for the service of France were monopolized by the younger sons of the
more powerful families, who introduced the social vices of France into
their own country, where they formed a strange medley in conjunction
with the pedantry of the ancient oligarchical form of government. In
the great canton of Berne, the council of two hundred, which had
unlimited sway, was solely composed of seventy-six reigning families.
In Zurich, the one thousand nine hundred townsmen had unlimited power
over the country. For one hundred and fifty years no citizen had been
enrolled among them, and no son of a peasant had been allowed to study
for, or been nominated to, any office, even to that of preacher. In
Solothurn, but one-half of the eight hundred townsmen were able to
carry on the government. Lucerne was governed by a council of one
hundred, so completely monopolized by the more powerful families that
boys of twenty succeeded their fathers as councillors. Basel was
governed by a council of two hundred and eighty, which was entirely
formed out of seventy wealthy mercantile families. Seventy-one
families had usurped the authority at Freiburg: similar oligarchical
government prevailed at St. Gall and Schaffhausen. The _Junker_, in
the latter place, rendered themselves especially ridiculous by the
innumerable offices and chambers in which they transacted their
useless and prolix affairs. In all these aristocratic cantons, the
peasantry were cruelly harassed, oppressed, and, in some parts, kept
in servitude, by the provincial governors. The wealthy provincial
governments were monopolized by the great aristocratic families.[1]
Even in the pure democracies, the provincial communes were governed by
powerful peasant families, as, for instance, in Glarus, and the
tyranny exercised by these peasants over the territory beneath their
sway far exceeded that of the aristocratic burgesses in their
provincial governments. The Italian valleys groaned beneath the yoke
of the original cantons, particularly under that of Uri,[2] the seven