er
officers appointed yearly by one of the six chief cantons taken in
rotation; and a Federal Diet, consisting of twenty-five deputies--one
from each of the small cantons, and two from each of the six larger
cantons--met to discuss matters of general import, but the balance of
power rested with the cantons: further articles regulated the Helvetic
debt and declared the independence of Switzerland--as if a land could
be independent which furnished more troops to the foreigner than it
was allowed to maintain for its own defence. Furthermore, the Act
breathed not a word about religious liberty, freedom of the Press, or
the right of petition: and, viewing it as a whole, the friends of
freedom had cause to echo the complaint of Stapfer that "the First
Consul's aim was to annul Switzerland politically, but to assure to
the Swiss the greatest possible domestic happiness."

I have judged it advisable to give an account of Franco-Swiss
relations on a scale proportionate to their interest and importance;
they exhibit, not only the meanness and folly of the French Directory,
but the genius of the great Corsican in skilfully blending the new and
the old, and in his rejection of the fussy pedantry of French
theorists and the worst prejudices of the Swiss oligarchs. Had not his
sage designs been intertwined with subtle intrigues which assured his
own unquestioned supremacy in that land, the Act of Mediation might be
reckoned among the grandest and most beneficent achievements. As it
is, it must be regarded as a masterpiece of able but selfish
statecraft, which contrasts unfavourably with the disinterested
arrangements sanctioned by the allies for Switzerland in 1815.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVII

THE RENEWAL OF WAR

The re-occupation of Switzerland by the French in October, 1802, was
soon followed by other serious events, which convinced the British
Ministry that war was hardly to be avoided. Indeed, before the treaty
was ratified, ominous complaints had begun to pass between Paris and
London.

Some of these were trivial, others were highly important. Among the
latter was the question of commercial intercourse. The British
Ministry had neglected to obtain any written assurance that trade
relations should be resumed between the two countries; and the First
Consul, either prompted by the protectionist theories of the Jacobins,
or because he wished to exert pressure upon England in order to exto