THE NEW CONSTITUTION OF SWITZERLAND.
THE changes in the Swiss Constitution, accepted on Sunday by a double majority of the people, and a threefold majority of the Cantons, are most serious, and have evidently two objects in view. One is to strengthen the Federal Army. That Army, though it has performed some serious feats of arms, though it nominally contains 200,000 men, and is fairly drilled, is too loosely organised for sufficiently rapid action in a great emergency. The Central Government, sitting at Berne, had, under the old Constitution, no direct power over the Army until it was in the field, the organisation of each section and the duty of forwarding it where com- manded being left absolutely with the Cantons. These powers are not withdrawn even now, and each Canton can still use its own troops for internal purposes ; but the Canton is made for military purposes entirely subordinate to the Central power, which can now dictate organisation, take possession of all materiel of war, and in fact, if it pleases, create as centralised a force as it has means to pay. There can be no doubt whatever that this new power, if wisely and moderately used, will greatly increase the securities for the independence of Switzerland. Her Army of 200,000 men would by itself be a hard nut to crack, for the Switzers are brave fighting-men, and the authorities at Berne would in the event of war stand in this favourable position. They can be attacked directly only by Germany or France, and of course would be defended by either power innocent of the attack,—by Germany because she could not submit to see her flank so completely turned, by France because the Swiss Army would furnish just the iron spear-head her own Army wants in a conflict with the German Army. At the same time, the risk that the defender would develope also into the ruler would be averted by the dislike of strong Powers to lengthen their conterminous bound- ary, and the difficulty which either power, just exhausted by conflict, would feel in encountering a new army sure to fight well, and sure also to occupy the most dangerous of positions. It is true that the neutrality of Switzerland is guaranteed by Europe, but in these days guarantees do not count for much, and the ability to inflict a serious blow on any invader is a much more tangible security. Neither Germany nor France wants to lose 100,000 men on the eve of a mighty duel, and Switzerland, if thoroughly organised, might employ at least that number. She becomes, in fact, a fortress which an assailant must carry, just when he has other and heavier business on hand. Both Powers, it is true, acting in unison, could divide Switzerland, and there are contingencies under which this danger might arise ; but they are extremely impro- bable, and exist now in a yet higher degree, partition being comparatively easy. With 200,000 good men Switzerland will always find allies.
The second and more immediate object, the one, in fact, on which all voting turned, is to raise the Republic once for all above all the Churches found within its borders, and this has been accomplished in the most thorough-going style. Many of the Cantons are strongly Catholic, and one or two are strongly Protestant, but the entire Republic may be classed as Liberal ;
it is to the Republic, the whole Confederation, that all ecclesiastical power is now confided. An alliance between the Protestants and the Voltairians will always command, in the whole country, a majority too great to be resisted, either by votes or rifles ; and the Central Government, now allowed to act without Cantonal restrictions, can pass any ecclesiastical decree it pleases. The State is set free with a vengeance. Not only may it pass any law on education, but it must establish compulsory primary education in all Cantons, and this education, being uniform, will obviously be secular. Then it must establish a Central University, at which men of all religions will be trained together, a practice to which Catholics, with considerable want of faith in their own system, have of late years been angrily opposed. Then the Central authority " may take the necessary measures for the maintenance of public order and peace between the members of the different religious communities, as well as against the encroachments of ecclesiastical authority upon the rights of the citizens,"—words wide enough to cover any conceivable amount of interference with any creed in the Republic, or at least any creed requiring the services of a priesthood. It is true, the Canton still retains the same powers, but the general legislation overrides Cantonal authority, and all Switzerland may punish an excommunication pronounced by the Bishop of a Canton. As if to show clearly the spirit in which the power is to be used, the Constitution authorises the Confederation to prohibit the creation of any new Bishopric,—a direct defiance to Rome ; and the founding of any new convent, or the re- establishment of any one dispossessed ; to control all burial- places, and to make any laws of marriage it may please. In fact, if the summary we are quoting from the Con- tinental Herald, the old Swiss Times—a journal we are happy to see so suddenly and amazingly prosperous—is accu- rate, the Confederation must establish civil marriage, for " marriage is not to be refused on any moral or religious ground," the Swiss apparently trusting the maintenance even of the laws of consanguinity entirely to opinion, as the French did during their whole Revolutionary period ; while the children born out of wedlock must be legitimatised on the subsequent marriage of their parents, a just and humane pro- vision in theory, but one which in practice is not found to conduce to female chastity. The State, in fact, is made supreme in all matters of marriage, burial, and ecclesiastical discipline,—that is, in all that section of human life which in Catholic countries necessitates contact with the priesthood.
These laws must have been prepared by very astute hands, for while they prohibit no creed and interfere with no creed, they arm the governing party in the Republic with a power beyond that conferred in Prussia by the Falk laws, with a power, that is, of suppressing Ultramontaninn altogether. If reasonably worked, there is nothing in them to which fervent Catholics can object—for Catholics do not object to civil marri- age in itself, but to marriage unblessed by religious sanction— but they may easily be so worked as to suppress Catholic dis- cipline altogether. For instance, they certainly allow of any penalty being enacted for excommunication, of the suspension of religious services in a new diocese, of the gradual extinction of all convents, of the expulsion of any religious order " the conduct of which is dangerous to the State, or disturbs the peace between the creeds," and, as we imagine, of the exclu- sion of any Papal Bull. The Confederation can, in fact, prohibit the Roman Catholic religion, if it pleases ; and though we do not believe the grave and experienced men who govern it intend to go that length, they have two additional tempta- tions to attempt the feat. The revision has given them full control of the Army, and the vote for it has revealed the com- parative weakness of their opponents. The Council of the Confederation possesses, in fact, the full power of the Hohen- zollerns, backed by a formidable army, and may, if it pleases, persecute to any length, short of inflicting death, a punishment which, strange to say, in a country so rigid in its ideas, is finally and universally abolished. That is a dangerous amount of power to commit to a majority in any Republic, and its habitual use may end either in violent con- vulsions, or in the emigration of the Catholic population bodily to America. Even if it is not used, the provisions which confer it assert the sovereignty of the State over the conscience to a degree which would never be borne in England, and which is entirely inconsistent with any theory of reli- gious liberty. It is not the State-paid pastor who may be restricted, but the unpaid, not merely the new diocese which is prohibited, but the new superintending circle. Wesley could no more work under the Bill than Pio Nono can. The prin- ciple of Lord John Russell's Ecclesiastical Titles Bill is, in fact, elevated into a State Dogma, and the Confederation can annul the territorial or disciplinary arrangements of a disestablished Church. So can Parliament, no doubt, but if it did, English Liberals would scarcely assert that it was governed by the principles of civil and religious liberty, or that any worship was free within the limits of morality and order. The Can-
tonal system of Switzerland is not one we admire, for, like the State system of the Union, it has always seemed to us un- favourable to the development of statesmanship, but it did at least leave the people really free ; and we are not sure that the Swiss, in their panic-terror of the Syllabus, are not parting with too much of the freedom which alone makes them remarkable on earth.
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