Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/48

 34 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

as 1513 there was a sort of confederacy of thirteen cantons. But this confederacy was not a government, certainly it was not a democratic government. The thirteen were prevented from breaking up into warring states from the fact that they held the greater part of the land outside their own borders which now composes Switzerland as subject territory. The subject territory was governed in a way altogether anti-democratic. The French Revolution loosened the joints of despotism in Switzerland as it did in the rest of Europe. It was not until Switzerland was con- quered by France and organized as a Helvetic province that all of the cantons were placed in relations of equality with reference to each other. It was outside pressure on the part of the mon- archies of Europe that forced the thirteen despotic cantons to a position of equality when Switzerland became independent in 1813. But the old aristocratic governments remained. The revolutions of 1830 stirred the democratic impulses in Switzer- land, but it was not until the period of European revolution in 1846 and 1848 that a really democratic constitution was adopted in Switzerland. Of course I knew these historic facts before I went to Switzerland, but I had failed to be duly impressed with the newness of Swiss democracy. I believe that we cannot be too prompt in reaching the understanding that what we now recog- nize as democracy is something absolutely new on the face of the earth. The name and the thing democracy were a byword and a scandal to many of our revolutionary fathers. In Switzerland the men still live who have witnessed a short and sudden change from a close oligarchy or aristocracy to democracy. These men know when and how the change was made. With us the ideas of Jefferson have filtered into our minds so gradually and imperceptibly as to delude us into the notion that all true patriots have always been democrats.

The party in Switzerland which represents the ruling class of 1848 is now called the Democratic party. It has in it the bankers, merchants, and men of conservative tendencies. Yet this party has initiated and carried into effect legislation which in America would be stigmatized as communistic. Some, if not