CORRESPONDENCE.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN SWITZERLAND.
[FROM A CORRESPONDENT. J IT would be a mistake to attribute too great importance to the decision of the Swiss people to restore to the Cantons the right they formerly possessed of visiting the crime of murder with the punishment of death, or to infer therefrom that the majority of the local Legislatures will avail themselves of the privilege, by reintroducing the capital penalty into their respec- tive criminal codes. Notwithstanding the vote of last Sunday, it is by no means certain that the bulk of the people approve of the principle of capital punishment ; and if the question bad been uncomplicated by side-issues—if, for instance, they had been asked to render the penalty obligatory throughout Switzerland, their answer would probably have been a decided negative. But mixed up with the main issue was the question of cantonal rights, federation versus confederation ; and the Kulturkampf, which has so long disturbed the repose of more than one Canton, has not been without influence on the outcome,—may, indeed, have converted what other- wise would have been a minority into a majority. The history of the question is shortly this :—Before 1874, the various Cantons had punished their criminals as they thought fit. In some the death-penalty was in vogue, in many it was not ; but the new Federal Constitution, which in that year came into force, established uniformity throughout the Confederation, by means of a clause which declared that it should no longer be competent for local Governments to per- mit the infliction of corporal punishment for any offence what- soever. Not a few of the Cantons, even among those which had already spontaneously abolished capital punishment, strenu- ously objected to this provision, on the ground that it consti- tuted an infringement of their sovereign right—a right they had enjoyed from time immemorial—to deal with their criminals after their own fashion ; and they accepted it only because its rejection would have involved the rejection of an otherwise beneficial measure, of which the clause in question was merely a part. About two years ago, owing to a portentous increase in the crime of murder in several parts of the Confederation, an agitation sprang up for such an alteration of the Federal Constitution as would enable the Cantons to decide for them- selves as to the expediency of inflicting capital punishment for certain descriptions of homicide ; and last winter a petition to this effect, signed by upwards of 30,000 citizens, was presented to the National Assembly (the two Federal Chambers). This proceeding greatly alarmed the Government, and indeed all who had the welfare of the country at heart, for an addition of 15,000 or 20,000 signatures, which it was supposed might easily have been obtained, would have converted the petition into a requisition for a revision of the Constitution, entailing,. con- sequently, the dissolution of the Chambers, the election of a Constituent Assembly, and the resignation of the Federal Council. In these circumstances it was deemed desirable to call a special session of the Legislature to take the matter into con- sideration, and devise means for the avoidance of so grave a crisis as that which was every day becoming more imminent. On the meeting of the Assembly in March, the Government presented a report advocating the maintenance of the new system, and earn- estly deprecating compliance with the prayer of the 35,000 peti- tioners. The Council of State, however, a body whose functions are almost identical with those of the United States Congress, took a -different view of the matter, and decided in favour of a revision of Clause 65 (forbidding capital punishment) of the Federal Consti- tution. The National Council, after some hesitation, concurring with this resolution, the proposed measure was remitted to the decision of the people. By this expedient the issue was nar- rowed to one question, and whatever answer the vox populi might give, no unpleasant consequences, either to the Legisla- ture, the Federal Council, or the Constitution, could ensue. The result of Sunday's voting, or referendum, as the Swiss call it, was majority of some 15,000 /as and ouis. The Constitution will, therefore, be modified in the sense desired, and henceforth, or so soon as the necessary legal formalities are completed, the Cantonal Governments will be free to authorise their Judges to pronounce sentence of death on criminals found guilty of
murder. The infliction of capital punishment for any other crime is, and remains, forbidden.
To all who care to watch the drift of Continental thought, the voting of the various Cantons on this question presents a curious study ; for Switzerland, composed, as it is, of men of various races and creeds, all of whom enjoy full liberty of action and speech, probably reflects the current ideas of the day with greater fidelity than its politically more important neighbours. Thus, Tessin, with its Italian population, gives a majority of two to one against the " re-erection of the scaffold on the soil of the Confederation," notwithstanding the not d'ordre which had gone forth from the leaders of the Catholic party to vote for the revision,—and Tessin is intensely Catholic. The German- Swiss Catholic Cantons, on the other hand—Glaris, Aargau, Appenzell, Schwyz, Unterwalden, and Uri—and the Catholic districts of the Swiss Romance—Fribourg, Valois, and the Bernese Jura—gave large majorities in favour of capital punishment; while the antipathy of Geneva thereto is shown by the fact that in all the Canton, out of 20,000 electors only 800 were found to vote in its favour. The Genevese Radical Democrats, like their brethren in other parts of Switz- erland and elsewhere, are bitterly opposed to capital punish- ment ; they deem it a relic of barbarism and a sign of oppres- sion, but they regard the Catholic Church also as a relic of barbarism and a sign of oppression, and for six years past they have been endeavouring to carry this theory into practice. They have made laws to annoy the Catholics, and now the Catholics have voted the revision of Clause 65, to annoy them. Sunday's referendum was the Catholic revenge for the six years of petty persecution the Catholic Church had suffered in the Cantons of Berne and Geneva. The voting of the other Cantons calls for little special remark. It is curious to note that the Vaudois still resent the oppression endured by their fathers at the hands of the lords of Berne. Whatever is proposed at Berne is opposed by Canton Vaud. Whether it be a question of a new Federal Constitution, as in 1874; of a subvention to a subalpine railway, as in January last ; or a judicial question, as on Sunday, the Vaudois are always particularist and irreconcilable. Zurich, as was to be expected from the democratic sympathies of its people, voted "No," by a large majority ; while Berne, as befits the capital Canton, divided its suffrages almost equally between "No " and " Yes."
Interest will now centre in the action of the individual Cantons. Some will re-establish capital punishment, while many, perhaps the most, will not ; and students of juris- prudence and social economy will have an admirable oppor- tunity of watching the working of two different systems in the same community, and of comparing their success in the repression of the crime which it is their common object to combat. Whatever may be the result in Switzerland itself, other countries can scarcely fail to profit by the experiment which she is about to try.
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