Supplement
No. 180, 28 December 1848

The Measures against German Refugees –
The Troops from Ticino Returned – The Patrician Commune

Bern, 24 December. The new measures of the Federal Council, which are so highly approved by the Reich, consist not only in the circular and Steiger’s inspection tour, but notably in the expulsion from Switzerland of three utterly harmless refugees who published an extremely innocuous, merely descriptive pamphlet on the last Baden uprising; furthermore, in the action taken against the journal “Die Revolution” and the so-called “Wehrbund hilf Dir”.

The free-corps leader J. Ph. Becker in Biel, a citizen of the Canton of Berne for the past year, placed himself at the head of a military association under the above-mentioned name, which was intended to organise all the German free-corps men present in Switzerland into a German legion. The affair looks dangerous, but it was not so at all. The legion existed only on paper; there was no question of arming, still less of training. Its sole purpose was to prevent further rash and planless free-corps expeditions, and since all free-corps expeditions are necessarily rash and planless (witness the two Lucerne expeditions, the two Baden ones and that of Val d’Intelvi), the “Wehrbund” was bound to lead to the prevention of all free-corps expeditions altogether. That, however, was not what the Baden nor the Swiss government wanted; and since the leaders of the association, through all kinds of fondly cherished reminiscences of every kind of secret league-mongering, as well as through a more or less swaggering demeanour, gave the government a pretext for intervention, and since the whole plan fell under the Berne law on free corps, it was the best opportunity to discern here a deep-laid conspiracy and preparations for a new imminent invasion of Baden. To this was added the imprudence of Becker in announcing his weekly, the “Revolution”, on its title page as the “Organ of the democratic Wehrbund hilf Dir”. Enough: Herr Ochsenbein, who came to Biel either by chance or on purpose, prompted the intervention of the public authorities. The specimen number of the “Revolution” was seized, one of the editors, Michel, was expelled from the canton, and Becker’s house was searched. Afterwards they thought better of it. The encroachment on the freedom of the press was too provocative. The seizure was lifted and the Revolution will continue to appear; however, legal proceedings have been initiated against Becker, and that will probably be the end of the Wehrbund hilf Dir. The German imperial philistine can sleep peacefully again.

In Ticino all the troops have been dismissed. The extent to which the Ticinese were slandered by the eastern Swiss is shown by the excellent understanding in which the battalion from Berne that was sent there lived with the population. It is true, to be sure, that from the outset this battalion behaved quite differently from the Zurich and Appenzell contingents. At a banquet given for the officers’ corps, the Berne Colonel Seiler declared neutrality to be a necessary evil and expressed the wish that the time might soon come when Switzerland, freed from this fetter, could fight alongside the other nations for liberty. The battalion collected a day’s pay as a contribution for the Italian refugees. If the men from Zurich and Appenzell had acted in the same way, instead of enjoying exercising a hateful gendarme police and hobnobbing with Austrian officers, the Ticinese would have received them quite differently.

A few days ago a most amusing gathering of philistines took place here in Berne. The commune of residents met to declare whether it was willing to assume the burdens of the federal seat. The patricians, defeated in the last citizens’ commune and seeing the actual commencement of the division of assets between the citizens and the residents before them, sought to take their revenge in this matter. By actually ceding the assets of the residents’ commune, they would make the town independent of the patriciate, lose a host of lucrative posts and the main support of their preponderant influence in the municipal council, to say nothing of the substantial direct monetary loss. They therefore deployed all their intrigues – in order to have the federal seat removed from Berne again! They declared that the burdens of the federal seat had been stated in such uncertain terms that one risked being shamefully taken in by the Federal Council; further, that the state, and not the town, must bear the greater part of the costs; and on these pretexts they proposed to grant a miserly 300,000 francs, and not a centime more. The law on the federal seat requires, however, unconditional acceptance of the 

conditions within one month, and the month expires on the 28th. Acceptance of the patrician proposal would thus have amounted to a rejection of the federal seat. The plausible proposals for economy and security advanced by the patricians met with immense approval from the Berne philistines, so that the radicals, who wanted to keep the federal seat at all costs, almost despaired of carrying their point. The discussion went on all day, and only in the evening did the radicals muster 419 votes, which decided, against 314, on the unconditional acceptance of the obligations imposed by the Federal Assembly. Here you have an example of the miserly, pettyfogging parochialism that dares to make itself heard even in the capital of Switzerland!