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Special pages :
Sitting of the Swiss Chambers
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 147 (second edition), November 19, 1848.
Berne, November 12. In the sittings held so far, the two Swiss Chambers have not yet debated any of the more important questions. Last week the main business was the constituting of the two Councils; the debate on the publication of proceedings (which, as is known, has been dropped for the present without any conclusion being reached); the recall of deputies elected with reservations regarding the new Constitution.[1] During yesterday’s sitting the oath for the federal authorities was finalised and the salaries of the Federal Council fixed (6,000 Swiss francs for the President, 5,000 for each of the councillors, and 4,000 and free residence for the Chancellor). It will now no longer be possible to delay the choice of the federal capital and the appointment of the Federal Council. In addition the Vorort yesterday informed both Councils of the measures taken with regard to Tessin.[2] Tessiners have appealed against the Vorort to the new federal authorities; however, it is not to be expected that the latter will modify or revoke altogether the decisions taken by their predecessors.
- ↑ In the Freiburg (Fribourg) and other Swiss cantons the Government made recognition of the cantonal Constitution one of the conditions for voting at the elections to the Federal Assembly. In Freiburg this measure was directed against clergymen who tried to get their deputies elected to the National Council. Many members of the National Council, however, regarded this as a violation of the universal suffrage introduced by the 1848 Constitution and managed to have the elections in the Freiburg canton annulled (for details see this volume, pp. 42-43). Subsequently this decision was reviewed and the annulment of the Freiburg elections reversed (see this volume, pp. 57-58)
- ↑ Under pressure from Radetzky, commander-in-chief of the Austrian army in North Italy, the Vorort Berne sent its representatives and a military detachment to Tessin, a canton bordering on Italy, where Italian refugees who supported the insurgent movement against Austria had found asylum. The representatives demanded that all the Italian refugees should he deported from Tessin into the interior of the country. The Tessin Government refused to fulfil this demand and agreed to deport only those Italians who had taken a direct part in the insurgents’ movement. The conflict was discussed in the columns of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung for several months. Engels gave details of the debate on it in the new Swiss Federal Assembly in his article “The National Council” (see this volume, pp. 138-53). The Vorort (the main canton) — the name given to a Swiss canton in whose capital the Diet, and later the Federal Assembly, held its sittings before Berne was proclaimed the Swiss capital. In 1803-09, there were six main cantons — Freiburg, Berne, Solothurn, Basle, Zurich and Lucerne; in 18 1 5 their number was reduced to three: Zurich, Berne and Lucerne, and the seat of the Diet changed every two years. Until the Constitution of 1848, the Vorort authorities to a certain extent fulfilled the functions of the country’s Government and its representative was President of the Diet