Protest of the Pope – Imperial Corn Blockade –  
The Grand Council of Valais

Bern, 26 November.  
No. 157, 1 December 1848.  
Supplement to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

In yesterday’s sitting, the National Council disposed of the two items on the agenda (the motion of Emil Frei on the law on ministerial responsibility and that of Ochsenbein on the federal university) by referring them to the Federal Council. During the discussion on the university, a number of peculiar statements were made. Lusser from Uri saw in the project the ruin of his canton’s finances. Hungerbühler of Bern likewise resisted the university with all his might: it was a luxury expense, and there were already enough over-studied people. Even the Alcibiades of the Swiss Athens, Mr. Escher of Zurich, opined that one must first wait for the funds. Alcibiades had good reason to press for the simple agenda; he knew very well that the Bernese intend to seize the federal seat and then fob off Lucerne with the Federal Court and Zurich with the “federal university.” But the ambition of the Athenians of Switzerland goes much further, and all but two of them voted, albeit in vain, for proceeding to the simple agenda.

In the Council of States, the law on the federal seat was adopted in the version proposed by the National Council, and only an addition by Rüttimann, concerning the security of the federal authorities, was appended. It has thus now been decided that the federal seat shall be determined separately by the two chambers, and indeed not by election but by ordinary ballot. We shall see what comes of it.

A great confusion had arisen in the canton of Neuchâtel a few days ago. News reached here that all the State Councillors, with the exception of one (Mr. Steck), had handed in their resignations. In the greatest consternation, all the National and State Councillors of the republic immediately journeyed home from here. As we hear, the difference, provoked by a violent

outburst on the part of Mr. Steck, was settled again by a commission of the Grand Council appointed for this purpose, and at the session two days ago the State Councillors withdrew their resignations, which was received by the Grand Council with loud cries of vive la république.

The Pope has protested against the resolutions of the five cantons of the Diocese of Fribourg, which remove Bishop Marilley from episcopal functions and order measures for the provisional administration of the bishopric. He threatens, if these measures are not revoked, with “other provisions to which his conscience, in the face of the Catholic world, would oblige him.” The “Schweizerische Beobachter”, the local reactionary paper, consoled itself the evening before last with the hope: now that the republic had been proclaimed in Rome (the poor paper had been hoaxed into believing this), the papacy was finished and the Catholic world restored to its liberty, by which the Fribourg troubles would also be resolved!

The reports from the German frontier as to whether the corn blockade has already taken effect or not are contradictory. This much is certain, that it has at most already taken effect on Lake Constance; for on the 24th, the day before yesterday, just as many Swabian corn farmers came to the market in Zurich as ever before.

The Grand Council of Valais has resolved to impose the Sonderbund war tax, not as has been done elsewhere, on the enormously wealthy monasteries, but on the communes. The share which Valais has to pay amounts to 1,600,000 Swiss francs. Thus, instead of the real instigators of the entire uprising, the monks, the poor people of the canton are to pay this tax. Meanwhile, the venerable fathers are all the more dragging their property over into Piedmont, as the Fathers of the Great St. Bernard have already done. These little clerics, so celebrated in schoolbooks and sentimental stories on account of their dogs and their supposed self-sacrifice for freezing wayfarers, but in reality enormously rich and taking very good care of themselves, have taken all their wealth, their cattle, their money, their implements to Aosta, where they are also staying and doing hearty justice to the Piedmontese wine. When Radetzky entered Milan, these friends of humanity celebrated the joyful event with banqueting and cannon fire, and were for that reason prosecuted by the Piedmontese courts. In their wintry monastery, this ecclesia pressa has left behind nothing but some bread and bacon, with which a few servants entertain travellers. The “Suisse”, incidentally, doubts that the above decision is correct, although it is printed in the Journal du Valais.