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The Federal Council and the Foreign Ambassadors. The Federal Council in Tessin. Centralisation of Posts. German Army Commander’s Apology
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 161, December 6, 1848.
Berne, December 2. Since announcing the constitution of the new federal authorities and the simultaneous expiry of the 1815 treaty, [1] the Federal Council has already received the assurance from all the foreign ambassadors that they believed they could promise in advance their governments’ recognition of the new authorities and the new Constitution. Only the British ambassador, Master Peel, made no mention of recognition, and merely stated tersely that he had communicated the announcement to his Government. As Russia has no representative here, no statement has, of course, come from that power.
The Federal Council has appointed as its representatives in Tessin Colonel Stehlin from Basle and Colonel Briatte from Waadt, both of them members, and the latter President, of the Council of States. The radical Briatte will, it is hoped, act differently from Herr Escher and Herr Munzinger.[2] Incidentally, all Italian refugees of military age have been removed from Tessin into the interior of Switzerland.
Further, the Federal Council has started to apply the law on the centralisation of posts. Herr Laroche-Stehelin from Basle has been appointed acting Postmaster-General of Switzerland, and two commissions have been set up, the first to assess the materials to be taken over from the cantons and private individuals, the second to draft a law on the organisation of the Swiss posts.
The German army commander concerned has made the appropriate apology in a letter to the Federal Council; he declares himself ready to give the satisfaction required, and announces that those concerned have already been handed over for punishment.
- ↑ The reference is to the treaty (drawn up by the Swiss Diet in 1814 and approved by the Vienna Congress in 1815) which acknowledged Switzerland’s permanent neutrality. Under this treaty the Swiss Confederation was defined as a federation of 22 cantons. When a Constitution was introduced in 1848, this treaty became invalid
- ↑ Concerning the position of Escher and Munzinger as the representatives of the Berne canton in Tessin during the so-called Tessin conflict, 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”. 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.