ance; and for judges
also they were careful to select men of substance, "for he careth most
for freedom and order who hath most to lose"; and for the greater peace
of the land there was a Street-Council, consisting of seven reputable
men, who went through the streets administering justice in small causes
here and there, as in the East the judges sat at the city-gate or at the
door of the palace.

As the people increased, the valleys of Schwyz, Uri, and Unterwalden
were separated and grew to be independent in their own domestic matters,
while united with respect to external affairs, as in the league made in
1251 between Zurich, Schwyz, and Uri;--they were like the Five Nations
of Canada, says the historian, but more human through Christianity.
Their religious belief was simple and fervent; the Goths, as Arians, had
rejected the supremacy of the Pope; and now there came secretly teachers
from the East, through Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Hungary, even into Rhaetia,
and thence to these fastnesses of the Alps. The mind of men, thus left
free, developed itself according to the different character of the
races. The people of Schwyz were strengthened in their adherence to the
authentic Word of God, as it was with the Apostles, without the use of
pictures or the bones of saints; this Word they learned by heart, and
made little of the additions of men; hence they got to be heretics, and
were called Manicheans; but Catholicism conquered them at last.

Thus simple and unknown lived this ancient people,--destined to restore
in the end the Confederacy of Helvetia, lost since the days of Caesar's
victory, thirteen hundred years before,--till Gerhard, Abbot of
Einsiedeln, complained of them to the Emperor Henry V. for pasturing
their cattle upon the slopes which belonged to the convent: for,
forgetful of the people who dwelt in these parts, whose existence,
indeed, was concealed from him by the monks, the Emperor Henry II., in
1018, had bestowed upon the convent the neighboring _desert_; and the
Abbot, of course, did not fail to make the most of the gift. Thus there
occurred a collision. The Abbot pursued these poor peasants with the
spiritual power, which was not light in those days, and summoned them
before the Diet of Nobles of Swabia; but they rejected that tribunal,
for they acknowledged only the authority of the Emperor. Whereupon the
Abbot laid his complaint before Henry V. at Basel, where Graf Rudolph of
Lenzburg, Bailiff of Schwyz