and the Swiss
deputies in committee, the First Consul summed up the results of their
labours in the Act of Mediation of February 19th, 1803, which
constituted the Confederation in nineteen cantons, the formerly
subject districts now attaining cantonal dignity and privileges. The
forest cantons kept their ancient folk-moots, while the town cantons
such as Berne, Zuerich, and Basel were suffered to blend their old
institutions with democratic customs, greatly to the chagrin of the
unionists, at whose invitation Bonaparte had taken up the work of
mediation.

The federal compact was also a compromise between the old and the new.
The nineteen cantons were to enjoy sovereign powers under the shelter
of the old federal pact. Bonaparte saw that the fussy imposition of
French governmental forms in 1798 had wrought infinite harm, and he
now granted to the federal authorities merely the powers necessary for
self-defence: the federal forces were to consist of 15,200 men--a
number less than that which by old treaty Switzerland had to furnish
to France. The central power was vested in a Landamman and other
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