** Berne, 18 November. Yesterday I gave you the names of the first eight elected federal judges. In the course of yesterday’s joint session, the following were also appointed: Folly of Fribourg (one of the National Councillors there whose election was quashed), Dr Karl Brenner, editor of the *Schweizerische Nationalzeitung* of Basle, and Attorney Jauch of Uri, whereby the Federal Court is brought to the full number of eleven judges. Kern was appointed president, and Dr K. Pfyffer vice-president.

As you know, the National Council has quashed the elections of the Canton of Fribourg, because only those electors who were prepared to swear an oath to the new Federal Constitution were admitted to the vote. It confirmed its vote on the following day by the almost unanimous (73 to 13) rejection of Funk’s motion to have the matter decided by both chambers. Apart from the local Berne gossip which this decision has provoked, it has, however, also given rise to very bitter discussions between the radicals of German and French Switzerland. The matter is as follows: The Federal Constitution stipulates that the first National Council shall be elected by all Swiss who are at least 20 years of age and otherwise have the right to vote in their canton. For the rest, the entire arrangement, regulations and detailed provisions are left to the individual cantons. The oath demanded by the Fribourg government is also a condition of the franchise in many other cantons; in these cantons every Swiss citizen who exercises his right to vote for the first time must swear an oath to the cantonal constitution. It is clear that the intention of the framers of the new constitution was to secure universal suffrage for the elections; but according to the letter of the law the Fribourg government is right, and given the circumstances in which it finds itself confronted by a compact hostile majority dominated by the priests, it had either to demand the oath or to resign. The German radicals now adhere to the intention of the legislator, while the French radicals, with Vaud at their head, rely on the letter of the constitution in order to save the Fribourg government and the five radical votes in the National Council which are so desirable to them. They declare the decision of the National Council to be an indirect approbation of the rebellion of the Bishop of Fribourg, which, quite rightly, would necessarily bring about the overthrow of the Fribourg radical government and the establishment of a Sonderbund government in that canton. They label the radicals of Berne and other German radicals “theorists”, “manufacturers of hollow abstractions”, “doctrinaires”, etc. It is true that the German-Swiss radicals, mostly lawyers, often adhere too rigidly to their juridical standpoint, while the Vaudois and Genevans, formed in the French revolutionary school, are better politicians and sometimes make rather light of the *jus*.

The most resolute paper of this French-Swiss tendency is the *Nouvelliste Vaudois* of Lausanne, the “organ of the revolution declared in permanence”, as the conservatives and even the settled liberals call it. This paper, which is by the way by no means written without wit and facility, quite simply plants the flag of the red republic, declares itself for the June insurgents in Paris, calls the death of Latour in Vienna “a mighty act of sovereign popular justice”, and mocks with bitter irony the pietist-reactionary *Courrier suisse*, which turned up its eyes howling at such atrocities. And yet this *Nouvelliste* is the organ of a powerful party in the Vaud government, indeed, one can almost say the organ of the majority of that government; and nevertheless in Vaud everything proceeds entirely in order, the people are calm and enthusiastically attached to their government, as the National Council elections once again prove.

According to a semi-official communiqué from the *Revue de Genève*, Geneva will ratify the resolutions of the diocesan conference concerning the Bishop of Fribourg (with which you will long since be familiar), with a few slight reservations dictated by old concordats. The remaining cantons of the diocese have already ratified them. As soon as all ratifications have been received, it reports further, Bishop Marilley will be set free, since the Canton of Fribourg has declared that it intends to drop the criminal investigation initiated against him on account of his participation in the last attempted insurrection.

Great suspense prevails over the choice of the federal city. If Berne should not be chosen, and a portent of this is seen in the fact that no Bernese has been appointed either president or vice-president of the Federal Council, then a movement will break out here which would result in the overthrow of Ochsenbein, a majority for the radical tendency (Stämpfli, Niggeler, Stockmar, etc.), and the revision of the scarcely introduced Federal Constitution. For according to the constitution, both chambers must be dissolved and new ones elected for the revision of the constitution as soon as 50,000 Swiss citizens entitled to vote demand it. Berne alone can easily collect this number of signatures, not counting the masses that would come from the advanced Latin cantons, spurred on by the prospect of a unicameral system and greater centralisation. But all speculations about the votes of Swiss chambers are mere leaps in the dark; the boundless fragmentation, this necessary consequence of the historical federative republic, the indescribable confusion of interests and the incomprehensible tangle of determining motives render all such kitchen-stove prognostications about probability and possibility futile.