Chapter 5

The Allemends of Switzerland⁽¹⁾

In the primitive cantons of Switzerland, institutions of the most democratic character conceivable have secured the inhabitants from the most remote times in the enjoyment of liberty, equality and order, and as great a degree of happiness as is compatible with human destinies. This exceptional good fortune is attributable to the fact, that ancient communal institutions have been preserved, and with them the primitive communal ownership.

The French revolution committed the error, every day more apparent, of endeavouring to found democracy by crushing the only institutions which can make it possible. It set up abstract man, the isolated individual, and theoretically recognized in him all his natural rights, but at the same time annihilated everything that could attach him to preceding generations, or to his existing fellow-citizens, -- the province with its traditional liberties, the commune with its undivided property, and the crafts and corporations, which united in a bond of brotherhood workmen of the same trade. These associations, the natural extension of the family, had sheltered the individual: though perhaps sometimes a fetter, they were always a support; while binding men down, they also strengthened them; they were the hive in which individual life was carried on. In times of adversity there was a guarantee of assistance; in ordinary times, a supervision which kept men in the right path, a power of defence when their rights were attacked, and a tradition for new generations. The present was connected with the past by the privileges and advantages derived from the institution. In modern days the individual is lost within the nation, an abstract idea which is only realized for most of us under the form of the receiver who demands the taxes, or the conscription which imposes military service. The commune has lost all local autonomy, and is become a mere wheel in the machinery of administration, obedient to a central power. Communal property in almost every case has been sold or diminished. Man, coming into the world with wants to be satisfied, and with hands to labour, can claim no share in the soil for the exercise of his energy. Industrial crafts are no more: the joint-stock compares which have taken their place are a means of associating capital not men. Religion, a powerful bond of union, has lost most of its fraternal power; and the family, shaken to the foundation, is little more than a system of succession. Man is a social creature; and the institutions have been destroyed or weakened in which his sociability could express itself and form a solid basis for the state.

Attempts are made, now-a-days, to fill in the blank made by the centralization of the primitive system and the Revolution, by founding trades' unions: but these have no feeling of brotherhood or religion, no tradition and no juridical principles; too often they are merely aggressive associations for maintaining a struggle with the capitalists. At the risk of being thought "reactionary," the author has no hesitation in asserting that two institutions formerly existed, which should have been preserved and improved as the foundation of modern democracy, -- viz. communal autonomy, and communal property. Politicians have striven to destroy the former, and economists to banish the latter; but it is an immense mistake, and will everywhere hinder the establishment of democratic institutions, at any rate until a remedy is devised.

If in any country these institutions have been preserved, and, at the same time, liberty, equality and order have been maintained for centuries, we are induced to think that these facts are connected as cause and effect; and it may be useful to study under what conditions the country has enjoyed these rare advantages. The remarkable point is that these institutions existed among all nations originally; but in almost every case they have been destroyed or radically modified with the lapse of time. In Russia alone the property of the commune has been preserved, although the nobility, created in the sixteenth century, deprived it of half its possessions, and reduced the inhabitants to serfage. In France feudalism depressed the communes, but did not destroy them; it was reserved for royal despotism and the subsequent passion for uniformity at the time of the French revolution, to deal their death-blow. In Germany the commune was mutilated by the nobility and by administrative centralization. In England, by a strange contrast, while the towns preserved all their liberties and obtained a voice in the lower House, the rural commune was consumed by the manor, so that no vestige remains, except in the ecclesiastical element, the vestry or parish. Hence arose the profound degradation of the agricultural labourer, who is only now awakening to enter on a struggle with his employers.

There has never been a more radical democracy than that which has existed for a thousand years in Switzerland; its application in a more absolute form cannot even be conceived. In the cantons of Uri, Schwytz, Glaris, in the Appenzells, and in the two Unterwaldens, the people govern themselves directly, without any intermediate representative body. In the spring, all the citizens of full age meet in a single assembly, in the open air, to pass laws and to nominate the officers charged with their execution. This is the old "May Field" of the Germans, where all the warriors assembled in arms, and expressed their decision by the wapentak, or clash of arms. To the present day, the inhabitants of the outer Rhodes⁽²⁾ of Appenzell come to the general assembly, one year at Hundwyl and the other at Trogen, each carrying in his hand an old sword or ancient rapier of the middle ages, which forms a quaint contrast with their black clothes and family umbrella. These assemblies are called landesgemeinde, that is "national commune," a strictly precise term, implying that the whole country forms, so to say, a single commune. This was the case originally. Historical documents shew us, in the early part of the middle ages, German tribes occupying, one the territory of Unterwalden, another that of Uri, and the third that of Schwytz, as undivided marks. Later, as different villages were formed, they constituted separate autonomic communes; but the great commune of the canton with the general assembly of all the inhabitants, the landesgemeinde, was maintained. We find, therefore, a form of government perfectly free and democratic. This absolute self-government, dating from the most remote times, has been transmitted uninterruptedly to the present day. Nations did not start with patriarchal royalty, as has often been asserted from an exclusive study of heroic Greece, but rather with republican institutions. Madame de Stael was right. Liberty is ancient, despotism modern.

Direct government, which Rousseau considered no longer possible, can subsist in the primitive cantons, partly because the territory is very small, and also because the duties of legislation are reduced to a very small compass. Most kinds of business are carried on in the commune. Foreign relations are the province of the confederation. The manner of life is simple, and custom still exercises a considerable empire. Accordingly there are but few laws to be made. The landamman presents them to the assembly, every citizen having the right of initiative or amendment. The discussions are at times very animated, and even violent; but an early division is demanded, as every one is anxious to get home again. The abuse of parliamentarianism, the peculiar curse of States governed on the representative system, is thus avoided.

Almost everywhere deliberative assemblies remain too long together: they irritate and weary the country; sometimes communicating to it the passions by which they are themselves animated, and sometimes arousing an extreme movement in opposition when they have ceased to represent piblic opinion. When the assemblies are prorogued, the country is at rest, and devotes itself to business, to art, literature, industry or commerce. Scarcely, however, have parliamentary discussions recommenced when everything is once more called in question: exasperated parties are at issue; and the government, compelled to devote its whole power in warding off the attacks of its adversaries, has no time to consider questions of general interest. The passions of the nation are aroused over contests in which a portfolio is the prize. The parliamentary system thus degenerates into contests of intrigue in the chambers, and contests of influence, too often corrupt, in the elections. America, Germany, and England have been preserved from the abuse of parliamentarianism, which, in France and Italy, has become an absolute cause of disorder. The best means of escaping it is to reduce the functions of the central power by extending those of local powers, -- of the province, that is to say, and the commune.

In Switzerland, the communes enjoy almost absolute autonomy. They not only frame their own regulations, but even their own constitution, so long as it is not contrary to the laws of the State. They administer independently everything relating to their schools, churches, to the police, the roads, and the care of the poor. They have free power of nominating all their officers, and of fixing their local taxation. The State only meddles with the communal administration so far as to preserve the hereditary patrimony of the commune from destruction, and to prevent the violation of general laws. The interference of the central power is rather greater in certain cantons, such as Fribourg, Geneva and Berne; in others, such as Appenzell and the Grisons, it is reduced to nearly nothing. The State is only a federation of independent communes, which existed before its birth, and can live without it. The central power exercises no administrative control over the local authorities; the violation of a general law is the only ground for its interference. It can only reach the citizens through the medium of the communes; and it is the latter which vote the taxes and pass the laws, the establishment of which belongs to the people, in virtue of the Constitution. Decentralization here is excessive. Communal federalism pushed to this extreme degree takes away all consistency from the State, and reduces the nation to dust. As Tocqueville has demonstrated, the superiority of the United States' constitution consists in the fact, that, while the independence of the federated states is respected, the central power, for the duties which it has reserved towards itself, addresses the citizens directly, by means of its own agents, nominated and distributed by itself.⁽³⁾

The reason that the republican system is so firmly established in Switzerland is, that it has its roots in minute districts. If for centuries it has been a guarantee alike of order and liberty, this is due to the fact that, most matters of public interest being decided in the commune, the changes, which elections bring about in the composition of the government, exercise only a secondary influence. It is impossible to found a republic, as has been attempted in France, by maintaining a centralization, which leaves in the hands of an assembly or a president the power of deciding everything. A civilized country can never tolerate a system, which, at every general election, and at every renewing of the executive power, once more calls into question the whole political and social organization. If all the organs of national sovereignty are to be elective, some limit must be put on their authority, and some restraint on the functions of the central power. In the United States, as in Switzerland, the commune, or township, is the principal focus of political and administrative life. In the township most of the common interests are managed. The State is composed of a union of independent and autonomic townships, just as living creatures are made up of an infinite number of connected cells, each of which is endowed with individual activity.

The characteristic distinguishing the Swiss commune from the American commune, and imparting to it a much greater importance, is that it is not merely a political and administrative institution; it is also an economical institution. It does not simply give its members abstract rights; it procures them also in some measure the means of existence. As elsewhere, it supplies the expenses of the school, the church, the police and the roads; but more than this, it secures to its members the enjoyment of property, the essential condition of true liberty and independence. This curious aspect of the primitive Swiss communal organization we will endeavour to describe.

We have seen how, in all nations, by a slow and universally similar evolution, the commune and property were developed in the mark. The mark we have seen was the common domain of the clan. Under the pastoral system, the enjoyment of the pasturage and forest was undivided. Each patriarchal family cut the wood necessary for its wants, hunted its game in the forest, and sent its cattle on to the pasture land.

On the introduction of agriculture, the enjoyment of the portion of the mark brought under cultivation ceased to be undivided: it became individual property, but only temporary property, for the space of a life at most. There was only a usufruct; a jus possessionis, similar to that which the Roman citizen exercised over the Ager Publicus; the dominium, the eminent domain continued to belong to the tribe. This change in the mode of enjoyment was the necessary consequence of the change from the pastoral to the agricultural system. The cultivation of grain requires labour, manure, and the application of a certain outlay to the soil: this work cannot be properly carried out, unless he who executes it is sure of reaping the fruit of his outlay. Hence the necessity of individual occupation. On the other hand, as an equal right to live by his labour was recognized in every head of a family, a new allotment had to be made from time to time, that every one alike might be put in possession of the part which fell to him. Thus the clan retained a sort of eminent domain, and periodically effected a new partition of the soil. As we have seen, this primitive organization of the mark has been perpetuated in several countries, particularly Java, and Russia. Elsewhere, a few families, attaining greater power, retained their portion, which has been transmitted by hereditary descent. So private property, the type of which we must seek in the quiritary ownership of the Romans, came into existence.

Among nations of German origin, or in countries conquered. by the Germans, the feudal system made gradual encroachments on the mark. In England, where, in consequence of the Norman conquest, feudalism was organized more completely and systematically than anywhere else, the manor finally absorbed the forest and pasture-land of the communes. The cultivated lands, tilled by the peasants, were soon released from periodic partition. Hence there remain hardly any traces of the primitive mark in England. The complete and absolute dominium of the Roman law, however, has never been recognized. In strict law, the English soil, conquered by William, and distributed by him to his vassals, still belongs to the Sovereign. The possessors of it are mere tenants of the Crown.⁽⁴⁾

In France the peasants, remaining for a long time associated in family groups, succeeded in preserving their communal property. This property, however, attacked as it is by economists, broken in upon by laws of compulsory partition, and always badly managed, hardly yields anything. The use of it is badly regulated, and it only survives as a relic of the past, in strong contrast with the existing agrarian economy. In Switzerland the case is quite otherwise. In the high valleys feudalism was not introduced till late; it never attained to much power, and before the end of the middle ages it had completely disappeared. The democratic institutions of the primitive mark were therefore maintained in all their vigour. Although private property has by degrees spread considerably, communal property has not disappeared. Under regulations, continually increasing in precision, it has followed a regular juridical development, and still plays a very important part in the economic life of the Alpine cantons.

The lands of the communes in Switzerland are called Allmenden, which seems to signify that they are the common domain of all. In a restricted sense, the name Allmend is applied to that portion of the undivided domain, situated near the village, which is devoted to agriculture.

The common territory consists of three distinct portions -- forest, meadow, and cultivated land -- Wald, Weide und Feld. Certain villages, such as those in the cantons of Zug and Schwytz, where there are marshy plateaus, possess besides lands where rushes are cut for litter (Riethern), and others wbere turf is cut for firing (Torfplaetze). Commonable land is not there, as with us, a bare waste, or sterile heath, pasturing a few miserable sheep, and presenting a picture of neglect and desolation. It is a domain managed according to strict rules dictated by the requirements of systematic agriculture. All the inhabitants regularly take part in its management, and the produce is as great as on private domains, for the cultivated land of the allmend will let at 250 or 300 francs the hectare. This domain provides those, who are entitled to the use of it, with the means of satisfying the first wants of life. It supplies turf or wood for firing, timber for the construction or repairing of the châlet, and the construction of household articles, tools or agricultural implements -- in a word lodging and furniture; a summer pasturage for the sheep and cows, which yield milk, butter, meat and wool -- or animal food and clothing; and finally a plot of cultivated land, yielding corn, potatoes and vegetables.

In many villages the portion of cultivated land which falls to each family is abundantly manured and used as a kitchen garden: it is sufficient to contribute largely to the vegetable portion of the food supply. At Stanz every occupier is entitled to 1,400 klafter, which amount to 45 ares; or more than an English acre. In the canton of Saint-Gall the village of Buchs allows each of the cultivators 1,500 klafter or about half a hectare of excellent land, as well as firewood for the whole year, and alp for a considerable head of cattle; and besides this, it derives from its communal property a revenue sufficient to support the schoolmaster and pastor, and to meet all public expenses without imposing any tax. At Wartau, also in the Oberland of Saint-Gall, every occupier receives 2,500 klafter or 80 ares in usufruct.

Mere habitation within the commune, or even the exercise of political membership, is not sufficient to constitute a title to the enjoyment of the communal domain; descent from a family, which has possessed the right from time immemorial, or at least from before the commencement of the present century, being necessary. Collective succession is based on succession in the family, that is to say, descent in a privileged family gives the right to a share in the collective inheritance. In theory it is the association of descendants of the original occupants of the mark continuing to enjoy what remains of its domain. Thus, in the same village, side by side with a group of persons using the commonable land, may be found inhabitants excluded from all the advantages which so materially improve the position of the former, and there are thus, as it were, two distinct communes involved one within the other. The Beisassen, or simple residents as they are called, have often complained of this distinction, which has given rise to violent struggles between the reformers, who demand equal rights for all, and the conservatives, who endeavour to maintain the old exclusion.⁽⁵⁾ Even in those cantons where the most absolutely equal democracy that has ever existed is established, there is ground for a struggle between the spirit of tradition and the spirit of levelling. As there is no general law on the subject, the results of this struggle have not been everywhere the same; but generally arrangements have been adopted securing certain rights to the mere residents, or Beisassen. Thus they may have firewood from the forest, but not timber. They may only send the young cattle, and in some cases one or two milking cows, but no more, on to the alp. In the Allmends of the plain they are allowed even less: they are often entirely excluded; in some cases they only participate in the drawing of lots for the plots of cultivated land or gardens.

We have but little documentary evidence as to the primitive mode of occupying the Allmenden. When the population was very slight in proportion to the territory at its disposal, regulations were hardly necessary. Every one cut what wood he required in the forest, and depastured on the alp all the cattle he possessed. It was only later on, when the number of copartners became too large to allow of an unlimited right of user, that the interposition of rules was called for, and they merely sanctioned ancient custom. These regulations became stricter and more precise in proportion as the wants of the community increased. There has thus been a certain juridical evolution; but the fundamental principles of the law have changed as little as the alp itself, or the pastoral economy practised on it. The Swiss Allmend thus affords us even now a picture of the primitive life of the ancient inhabitants of the plateaus of the Iran.

The oldest rules of the Allmend which have been published date from the fifteenth century. Every community possesses an old chest, or ancient trunk, in which are preserved all the documents relating to the domain of the corporation. Besides the fundamental regulation, which may be called the constitution of the society, -- Einung or Genossenordnung, -- this chest contains the judgments deciding any contested point, agreements with neighbouring villages, and the official reports of decisions passed in the ordinary assemblies of May and December. This respect for ancient tradition is a great source of strength in Switzerland; for, as they are more democratic and equal the higher they go back into antiquity, these traditions are exactly in harmony with the requirements of the age which seeks to establish democracy. They have this great advantage over the innovations attempted in the present day, that they have lasted for thousands of years, being maintained and perfected by the free will of men who appreciate their advantages. This leads us to suppose that they are conformable to natural law, that is, to the wants of human nature.

The mode in which the inhabitants exercise their right in the Allmend differs more or less in the several communes. It not also varies according to the nature of the. property. It is the same for the alp, for the forest, for the turf and the cultivated lands. When the group of habitations in the centre of the mark was transformed from a village into a town, it became difficult to maintain the ancient method of enjoyment. Nevertheless, at Berne, the woods are still allotted among the persons entitled. In the industrial town of Saint-Gall each of them receives annually half a fathom of wood and a hundred fagots, or a plot of arable land. The town of Soleure distributes among the occupiers a considerable supply of firewood, varying from five fathoms to a half fathom of beech and fir, according to the class of persons entitled. In many localities the communal lands are let, and the profits applied to defray public expenses. Sometimes there is a surplus, which is apportioned in money; but nearly all the communes which have arable lands allot them among the commoners. There are infinite varieties of detail in the manner of enjoyment of the several communes. The methods can, however, as the Pastor Becker remarks, be classed with sufficient accuracy according to the types afforded by the three cantons of Uri, Valais and Glaris.

Uri is, as seems to be signified by the root of the word, Ur, pre-eminently the primitive district. At the present day it forms a single mark, without any division into communes. Villages have been formed, Fluelen, Altdorf, Bürglen, Erstfeld, Silenen, Amstäg, Waset, and Andermatt; but except for the care of the power, which is to some extent in their charge, these villages do not form distinct political corporations. They are not true communes; the inhabitant exercises his right of user in any locality to which he may remove. The inhabitant of Silenen may send his cattle into the valley of Schaechenthal, and the inhabitant of this valley may send his on to the alp of the Surènes. In this system there is no other division than that traced by nature itself, which has divided the canton into two distinct parts, the district of Uri, and that of Urseren, separated by the deep gorge of the Schoellenen, bordered on both sides by perpendicular granite rocks, with the Reuss roaring at the bottom. There are, therefore, as it were, two marks, tbe upper mark above the Urner Loch, and the lower mark below it.

In the lower mark, a great part of the plain has become private property; the woods, alps and a few allmends, in the neighbourhood of the villages, alone remaining in the primitive community. In the high valley of Urseren, fiiteen kilometres in length and two at the most in breadth, the splendid pastures, watered by the Reuss and by the mists of the glaciers, belong to the body of commoners of Urseren.

A touching legend is attached to the method in which the boundary between the marks of Uri and Glaris was formerly fixed. The two cantons are separated by frozen peaks and a lofty chain of mountains everywhere except at the Klausen passage, through which one can easily pass from the valley of the Linth to that of the Reuss. In times past, there were disputes and struggles between the people of Uri and Glaris as to the debateable boundary of their pastures. To decide the question, they agreed that, on St George's day, a runner should start at the first cock-crow from the bottom of each valley, and that the frontier should be fixed at the point where they met. The start was to be superintended by inhabitants of Glaris at Altdorf, and by inhabitants of Uri at Glaris. The people of Glaris fed the cock, which was to give the signal to their runner, as much as possible, hoping that, being in full vigour, it would crow early in the morning. The people of Uri, on the contrary, starved their cock; hunger kept it awake, and it gave the signal for the start long before dawn. The runner started from Altdorf, entered the Schaechenthal, crossed the top and began to descend on the other side towards Linth. The Glaris cock crowed so late that their runner met the one from Uri far down the slope on his side. Desperate at the thought of the disgrace which would be reflected on his countrymen, he begged earnestly for a more equitable boundary. "Hearken," answered the other, "I will grant you as much land as you can cross, ascending the mountain with me on your back." The bargain was struck. The Glaris man ascended as far as he could, when he fell dead from fatigue on the banks of the stream called Scheidbaechli (the boundary brook). This is why Urnerboden, situated on the slope facing Glaris, beyond the division of the water, belongs to Uri. It is a curious legend, in which, as so often in Swiss history, the citizen gives his life for the good of his country.

There is no precise measurement of the extent of the allmends in Uri. An estimate made in 1852 reckons the alps belonging to the lower district of the canton as containing 5.417 kuhessens⁽⁶⁾. As the district numbers about 2,700 families of commoners, this allows about the keep of two cows on an average for each family.