Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/40

56 confederate state still in existence, free and secure in itself?

“The soul, and vitalizing principle in our union is, love of freedom. Republicans anterior to Rome, our forefathers could not endure a monarchy. In later history they are the first-born of freedom.

“ ‘We have seen,’ says Bodin, in the sixteenth century, ‘Athens change her form of government seven times in one century, and Florence also seven times under the government of their refined lords, whilst the Sworn-Confederates have maintained their popular institutions since A.D. 360.’

“Foreign powers, at the present time, are not ignorant that any attempt to overcome the Cantons would awaken the same resolute resistance as that of which Sempach and Grandson are the monuments. For others the festivities, gayeties, and splendid scenes of courts; for us the fraternal feeling which makes the heart throb in a nation fostered by equality on a free soil. We could not bear to live, if we had lost that which gives life its value.

“Behold, then, what the Swiss have in common, from the Rhine to the Rhone, from Geneva to the wild valleys of ———.

“The annals of Switzerland have shown their vocation for independence.

“ ‘Helvetia,’ said our fathers, ‘is a confusion which God regulates.’ They taught us not to doubt God; their history, never to despair of our native land. The great nations subsist by their masses, we, by our faith and love.

“Our union is expressive of this. In what name