_Limitations to Swiss Freedom._

Certain stumbling blocks stand in the way of sweeping claims as to the
freedom enjoyed in Switzerland. One is asked: What as to the suppression
of the Jesuits and the Salvation Army? As to the salt and alcohol
monopolies of the State? As to the federal protective tariff? What as to
the political war two years ago in Ticino?

Two mutually supporting forms of reply are to be made to these queries.
One relates to the immediate circumstances under which each of the
departures from freedom cited have taken place; the other to historical
conditions affecting the development of the Swiss democracy of to-day.

As to the first of these forms of reply:

In the decade previous to 1848 occurred the religious disturbances that
ended in the war of the Sonderbund (secession), when several Catholic
cantons endeavored to dissolve the loose federal pact under which
Switzerland then existed. On the defeat of the secessionists, the
movement for a closer federation--for a Confederation--received an
impetus, which resulted in the present union. By an article of the
constitution then substituted for the pact, convents were abolished and
the order of the Jesuits forbidden on Swiss soil. Both had endangered
the State. Mild, indeed, is this proscription when compared with the
effects of the religious hatreds fostered for centuries between
territories now Swiss cantons. In the judgment of the majority this
restriction of the freedom of a part is essential to that enjoyed by the
nation as a whole.

The exercises of the Salvation Army fell under the laws of the