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?
[1780 A.D.]
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 admission 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 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.