The Sun.
London, England, 1848-02-05 00:00:00

Ettning

LONDON, SATURDAY. FEBRUARY 5, 1848

The speech of M. TRIERS, on the affairs of Swit-
zerland, which occupied the whole of the Wednesday
sitting of the Chamber of Deputies, is a complete
and satisfactory vindication of the Swiss Liberals from
the calumnies which have been heaped upon them.
After narrating lucidly, clearly, eloquently, as he
only can narrate, the history of Switzerland from
1798 to 1830, and showing distinctly that the great
Powers, in 1815, when they guaranteed the neutra-
lity of Switzerland, never intended to prevent the
Diet from revising the Federal pact in any manner
which to the Diet might seem most fitting, M.
TIIIERS proceeded to give the history of the occur-
rences in the Swiss cantons since 1830, and to prove
that throughout these transactions the Sonderbund
party have been the aggressors—that they gained
their power by insurrection, and maintained
it by what they called " religions liberty "
their " religious liberty" being not equal reli-
gious rights for all, but the liberty of persecuting
all, for themselves. In 1830 the moderate party was
in power in Switzerland, and they continued to
govern it for ten years. They were deprived of
power, not by the Radicals (Radicalism in Switzer-
land is of very recent date, and owes its origin solely
to the persecutions which the Liberal party have
experienced from the Jesuits and the parti-pretee
against which persecution it is the natural reaction),
but by the Jesuits, who in many of the cantons
seized the government by force, and commenced
immediately a sy,stem of cruel persecution against all
who did not pay implicit obedience to their authority.
In the year 1839 the Jesuits sent out missionaries
in various directions to preach in the country
districts, not religion, but politics, not peace,
but insurrection, and thus desecrated religion
into a weapon fur obtaining temporal power.
The consequence was an insurrection against the es-
tablished Government of Friburg, its destruction and
the installation of the Jesuits by force in the canton
of Friburg. After this first success, after the
Jesuits had established themselves by force in Fri-
burg, they wished also to establish themselves in
Lucerne, in Soleure, and in Argovia—at first they
had recourse to legal and pacific measures ; at
Lucerne they succeeded, by intrigue they obtained a
majority, without its being necessary for them to
have recourse to open violence. But in Soleure and
Argovia they were in a minority, and then they had
recourse, as in Friburg, to their favourite method,
insurrection. There were established in Argovia
certain convents—these convents were converted
into a focus of hostility against the established
Government of the cantons; the convent of
Muri was the centre of the insurrection, the
head-quarters of the civil war. The insurrection,
however, was unsuccessful, the Government tri-
umphed, and suppressed the convents, and those very
men who were so loud in their protestation against
any interference with the independent cantonal
sovereignty when the Diet ordered the expulsion of
the Jesuits, actually on that occasion strenuously
endeavoured to urge the Diet to interfere by force in
order to prevent the canton of Argovia from
k uppressing these convents. We cannot but
repeat the question of M. TRIERS at this
point of the narrative, and ask if Prince
METTERNICU would suffer the existence of
any convent in Milan which should conspire against
the Austrian Government ? Defeated in Argovia, the
Jesuits turned their attention to the Valais. This
canton consists of two portions—the Upper Valais,
the language of which is German, and the Lower
Valais, the language of which is French. The Upper
Valaisans are perhaps the most ignorant, besotted,
bigotted peasantry in Europe. The clergy exercise
absolute power over them, and possess immense
wealth. The monks of St. Bernard possess
large estates, and the Jesuits also are large
landed proprietors. These clergy paid no taxes
whatever on their immense properties, and even
claimed exemption from the ordinary tribunals, by
appealing to Rome in every instance in which an
action or prosecution was instituted against them.
They established a journal, and every action brought
against them for libel was carried to Rome. This
was not all. Marriage in the Valais was a religious
ceremony, and could not be contracted legally save
it was celebrated by a priest. The clergy took upon
themselves to refuse to perform the ceremony in cer-
tain cases, and the Bishop of Siosi actually issued an
order forbidding the clergy to marry, christen,
cr bury any members of the society of Young
Switzerland. This very Bishop of Sus/ is at
this moment one of the loudests brawlers against
any infringement on his religious liberty, meaning
by that liberty the power of tyrannising over others.
In the Lower Valais the inhabitants were, com-
paratively speaking, well educated and far from
bigotted ; they had long had a majority in the can-
tonal legislature, and had a semi-liberal government.
The Government had announced its intention of pro-
posing a measure, subjecting the property of the
clergy to the same taxes to which all the other pro-
perty in the canton was subject. Immediately the
clergy arm the peasants of Upper Valais—dissolve
the Government by force—march the armed peasants
into the Lower Valais—many of the inhabitants
fly to save their lives—they are met on the bridge of
Trient by armed peasants, who had been armed and
sent thither by the monks of St. Bernard, and are
there shot down by these soldiers of the priests, and
their bodies thrown into the torrent. The victors
then levied the costs of the war upon the inhabitants
of Lower Valais, established special tribunals for the
trial of their opponents, many of whom were fined
and imprisoned, and had their goods confiscated, and
sent commissioners to every part of the
canton to summons before them all who
belonged to the society of Young Switzerland,
forcing them to abjure their belief and to conform to
the Jesuit creed. These scenes excited the eaten-
euacr
atten-
tion of the Diet,
more especiallynrodnce when they
intothey
heard that it
one was itended to it
Lucerne,
of the governing cantons. The Diet
addressed an earnest request to Lucerne not to in-
troduce the Jesuits, and immediately afterwards the
Jesuits were installed in thegovernment of Lucerne
in triumph. The Jesuits in Lucerne treated their
opponents as they had already treated their o -
nents in Valais. In many instances they seizedp
and hanged them on trees, and confiscated their
property, without form of trial. Henceforth the
Jesuit question became a national question. If the
Jesuits were to enjoy the religious liberty they
sought, viz., the liberty of persecution, it was very
clear that no other body could enjoy even the rights of
toleration; and the Jesuits, in order to preserve the
liberty ofpersecuting, formed the league of the Sonder-
bund. The Diet demanded the dissolution of this league,
as contrary to the 6th Article of the Pact, and on the
refusal of the Sonderhund to dissolve itself, it was
dissolved by force after a campaign of a
thel3 Federal troops, under the
title command of General
fortnight by
Ri:aeWiahcOatoirlasof
17iosncofuonrtryh.imsvirelef
atuherempreomud.

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