I met here a very intelligent Frenchman who has resided many years in the town. One of the first questions I put to him was the following:
For more than twenty years Switzerland has been overrun with English and other visitors, who have spent an enormous sum of money in the country: what has become of all this money?
He replied that I might well ask the question.
“They have no banks in Switzerland; and, although land exchanges owners, still the money does not leave the country. We have here,” he said, “a few millionaires, who do lend their money in France upon good securities; but except these few, they do nothing with it. The interest of money is so low, that I have known it lent by one of the rich people at two-and-a-half per cent; and the Swiss in general, in preference to risking what they can obtain for so small a premium, allow it to remain in their chests. There is, at this present moment more bullion in Switzerland than in any other country in Europe, or, perhaps, than in all the countries in Europe. A Swiss is fond of his money, and he does not use it; the millionaires that we have here, make no alteration in their quiet and plain state of living.” He then continued, “At this moment, those who can afford to spend their money at Basle are retrenching, not from motives of economy, but from feelings of ill will. The burghers, who have country seats, to which they retire during the summer, have abandoned them, and if any one wished to settle in this canton, they might purchase them for half their value. The reason is, that there has been a difference between the town burghers and the country people. The canton wanted a reform bill to be passed, in which they have not succeeded. They required a more equitable representation—the country people amount to about forty thousand, the town of Basle to only ten thousand; and the town of Basle, nevertheless, returns two-thirds of the council, which governs the canton, to which the people who live in the country have raised objections. Hence the variance; and to punish the country people by not spending their money among them, the burghers have abandoned their country houses.”
It may not, perhaps, be generally known, that at the time of the three days at Paris, there was an émeute in Switzerland, in which the aristocracy were altogether put down; and in Berne, and some other cantons, the burghers’ families, who, on pretence of preventing the aristocracy from enslaving the count, had held the reins of power for so long a period, were also forced to surrender that power to those who had been so long refused participation in it. This was but the natural consequence of the increase of wealth in the country: those who before had remained quiet, feeling themselves of more consequence, insisted upon their rights; and the usual results were, that the administration of the government changed hands; but although this might be considered as an advantage gained, still it was but a change, or rather an admission of those who had become wealthy to a participation of the advantages connected with the exercise of authority; a change beneficial to a few, but to the masse, productive of no real advantage. At Berne, to be a member of the government, is considered as a certain source of wealth, a convincing proof that the interests of those who hold the reins are not neglected; and that in a republic it is as difficult to insure to the people their legitimate rights, as under any other form of government. And so it will be as long as the world turns round; man is everywhere the same exacting, selfish, preying creature; and his disposition is not to be changed.
The Helvetic Republic is, in fact, nothing but an aggregation of petty despotisms—leniently administered, I grant; but still nothing but despotisms. Those who are in power, or connected with those in power, are the only portion of the community who can amass large sums; and thus the authority is handed down from one to the other within certain limits, which it but rarely transgresses, something very nearly approximating to the corporations in England.
In Switzerland, the working man remains the working man, the labourer the labourer, almost as distinct as the Indian castes the nobles are crushed, and the haughty burgh rules with all the superciliousness of vested right.
I have always held a “respublica” as only to exist in theory or in name. History has proved the impossibility of its retaining its purity for half a century. What the American Republic may be, it is impossible to say, until one has been in the country, and discovered what its advocates have been careful to conceal. The Americans had a great advantage in establishing this system of government; they had nothing to overthrow, nothing to contend with. They all started fair, and their half century is now nearly complete. Time will prove whether it be possible in this world to govern, for any length of time, upon such a basis. Mr Cooper, in his work on Switzerland, is evidently disappointed with his examination into the state of the Helvetic Republic; and he admits this without intending so to do.
At Soleure I saw nothing very remarkable, except a dog with a very large goitre on his neck, a sight which I never had witnessed before, during the long time that I wandered through Switzerland.
On our way to Berne, to divide the day’s travelling more equally, we stopped at a small village, not usually the resting-place of travellers, and I there met with a little bit of romance in real life, which Sterne would have worked up well, but I am not sentimental. The house, to which the sign was the appendage, struck me, at first entering, as not having been built for an hôtellerie; the rooms were low, but large, and the floors parquetté; here and there were to be seen remains of former wealth in pieces of marquetterie for furniture, and clocks of ormolu. There were some old prints, also, on the walls, very superior to those hung up usually in the auberges of the continent, especially in a village auberge. When the supper was brought up, I observed that the silver forks and spoons were engraved with double arms and the coronet of a marquis. I asked the female who brought up the soup, from whence they had obtained them? She replied, rather brusquement, that she supposed they had been bought at the silversmith’s, and left the room as if not wanting to be questioned. The master of the auberge came up with some wine. He was a tall, fine, aristocratical-looking man, about sixty years of age, and I put the question to him. He replied that they belonged to the family who kept the inn. “But,” said I, “if so, it is noble by both descents?” “Yes,” replied he, carelessly, “but they don’t think anything of that beer.” After a few more questions, he acknowledged that they were the armorial bearings of his father and mother, but that the family had been unfortunate, and that, as no tithes were allowed in the country, he was now doing his best to support the family. After this disclosure, we entered into a long discussion relative to the Helvetic Republic, with which I shall not trouble my readers. Before I went, I inquired his name from one of the servants, and it immediately occurred to me that I had seen it in the list of those twenty-six who are mentioned as the leaders of the Swiss who defeated the Burgundians, and whose monument is carved in the solid rock at Morat. Two engravings of the monument were in the rooms we occupied, and I had amused myself with reading over the names. I am no aristocrat myself, heaven knows! and if a country could be benefited, and liberty obtained, by the overthrow of the aristocracy, the sooner it is done the better; but when we see, as in Switzerland, the aristocracy reduced to keeping village inns, and their inferiors, in every point, exerting that very despotism of which they complained, and to free the people from which, was their pretence for a change of government, I cannot help feeling that if one is to be governed, let it be, at all events, by those who, from the merits of their ancestors and their long-held possessions, have the most claim. Those who are born to power are not so likely to have their heads turned by the possession of it as those who obtain it unexpectedly; and those who are above money-making are less likely to be corrupt than those who seek it. The lower the class that governs, the worse the government will be, and the greater the despotism. Switzerland is no longer a patriarchal land. Wealth has rolled into the country; and the time will come when there will be a revolution in the republic. Nothing can prevent it, unless all the cantons are vested into one central government, instead of so many petty oligarchies, as at present, and which will eventually tire out the patience of the people.