Page:The Rise of the Swiss Republic (1892).djvu/12

vi another federated state in existence, until lately almost ignored by writers on political subjects, whose example can, in reality, be of the utmost service to us. The Swiss Confederation is as near as possible a counterpart in miniature of the United States. Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart, in his “Introduction to the Study of Federal Government”, declares with justice that, “Of all the confederations of history, Switzerland bears the closest resemblance in institutions to the United States.”

Within two years, by what seems like an extraordinary revival of interest, four books have appeared in English devoted to the elucidation of Swiss political institutions, but the history of the country still awaits scholarly and scientific treatment. It is, in fact, the misfortune of Swiss history, that although very little is popularly known about it, that little is almost invariably incorrect. The subject has so long lain neglected in the literary garret that cobwebs have gathered over it and obscured the truth.

There is a widespread but vague idea that a regularly organized republic has existed in the Alps from time immemorial, under the name of Helvetia. Nothing could be more misleading—for, as a matter of fact, the territory now known as Switzerland had no separate political existence prior to the end of the thirteenth century, and its condition resembled that of Central Europe in general. The Swiss Confederation made its entry upon the historic stage in 1291, when three small and obscure peasant communities, Uri, Schwiz, and Unterwalden, concluded a perpetual pact in order to defend themselves against the encroachments of the nobility in general, and of the family of Habsburg in particular. As for the Celtic tribe of the Helvetii, who inhabited a part of the country when it is first mentioned by Roman writers, they had no more to do with founding the Swiss Confederation, than had the Indians in America to do with framing the Constitution of the United States.

Around the three communities of Uri, Schwiz, and Unterwalden, as a nucleus, the Swiss Confederation grew, in course of time, by the adherence of other sovereign communities, until it reached its present proportion of twenty-two Cantons in 1815. The very name of Switzerland was unknown before the fifteenth century, when, for the first time, the eight states which then composed the Confederation began to be called collectively “Die Schweiz”, after the com-