7. Posts and Railways.

Each one of these departments is presided over by one of the Councillors. When the Council is integrally renewed by the Assembly there is no designation or assignment of any department; the members are simply chosen as federal Councillors, and make the apportionment among themselves; and an agreeable understanding has always been reached. According to the constitution this departmental division is only “to facilitate the examination and despatch of business; all decisions must emanate from the Council as a whole.” Regular Council meetings are generally held twice a week. A decision is not valid unless at least four members are present, and no decision can be reversed except by four out of the seven, in a session attended by more than four. The Councillor presides over his department, conducting it much as an ordinary Secretary would under a cabinet system. In theory, each is responsible for all, and all are responsible for each. There is no question of rank, each department is of equal dignity.

The Bundespräsident, or President of the Confederation, is merely the chairman for a year of the Federal Council. He is only the chief of the executive; he is not himself the whole of it, and therefore can hardly be called the executive chief of the nation. His commission as President simply enhances his dignity, and does not confer upon him any additional power or responsibility. The other members are his colleagues, not his mere agents or advisers; he is only primus inter pares. He has no appointive power or patronage, no veto, no right of even nomination to any position. Not a single Swiss official at home or abroad is disturbed by the annual change in the executive head. Few republics have invested a single magistrate with such large powers as the President of the United States; few commonwealths have given a nominal chief magistrate so small a degree of power as belongs to the Swiss President. He is not a chief magistrate. He is chief of a board, which board, in its collective capacity, acts as chief magistrate. The central authority in Switzerland, since the birth of the republic, has always been vested in a committee; and a committee it is to-day. The small addition to the salary, giving audience for letters of credence and recall from diplomatic representatives, precedence on state and ceremonial occasions, and the right to be addressed as “Son Excellence,” about exhaust the special privileges, power, and dignity of the President of the Confederation. He is just as accessible to the public as any of his colleagues. He has no guards, no lords in waiting, no liveried ushers, no gewgaws and trappings. You may go to his official quarters with as little ceremony as you may call on a private citizen. The stranger may knock at the door and the chief magistrate of the Confederation bids him to come in. The new President enters upon the discharge of his duties on the 1st of January, following his election.[37] There is no formal or public installation, no demonstration, civic or military. The newly-elected President repairs to his modest chambers in the federal palace at noon, where alone he receives all who desire to call and pay their respects. This opportunity is availed of very little beyond the members of the diplomatic corps, who are expected to tender their congratulations personally and on behalf of the governments they represent. The writer was told by a colleague, who had been recently transferred to Bern from a post with an elaborate court, that on the announcement of the death of the Swiss President he donned his full diplomatic uniform to go and tender his official and personal condolence to the bereaved family. With considerable difficulty he found the executive mansion in apartments on the third floor of a building of a modest street. There being no portier, he rang the bell at the street entrance and ascended the stairs. Reaching the floor of the apartments he was met at the door by a woman who was wiping her mouth with the corner of her apron, evidently having been disturbed in a meal. She invited the diplomat in, and receiving the card, to his surprise, instead of leaving the room to deliver it, she invited him to be seated and opened the conversation. He soon discovered that she was the widow of the deceased President, and a woman of good education, force, and character. All the organs of the Swiss government have an unassuming and civic appearance, retaining in a degree the wisdom, moderation, and simplicity of their ancient manners; those who are invested with high trusts are ever ready and willing to retire to complete equality with their fellow-citizens, from the eminence of civil or military station to which their talents and the call of their country have raised them. There is nothing of pomp and majesty; the soil is too natural for the artificial forms of court diplomacy. The manly consciousness of freedom which creates and finds expression in the constitution elevates the middle classes who form its chief support; while the direct or indirect contact with public affairs develops the intelligence and strengthens the character of the citizen.

In its organization and practical workings, the Swiss executive is claimed by some to be modelled after a better pattern than that of the United States, in so far as escaping the great quadrennial contests, and the passions, ambitions, and disappointments born of them constituting, as more than once illustrated in the past, the greatest national peril.

Previous to 1888, the President of the Confederation ex officio became chief of what was called “The Political Department,” including the conduct of foreign affairs. A reorganization was found to be advisable, and, being formulated by the Federal Council and approved by the Federal Assembly, came into force on the 1st of January, 1888. Under this rearrangement of portfolios “Foreign Affairs” is placed on a new and separate footing and no longer falls to the President of the current year. This new department retains what belonged to the “Political Department,” with the exception of the former presidential functions. It is charged also with the management of commerce in general, with work preparatory to the negotiation of commercial treaties, and co-operation in drawing up the customs tariff; also with matters relating to industrial property, copyright, and emigration; and covering all the more important relations of Switzerland with foreign countries. It is the uniform practice for the Vice-President to succeed the President. In this way every member of the Federal Council in turn becomes President and Vice-President once during each septennial period.

Belonging to different political parties, the Councillors frequently antagonize one another on the floor of the Assembly, but this is not found to interfere with their harmonious working as an administrative body. The right of the members of the Federal Council to participate in the debates and make motions in the Federal Assembly, gives that body, what the Congress of the United States has not, the advantage of a direct ministerial explanation. Yet that ministerial explanation cannot be, as it may be in England, mixed up with fears of votes of censure on one side or of a penal dissolution on the other. Irremovable by the existing Assembly,[38] with the question of their re-election dependent on an Assembly which is not yet in existence, they have less need than either American or English statesmen to adapt their policy to meet any momentary cry. Is it not a most excellent political system? Is not this relation between the legislature and the executive, both in theory and practice, happily devised? It brings a quick and close communication between these two great branches, and tends to promote a good understanding between them. Elected by the Assembly, coming into office along with it, there is every chance of the Council acting in harmony with it; and their power of taking a share in the debates at once enables the Assembly to be better informed on public affairs. There is much in the Swiss experiment to refute the belief that there can be no executive power proper, unless it derives its authority from an independent source, and is made directly by the people, so it may claim to be equally representative of the people, and to have received still greater proof of the public confidence. The choice of the executive by the legislative body may be susceptible to the objection that it fails to furnish the limit and restraint that each of these powers should exercise on the other; and that it is entitled to be regarded as only a Cabinet d’Affaires,—a purely administrative committee. The history of the Swiss system has developed no unusual dissensions between these powers, and none are likely to occur. With the legislature governed as a rule by motives of public utility, there is little room for want of harmony with the executive, the simple function of which is to carry into effect the measures which the legislature has decreed.

The present Federal Council of Switzerland is composed of men of high order of ability, instructed by education and disciplined by experience. They are men of crystalline integrity, trained familiarity with the duties of their post, and profoundly patriotic in motive. Among all the changes and complications of late years, no government in Europe in its executive action has displayed a higher degree of practical wisdom than the Federal Council of Switzerland. It acts with sterling good sense and moderation, the result in a great measure of that slow and cautious temperament which has ever marked the Swiss character; traits which perhaps may be traced back to the privations and distress through which, during a long course of years, they struggled to the attainment of a dear-bought independence. It presides over the national interests in an equitable and impartial spirit, dealing wisely and temperately with the people without encroachment or oppression, and, if we may judge from the insignificance of their emoluments, without desire of advantage. The Councillors move in the surest way, both to the attainment and preservation of power, through the medium of those qualities which secure the esteem and gain the confidence of the people. The people, on the other hand, behold with content and satisfaction the absence of all selfish or ignoble purpose in the labors of the Councillors; and sacrifice all factious opposition and interference to the public benefit which they know to be identified with the vigor, stability, and welfare of the government. It is not too much to say that in the Federal Council of Switzerland an honest attempt is made to follow the wise admonition of Cicero in his “Offices:” “Those who design to be partakers in the government should be sure to remember the two precepts of Plato; first, to make the safety and interest of their citizens the great aim and design of all their thoughts and endeavor without ever considering their own general advantage; and, secondly, to take care of the whole collective body of the republic so as not to serve the interests of any one party to the prejudice or neglect of all the rest; for the government of a state is much like the office of a guardian or trustee, which should always be managed for the good of the pupil, and not of the persons to whom he is intrusted.”

There has been some movement to change the mode of appointment to the executive power of the Confederation. Like other human things, it is not absolutely ideal in its working. The relations between the executive and judicial departments are not what they should be, though much better than they were at the beginning of the constitution. Yet, on the whole, the working of the Swiss executive during the forty-two years of its trial has been such that it need not shrink from a comparison with the working of either of the two better known systems. The fact of the Council being not directly chosen by the people is claimed by some to be inconsistent with the “democratic theory.” Surely it is not wise to exchange at the bidding of a certain abstract doctrine a system which has worked well for so long, for one which is not certain to work better, and which might work a great deal worse. By many constitutional students the actual form of the Swiss executive is looked on as the happiest of the political experiments of the present half century. It seems to have escaped both some of the evils which are incident to kings and some of the evils which are incident to presidents. It seems more wisely planned, in all events for the country in which it has arisen, than those forms to which we are better accustomed.

CHAPTER V.
THE FEDERAL TRIBUNAL.

Bundesgericht; Tribunal fédéral.