage which France has taken to keep possession of Savoy, which used to belong to Switzerland, and the crown of the Swiss Alps. History has made strange partitions of territories; but the more one sees of Switzerland [Pg 167] the more one wonders that it could have ever become a united country, composed as it is of isolated valleys, separated by lofty mountain-walls, intercommunicable only by treacherous passes. ”

“ It gives one, for an occasional change from darker thoughts, a lively impression of the numbers of people now living, and above all now moving, at extreme ease in the world. Here is little Switzerland disgorging its tens of thousands of honest folk, chiefly English, and rarely, to judge by their faces and talk, children of light in any eminent degree; for whom snow-peaks and glaciers and passes and lakes and chalets and sunsets and a café complet, "including honey," as the coupon says, have become prime necessities for six weeks every year. ”

“ Nearly all the Swiss I have seen are Catholics, and a more upright, kindly, truly religious people I have rarely or never met. What, then, can have rendered them so palpably and greatly superior to their Italian neighbors, whose ancestors were the masters of theirs, but the prevalence here of Republican Freedom and there of Imperial Despotism?
Switzerland, shut out from equal competition with other nations by her inland, elevated, scarcely accessible position, has naturalized Manufactures on her soil, and they are steadily extending. ”

“ How can a country like Switzerland, made up of so many scores of valleys each different in characteristic and each conditioning the inhabitants,—here making them taciturn, there gay and thoughtless, here again honest and religious, there sly and untrustworthy,—how can it have any real political unity? ”