140 LECTURE ON SWITZERLAND. 



abdicate as at Berue, and np to this time a struggle for power goes on 

 hetween the partisans of a former order of things and tiie clergy against 

 the new order, and, from time to time, one or the other influence pre- 

 vails. The canton, meanwhile, steadily advances. Suffrage is univer- 

 sal ; the right to vote beginning at twenty years of age. 



The i)rogress of the canton since the new order of things may be best 

 illustrated by a few facts. The press is free, the legislative, executive, 

 and judicial departments have been separated, public instruction has 

 been set forth as one of tlie first duties of the state, and invasion of 

 domicile has been declared unlawful. To these intellectual improve- 

 ments may be added i>hysical or material ones; good roads have been 

 made throughout the canton and stage coaclies ])ut ux>on them, so that 

 instead of ten or tv/elve people leaving Zurich, or entering it, per day, 

 there are now one hundred and ten. The poor tax is at the rate of but 

 Scents per annum for each citizen inhabiting the canton; the cluirch 

 rate 18 cents ; and the expense of the civil list 20 cents. Finally the 

 revenue in 1832 exceeded the expenditure by $100,000, and this surplus 

 has been devoted to the cause of material and intellectual improvement. 



From the hasty and imperfect glance which we have now taken to- 

 gether of republican Switzerland, what conclusion may we draw as to 

 the capacity of the principle v/hich connects these people, to produce 

 their happiness, their moral, intellectual, and physical improvement? 



In the distance which separates us from them the minuter sh;;des of 

 character are lost. We do not discern the men of Geneva, of Vaud, of 

 Berne, and of Zurich, but the men of Switzerland. Standing out from the 

 picture, like the lofty summits of their own mountain chains, are the 

 prominent characteristics of the people. Frugality, perseverance, hardy 

 enterprise, high moral and religious feeling, lofty patriotism ; these are 

 tlie characteristics of the Swiss nation. 



How far these noble qualities are the result of their political institu- 

 tions, or whether the institutions owe their origin to these very qualities 

 of the people, it is needless to inquire, since what greater praise can be 

 awarded than the truth, that the institutions of Switzerland are in har- 

 mony with the free spirit of the people, and the spirit of the people with 

 their noble rei)ublican institutions. 



