One in visiting the chambers of the Assembly is much impressed with the smooth and quiet despatch of business. The members are not seated with any reference to their political affiliations. There are no “filibustering,” no vexatious points of order, no drastic rules of “clôture,” to delay or ruffle the decorum of its proceedings. Interruptions are few, and angry personal bickerings never occur. There are no official stenographers, or verbatim reports made of the proceedings; press reporters represent only the local papers and furnish a very meagre synopsis of the daily business. The small gallery set apart for the public is rarely occupied. “Leave to print” or a written speech memorized and passionately declaimed are unknown; there are none of these extraneous and soliciting conditions to invite “buncombe” speeches or flights of oratory for the press and the gallery. The debates are more in the nature of an informal consultation of business-men about common interests; they talk and vote, and there is an end of it. This easy colloquial disposition of affairs by no means implies any slipshod indifference, or superficial method of legislation. There is no legislative body where important questions are treated in a more fundamental and critical manner. The members of the National Council stand up to speak, while those of the Council of States speak from their seats. The tri-lingual characteristic of the country is carried into the Assembly; and within a brief visit to either House, different members may be heard to speak successively in German, French, and Italian. If the presiding officer of either House is a German and cannot speak French, his remarks are immediately repeated by a French official interpreter who stands at his side; and with a President who is French and cannot speak German the process is reversed. The members from the Italian Cantons, as a rule, understand French or German sufficiently not to require special translation into their tongue. All bills, reports, resolutions, and laws are published in the three languages. The Swiss have been as successful in reconciling the difficulties of diverse dialects in the federal legislature as in the harmonious union of Cantons. It was a serious obstacle in the way of the union, when the legislature of the kingdom of the Netherlands, founded in 1814, had three different languages spoken in its Halls,—Dutch, Flemish, and French. This was considered to foreshadow the disruption in 1830, as it intensified every prejudice and difficulty. The personnel of the Assembly is grave and sedate, dignified and serious. A large majority of the members are past middle age,—men of education, culture, and experience in public life. Many of them have held office first in their Communes and then in their Cantons. It is curious that, in a country where it is hard to find the court-house or a lawyer’s sign, one-fourth of the members of the Assembly report themselves as advokats; next in number come merchants, then farmers, physicians, bankers, and professors. One-third are given as incumbents of various other cantonal and communal offices. It is very common for a person to fill at the same time a federal, cantonal, and communal office, where the duties do not conflict and belong to the same general class. This is regarded as both simplifying and cheapening the public service. The very dress of the members, in its severe sombreness and uniformity, bespeaks the stable and serious bent of their minds. Scarcely the change of a cravat would be required for the entire body to appear at a funeral de rigueur. The oath administered to the members of the Assembly is calculated to emphasize the high and sacred trust assumed. It runs thus: “I swear, by God the Almighty! to maintain the constitution and the laws of the Confederation, faithfully and truly to guard the unity, power, and honor of the Swiss nation, to defend the independence of the Fatherland, the freedom and rights of the people, and its citizens in the whole, to fulfil conscientiously all duties conferred upon me, as truly, as God blesses me.” In taking this oath the member stands with his right hand uplifted, the thumb and first two fingers extended, indicating the Trinity.
The members of the Assembly practically enjoy a life-tenure; once chosen a member, one is likely to be re-elected so long as he is willing to serve. Re-election, alike in the whole Confederation and in the single Canton, is the rule; rejection of a sitting member, a rare exception. Death and voluntary retirement accounted for nineteen out of twenty-one new members at the last general election. There are members who have served continuously since the organization of the Assembly in 1848. Referring to this sure tenure of officials generally, the President of the Confederation, in a public address, said, “Facts and not persons are what interest us. If you were to take ten Swiss, every one of them would know whether the country was well governed or not; but I venture to say that nine of them would not be able to tell the name of the President, and the tenth, who might think he knew it, would be mistaken.” To some extent this remarkable retention of members of the Assembly may be ascribed to the fact that the people feel that they are masters of the situation through the power of rejecting all measures which are put to the popular vote. The position of a member is haloed with dignity, and is not a place sought from material motives, a perquisite more than an honor. The absence of this fiscal view of the office of the legislator brings in its train an equal absence of the “rotation” notion. The Assembly is not made up on the theory of mutation or by agencies more malign. Some are fond of declaring against the caprice and ingratitude of the people, says Mr. Freeman in his “Growth of the English Constitution,” and of telling us that under a democratic government neither men nor measures can remain for an hour unchanged. The spirit which made democratic Athens, year by year, bestow her highest offices on the patrician Pericles and the reactionary Phocion, still lives in the democracies of Switzerland, in the Landsgemeinde of Uri, and the Federal Assembly at Bern. The ministers of kings, whether despotic or constitutional, may vainly envy the sure tenure of office which falls to the lot of those who are chosen to rule by the voice of the people. Grote, who wrote his “History of Greece” in Switzerland, stated that his interest in the Swiss Cantons arose from the analogy they presented to the ancient Greek states; and specially as confirming the tendency of popular governments to adhere to their leaders with the utmost tenacity of attachment.
Corruption at the polls, civic jobbery, the declension of legislative character, the greed for official pelf,—these evils are not restricted to any people or country. An imperfect answer as to the cause and remedy is difficult; a complete answer is impossible. Some of these evils are connected with political problems that are vexing our epoch in every state and country where constitutional government and a liberal suffrage prevail. Switzerland, with a government so adequate for a simple people and small country, appears to have firmly resisted the impact of these political ills. Service in the federal legislature is accepted from a sense of patriotic duty; neither emolument nor self-aggrandizement being an element of its membership worthy of consideration. The election of deputies to the Swiss Assembly is an event which creates no violent commotion or even general interest in the great body of the people. A large majority of the candidates are unopposed; there is no opportunity for bribery to sap the public morale, or any field for the unscrupulous plying of the disgraceful artifices and incidents which too often mark a hotly-contested election in the United States. An election, general or local, is not an occasion of bustle or clamor, turbulence or revelry; there are no processions, no party badges, no music, no “pole-raising,” probably not a speech, and no candidate present when the exercise of this important privilege is going on. It is an affair of deliberation and decision, of sobriety and wisdom. The electors themselves feel that they are called upon to exercise a serious and elevating duty; the solemn and deliberate act of choosing men to govern the destinies of a civilized and enlightened people. It may be that the Swiss elections, being held on Sunday, and the polls often in the churches, in part contribute to inspire the elector with respect for himself, for the character which he has to sustain, and for the institution in which he thus bears an honorable part. It is feared that the suggestion of such a remedial agency in the United States would be regarded by our churchmen as ægrescit medendo. The excitement attending the popular elections in the United States as now conducted is in the main of a vicious and degrading character. Instead of infusing into the hearts of the people a spirit of patriotism, leading them to value the blessings of the government under which they live, it infuses little but rancor and malignity; giving an opportunity for the indulgence of vicious passions which are born but do not die with the emergency; evolving the gross, vulgar morality which, provided you do no injury to a man’s person or possessions, sees nothing in your conduct towards him to condemn; which is near-sighted to the turpitude of slander and misrepresentation directed against him, and blind to the iniquity of needlessly invading a man’s private life; a morality which is incapable of comprehending that one source of happiness ought to be as sacred from wanton encroachment and disturbance as another; and that visible property is not the only thing which can be purloined or invaded. These evils are being submitted to, without any strenuous effort to remove them, as if they were not a mere excrescence, but formed an integral or essential part of the system, which they deform and debase.
There can scarcely be said to be any party alignments in the Swiss Assembly. It is comparatively free from the “offensive partisanship,” “pernicious activity,” and system of party organization and activity which flourish in the United States with exuberant and, in some respects, ominous vigor. While nominally three political divisions exist in the Swiss Assembly, the Right, Centre, and Left, the accepted general classification reduces them to two, Radicals and Conservatives. The main line of separation is the same perplexing issue running through all political history, the rivalry between the state and nation, one seeking to minimize, the other to magnify the sphere of the central government. The Radicals are those who seek to give the broadest interpretation to the constitution, so as to enlarge the field of federal authority. The Conservatives are jealous of every encroachment upon the traditional prerogative of the Cantons, and desire to restrict and confine the limits of federal action. The Radicals are the most numerous, commanding an absolute majority in both the National Council and the Council of States. Within these two broad divisions there are many different shades that separate on questions of a social, religious, and economic character. Then these grand and subdivisions have an entirely different significance, as applied to federal or cantonal questions; a Radical as to the one, may be a Conservative as to the other. The Radical and Conservative of the Canton of Vaud is by no means the same as the Radical and Conservative of the Cantons of Zurich and Aargau; the Radical of Geneva is very different from the Radical of St. Gallen. The two parties are not distinguished from each other by any systematic respect or disrespect for cantonal independence. So the purely political question between privilege on one side and the sovereignty of the people on the other is one of subordinate moment; the former does not find expression in any party formula. It is an error to estimate the character and tendencies of the Swiss parties by the names which they bear, Radical and Conservative, in the light of the footing these names have obtained in every language in Europe, and the strong feelings of esteem or hatred associated with them. As such they are nowise fully correct designations of the political divisions, prominently opposed in Switzerland, and of the points at issue between them. It is not true that the Swiss Radical desires over-centralization to the extent of unitary government; but, with the Conservative, holds to the great theory of local self-government as founded upon these propositions; that government is most wise, which is in the hands of those best informed about the particular questions on which they legislate; most economical and honest when in the hands of those most interested in preserving frugality and virtue; most strong when it only exercises authority which is beneficial in its action to the governed. There is a feeling common to the population of every Canton and Commune, which puts all idea of any party advocating one concentrated system out of the question. Madison says, “An extinction of parties necessarily implies, either a universal alarm for the public safety, or an absolute extinction of liberty.” Political parties perform functions of the greatest possible importance; through their organizations is fulfilled that obligation which is incumbent upon every citizen of a republic, to give an earnest, careful, and habitual attention to the conduct of government. Parties are the exponents and representatives of the great issues that constantly arise in every free community. By the discussions that arise between them public opinion is formed, the people educated in their political rights, a due sense of citizenship generated and fostered; they are a great centripetal force in every system of home-rule government.
The strong attachment to party, with its resultant full crop of political dissension, in the United States has at the same time awakened a zeal for turning the powers of government to profitable public account, and a sensibility to the exposure of wrong or abuse, which manifest themselves in a thousand beneficial ways. “It is one of the advantages of free government,” declares Sir James Mackintosh, “that they excite sometimes to an inconvenient degree, but upon the whole, with the utmost benefit, all the generous feelings, all the efforts for a public cause, of which human nature is capable.” Switzerland, in the legislative branch of her federal system, gathers together a body of men remarkable for that generous and patriotic impulse which moves noble minds to sacrifice private interests to the public good, and that public spirit that is the sense of duty applied to public affairs; none of the cowardly and unpatriotic sentiment expressed in the speech of Cato, “when vice prevails and impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.” With a Swiss, the post of honor is always the post of duty, and the call of duty is loudest from the public service, and secures the ready response of the best citizens. Nowhere does popular government rest upon a firmer foundation of public spirit and the willing and active interest of the people.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FEDERAL COUNCIL.
Bundesrath; Conseil fédéral.
The three main forms of executive embrace the hereditary and irresponsible king, with or without a responsible ministry; the single responsible president; and the executive council. The most typical examples of these are: the constitutional monarchy of England; the Presidency of the United States; and the Federal Council of Switzerland. Or, there may be said to exist four chief ways in which parliamentary government is worked.
First, that of England, where the executive is the primary and the legislature the ultimate source of power; the English ministers have the right of initiative, but they cannot remain in office without a majority in the House of Commons.
Second, the German plan, where the ministers are solely dependent upon the Crown, but cannot spend money without parliamentary sanction.