126 LECTURE ON SWITZERLAND. 



heavy in countenance and in person, with an embarrassed air and awk- 

 ward address, the words of his first few sentences of miserahly pro- 

 nounced French coming forth slowly, and almost by stammering. The 

 natural reflection of a stranger would have been, why does that stupid 

 man rise; what light can he expect to throw upon the question? Kot 

 so, thought his countrymen. They i^new the mind that occupied this 

 unpromising exterior, and all listened with entire attention to Hess, the 

 burgomaster of Zurich, while by his own moderation he stifled the flame 

 which had been burning so fiercely, and by his good sense united all the 

 friends of education on a common ground of conciliation and compro- 

 mise. The denial of self shown by thus using a language which was 

 not familiar to him produced, also, doubtless a favorable impression. 

 Those who afterward heard the same speaker in his vernacular rousing 

 an assemblage by his eloquence, or moving them to laughter by his wit, 

 must have found it difScult to recognize in the accomplished orator the 

 embarassed speaker of the representative chamber. 



The canton of Geneva contains fifty-six thousand inhabitants, thirty 

 thousand of whom live in the town. The adjoining canton of Vaud 

 presents a strildug contrast in this as in other respects, out of one hun- 

 dred and eighty thousand people, only fourteen thousand being inhab- 

 itants of Lausanne, the capital, and only considerable town in the 

 canton.* The people of Vaud pride themselves upon their ultra-repub- 

 licanism, their orthodoxy in religion, their present moral and social 

 condition, and the broad basis laid in their institutions for further 

 improvement ; the carrying out of the cantonal motto of " liberty and 

 country." Their constitution declares the sovereignty of the people and 

 the equality of all citizens in the eye of the law, guarantees individual 

 liberty, the right of property, the inviolability of domicile, the freedom 

 of the press, and the right of petition. It provides for the separation 

 of the legislative, executive, and judicial authorities, a feature so 

 universal in our constitutions that we are surprised to find it gen- 

 erally overlooked by the framers of the Swiss. All citizens have a 

 right to vote at twenty-three years of «ge. The church is, as in 

 all these countries, connected with the state, and is styled in the 

 constitution the National Evangelical Reformed Church. Worship 

 according to the forms of the Eoman Catholic Church is guaranteed 

 to some of the communes, and there this church is also connected 

 with the state. The voluntary church system as it exists with us is 

 almost unknown, and it would be difScult to imagine the first effects of 

 severing church and state among a people where the connection has 

 always existed ; yet some of the clergy of Vaud look to the separation 

 as conferring a desirable freedom upon their church. As evidences of 

 the moral condition of Vaud may be mentioned that in 183G there was 



* The census of 1870 gives to the canton of Geneva a population of 89,416, whereof 

 about one-half live in the city proper. According to the same authority, the canton of 

 Vaud has a population of 229,596, and Lausanne 25,000. 



