Budget of the Swiss Canton of Bern

** Bern, January 9.

Neue Rheinische Zeitung, No. 195, January 14, 1849.

The budget of the canton has now been debated in the Government Council to such an extent that it can be submitted to the Grand Council, which is convening shortly. It falls in line with the other European budgets in that it, too, has a deficit of 43,000 francs, against a total sum of approximately 5 million francs. Of these 5 million, roughly 800,000 are covered by the yield from the state domains, 1,800,000 francs by indirect taxes, 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 their perpetual reproach of the “disordered financial state” 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 Herr Stämpfli.