Budget of the Swiss Canton of Bern

** Berne, 9 January. The budget of the canton has now been debated in the Government Council to the point where it can be submitted to the Great Council, which is about to convene. It aligns itself with the other European budgets in so far as it, too, has a deficit of 43,000 francs, on a total sum of about 5 million francs. Of these 5 million, approximately 800,000 are covered by the revenue from the state domains, 1,800,000 francs by indirect taxes, and the remainder by customs duties etc. Accordingly, there fall almost exactly 4 Swiss francs (1 Thlr. 18 Sgr.) in direct, and about 3 1/2 francs in indirect taxes, per head of the population. If all the reductions proposed by Finance Director Stämpfli (chief of the local Radicals) had been adopted, a surplus of 80,000 francs would have emerged instead of a deficit. But that did not suit the liberal majority of the Government Council, which calmly leaves to the aristocrats the eternal reproach of the “deranged state of the finances”, in order to lay this reproach at the door of the radical Stämpfli. In reality, the finances of the canton had been completely thrown into disorder and squandered by the notorious Neuhaus government, and if order has now been restored, we owe this solely to Mr Stämpfli.