CHAPTER II.

ANTECEDENTS OF SWISS FEDERALISM.

AMONG the many small republics of Europe which came into existence in the popular revolt from feudalism, those of Switzerland are conspicuous for the thoroughness and persistence of their republicanism. The lands whose union was the beginning of the Swiss Confederation held, before their alliance, a position in relation to the empire not greatly unlike that which the British colonies in America sustained towards the government of England. They acknowledged the supremacy of the empire, and it was no part of their early purpose to renounce this allegiance. The British colonies, also, in their first movement towards union, did not propose to sever their connection with the supreme government; they sought to control those affairs which, from their point of view, appeared to concern merely themselves. The conflicts which arose in the two cases had certain features in (10)

common. In each case it was a struggle between the spirit of feudal domination on the one side, and the spirit of democracy on the other. The primitive cantons directed their opposition, not against the supreme authority, but against the feudal lords who had acquired immediate suzerainty over them. So the British colonists, while they stoutly maintained their loyalty to the king and the English constitution, prepared with great determination to resist the governors who were sent among them. In the resistance offered by the people to the governors we observe the beginnings of a democratic war on feudalism. "The governors came over with high ideas of their own importance, and with not a little of the feudal spirit, which regarded the possessors of power as the holders of so much personal property that they might turn to their own private uses; while the assemblies were imbued with the spirit of the great idea that government is an agency or trust, which was to be exercised for the common good.' In spite of the professed loyalty of the cantons and the colonies, and their original determination to form unions without changing their relations with the supreme governments, they nevertheless, in both cases, assumed positions and established institu

'Frothingham, "The Rise of the Republic of the United States," 127.

tions which were absolutely irreconcilable with the lingering feudalism that still found exponents in the emperor and the king.1

But the general circumstances under which liberty was developed in the two republics were different. In Switzerland it grew up in a population which, on the same soil, had been subjected to feudal rule. Among the British colonists of America, it grew on a new soil, in a field free from the embarrassing traditions of earlier social forms; in a field, moreover, whose population was in large part composed of those, or the descendants of those, who had fled from the disagreeable religious and political restraints of an older society. In the one case, liberty was developed in the immediate presence of rejected authority; in the other case, its growth was encouraged by the leveling influences of frontier life, and by a wide separation from the seat of the supreme power. The two subsequent phases of development in both cases were the same. Having obtained independence, a loose confederation was formed in each case, with a single assembly as the sole organ of confederate authority; and, as a third phase of political growth, the confederate congress was supplanted by a federal organization. In the United States, the transition was made in 1788; in Switzerland, in 1848.

1 Frothingham, 161.

The first important event in the history of the Swiss republics was the union of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, in 1291. The movement by which this union was effected was not an isolated undertaking, but was in some sense characteristic of the age to which it belongs. Other phases of it are seen in the organization of city republics, and their attempts to acquire a recognition of their liberties; and in the formation of leagues of cities, like the Hanseatic League, or the League of the Rhine. At the time of their union, the lands which became the three primitive cantons of Switzerland had released themselves from all obligations to feudal superiors, and attained a position with respect to the empire essentially like that of the free cities of Central Europe. Uri acquired this position in the early part of the thirteenth century; Schwyz and Unterwalden, a little later; and since 1240, the practical independence of all three has rested on an unimpeachable legal foundation. Though practically independent, they remained directly subordinated to the empire, and neither their individual striving nor their united action aimed to libertate them from this position of subordination. The union was formed rather to maintain this relation and to check the encroachments of the House of Hapsburg.

After the death of Frederick II., in 1250, the

imperial power rapidly declined, and the dependent princes and estates of the empire sought on all sides to extend their dominion. When Rudolf of Hapsburg, whose hereditary lands embraced a part of the present territory of Switzerland, was made emperor in 1273, it was his weakness that chiefly recommended him to the electors. It was hoped that he would not be able to check the tendency to particularism that had been gaining strength during the previous quarter of a century. Rudolf occupied the throne for eighteen years, and died on the 15th of August, 1291. A few months before his death he purchased for his son, Duke Albrecht, certain rights of feudal jurisdiction over the city of Luzern and its outlying lands. The knowledge of Albrecht's zeal in enlarging the Hapsburg dominions made the free cities and cantons solicitous for the preservation of their liberties. Shortly after Rudolf's death, therefore, the citizens of Zurich, then a free city, resolved that the town "should not fall to any lord, except with the common consent of the community." A week later, on the 1st of August, Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden joined in a perpetual union, and adopted articles of confederation.1

1 Bluntschli "Geschichte des schweizerischen Bundesrechtes," I, 59, 60; II, 1.