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Ursuline Convent. Recruiting for the Grape-Shot King. The “Burghers’ Commune”. Commission on a General Customs Tariff
First published: in Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 168, December 14, 1848.
Berne, December 9. The last convent in the Berne canton, that of the Ursulines in Pruntrut in the Jura, is approaching its end. The Government Council [Regierungsrat] has decided to propose to the Great Council the dissolution of this convent in fulfilment of the Diet’s decision banning from Switzerland all orders affiliated to the Jesuits (to which the Ursulines belong).
After Radetzky had again allowed the Neapolitan-Swiss recruits through Lombardy, King Ferdinand likewise immediately suggested that recruiting should again be allowed in Switzerland. Lucerne and the Ur-cantons naturally hastened to permit recruitment; the Berne Government, for whom the enlistment agreements[1] are anyway a thorn in the flesh, luckily found an excuse to continue prohibiting recruitment for the present. It states in particular that according to the enlistment agreement (which is a relic inherited from the revered regime of Herr Neuhaus), the recruits would be obliged to go via Genoa, a route which is still barred to them; and further, the Neapolitan Government would first have to indemnify the Swiss in Naples for the damage by looting etc., done on May 15.[2] The god-fearing [Schweizerischer] Beobachter is of course fearfully shocked by this violation of inviolable Swiss loyalty, which moreover prevents a great number of fine young canton citizens from making a glorious career (!), jeopardises the future of the Berne soldiers in Naples, causes recruiting sergeants present in Berne to starve, and reduces the income of the publicans on whose premises the military bounty would be drunk away. These are the kind of arguments with which the reactionary Swiss press wages its war.
The local conservative patricians have suffered a hard blow. For there is a so-called burghers’ commune within the commune itself. This commune, the core of which is the patriciate, made sure, in spite of all the revolutions, that the former monastery estates and other state and town domains to which it is entitled as the former holder of sovereignty, should not be transferred with sovereignty to the state or the town respectively, but be kept by it in collective ownership. Only a small part of these highly valuable estates, on which the patricians still wax fat today, is to go to the town, but the “burghers” always refused to give it up. Now at last, through the choice of Berne as the federal capital and the consequent heavy city expenses, the burghers’ commune has been forced to surrender its share to the town commune, the so-called residents’ commune,[3] and moreover to pledge a “substantial” contribution to the costs of the federal capital. The patricians declare Zion to be in danger, and they have good reason, for the federal capital threatens their purses very seriously.
The Federal Council has formed under the presidency of the head of the Trade and Customs Department, Herr Näff, a commission which is to prepare the abolition of canton duty and the creation of a Swiss customs tariff, and propose the necessary measures. Switzerland will also get protective tariffs now, which will not, it is true, be high but will completely achieve their purpose owing to the advanced development of most branches of Swiss industry and to the low wages. England, Paris, Mühlhausen and Lyons will suffer most from these measures.
- ↑ The reference is to the agreements concluded from the fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century between Swiss cantons and European states for the supply of Swiss mercenaries. In many West-European countries the mercenaries were used by the counter-revolutionary monarchist forces
- ↑ The King’s guard consisting of Swiss mercenaries and Lazzaroni — a contemptuous nickname for declassed proletarians, primarily in the Kingdom of Naples. They were repeatedly used by the Government in the struggle against liberal and democratic movements. Took an active part in suppressing the popular uprising in Naples on May 15, 1848. Lazzaroni and soldiers broke into the houses of the people of Naples, including foreigners, looted them and committed violence.
- ↑ Burghers’ communes (Bürgergemeinden) came into being at the end of the Middle Ages. They granted their members certain economic and political privileges including exemption from a number of duties and tax payments, the right to use the commune’s property and advantages in filling lucrative government offices. One became a member of the commune either by birth or by living in a given place for a definite period of time and possessing immovable property, or by paying an admission fee. In the course of time it became more and more difficult to enter a commune, which led to the division of the Swiss population into citizens (Bürger) and residents (Einwohner), the latter being deprived of the above-named privileges. Within the burghers’ commune there appeared a still closer corporation of representatives of the old patrician families who in fact established a monopoly of practically all the major government posts. Abolition of the privileges of the burghers’ commune began during the Helvetian Republic in 1798-99, when all the Swiss were made equal in rights and political power was transferred to the residents’ commune (Einwohnergemeinde), which was declared to be the holder of sovereignty in the name of the entire nation. The Federal Constitution adopted in 1848 enlarged still more the rights of the residents’ commune while the burghers’ commune only retained philanthropic functions and power over its own property