improvement; but no fortune could bear the expenditure Sutherlandshire needs for its improvement, and there are worse cases than Sutherlandshire. There are tracts of immense extent where the landlord could no more do what is needed to Debt, and is merely in the capitalist's way. What would not Arran become in the hands of Thomas Brassey? A million might be spent in Skye, and spent to pay, for Skye ought to be the Oberland of Scotland; but who is to spend it with the present tenure? And now, as we write, we read in the Echo that Skye, which once sent so extraordinary a proportion of its men to the Army, is to be left almost without population, the people at last having resolved that they will depart to lands where they are sure of meat, instead of an almost perennial deficiency of oatmeal. If the Domesday Book of Scotland proves anything, it proves that the first necessity of the country is either the disappearance of proprietors able to endure a rental of a shilling an acre, or a radical change in the habitual sub-tenure of the soil; and that, we take it, is so far precisely what Lord Derby did not intend to prove. them to make them inventive, to compel These vast blocks will one day tempt them to grant "feus," to seek for miner- confiscation, as the estates of the Paals, to invite colonists, to apply that patroons did in New York State; but it is tient, minute care to arboriculture out of not in confiscation, but in change of tenwhich some great proprietors have ob- ure, in the abolition of the power of evictained so much? There are hillsides in tion, except for non-payment of a rent Perthshire where a shilling an acre has revised like the tithe, that improvement become ten shillings merely by oak plant- is ultimately to be found. The Duke of ing, not for timber, a slow and weary- Sutherland does what he can, it is said, ing process, but for bark. What can particularly if he sees his way to profit, work for ten hours a day bring to a in which he is quite right, profit being Duke with sufficient English revenues, the measure of success in agricultural or why should he bore himself to reclaim a moor? Sutherlandshire is bad enough, and its rent-roll but a poor one; but plant it down in Switzerland as a Canton, and a community of freeholders would very soon make it a comfortable, or at least an endurable, residence for a hundred thou-be done than he could pay the National sand people. Does anybody honestly think that the vast property of the two Campbells, stretching almost from sea to sea across the very waist of Scotland, would not, if held by a hundred men, instead of two, become twice as populous as it is now, and four times as wealthy and productive? The land, no doubt, is poor, but it is of the kind for which cap. ital, patience, and incessant labour could and would do miracles, for which its present owners feel no need, and which they would make no especial exertion to secure. They will say, or rather their agents for them will say, that such effort would be useless; but let them help as legislators to enfranchise the land till they are owners in fee-simple, and then offer to all comers feu-tenures, tenures in perpetuity, and see the prices they will from the very first obtain. We do not want to deprive them of an inch of their lands, rather, by abolishing the power of settlement and entail, we would increase indefinitely their proprietory rights; but we want to see other rights allowed to grow up under them, paying them neither by votes, nor service, nor respect, but by increased cash rentals. Old Coke, of THE HISTORY OF POPULAR VOTING IN Norfolk, in a lifetime would double the rental of Taymouth Castle, triple the population of that glorious property, and increase its actual produce indefinitely, losing nothing the while, except a quasifeudal power, which he ought not to have. The Duke of Argyll knows well the evil that in India is produced by the absence of the sense of property, yet from Iona to the German Ocean that sense is almost as absent as in Bombay. You cannot buy an acre, and unless the system has very recently altered, you cannot obtain a farm with absolute security of tenure. From The Pall Mall Gazette. SWITZERLAND. THE process known in France as a plébiscite, and commonly spoken of among us as a Napoleonic invention, is familiar enough to the Swiss people as an ordinary part of their constitutional machinery. As such it was used to crown the work of consolidation rendered necessary after the overthrow of the Sonderbund by the Protestant cantons in 1848. It was employed in a contrary direction at the defeat of the Revisionist party last year, when an unexpected alliance of the whole of the extreme Liberals with the Ultramontanes THE HISTORY OF POPULAR VOTING IN SWITZERLAND. 575 vote, and gave it also in favour of the new Federative Constitution, which was thus formally established by its individual acceptance throughout the States to be bound, except six and a half of them, of which one, the Tessin canton, had voted to accept it "conditionally." Of the cantons that positively rejected it, the only one of importance in population was the Valais, the others being Schwytz, Zug, Uri, the two Unterwalds, and Appenzell Interior. The constitution thus confirmed in 1848 was by its strict terms to be revised at the end of twenty years, but it was not until 1873 that the necessary legislative work for this purpose was completed, and once more submitted to the popular vote for ratification. The result was on this occasion a very different enabled the latter to administer a severe And it was doubtless owing to this recheck to that movement towards central- action that Lucerne and Vaud, two of the ization which they had just reason to most populous of the cantons and zealdread. And now a complete revulsion of ously Catholic as regards the majority of feeling, taking its rise in the religious their citizens, were found casting their struggle which is going on throughout votes on the side of the victors. In Fricentral Europe, has resolved the victors bourg, another Catholic canton, the of 1873 into their naturally opposed ele- Grand Council exercised the right it in ments, and reversed the national verdict those days had of casting the cantonal then pronounced. The ultra-Liberals, or, as they are oftener called, the FrenchRadical party of the south-west cantons of the Confederation, have gone over in a body to the reforming party. The direct result is that the revisionists, who were beaten by a very small majority last year, have now an immense preponderance in the popular vote, and have carried twothirds of the cantons. It must be remembered that they were bound to win the majority of these as States, as well as to gain a majority of the votes of the country to their side, in order to pass their reform bill; and that last year they only succeeded in winning ten of the cantons, whereas now they have prevailed in all except seven, and the half-canton of Appenzell known as Appenzell Interior. The twenty-two cantons of Switzerland, one. The other half of Appenzell had it should be noted, form for all practical gone over to the anti-centralists; so had administrative purposes twenty-five, as the great Catholic cantons of Lucerne, Basle, Appenzell, and Unterwald are each Fribourg, the Grisons, and Vaud, and subdivided into two separate govern- the two lesser but very important Liberments. But the two Appenzells and two al and French-speaking States of NeufUnterwalds count for but a single canton chatel and Geneva. The total of the adeach for the purposes of the Federation, verse votes was recorded as 260,859, and thus reduce the total votes of the against 255,609 favourable votes, and the cantons to twenty-three. A brief survey proposed revision was therefore rejected of the three great plébiscites of 1848, 1873, on the popular vote, as it was also by the and 1874, shows how the tide of popular decision of the cantons as States, there feeling on religious and political questions being thirteen against it and only ten for has swept forward and backward over a it. The causes of this reactionary vote country where thought and discussion have been already sufficiently indicated. are as free and active as among ourselves, The strength of the feeling in the southand every public measure is as widely west cantons against the dominant Gerdebated. In 1848, when the so-called man element, which produced the coali"Pact of 1815," which made of the Swiss tion of 1873, has not been able to counonce more an independent European peo-terbalance during the past twelvemonth ple, but left them still a mere aggregate the growing animosity against the Ultraof separate petty States, had to give way montanes, and of the six cantons which to a more really Federal Government, have been named as going over in 1873 the result of the voting was of course to the anti-centralists, the Grisons, Vaud, strongly influenced by the recent success Geneva, and Neufchatel have now secedof the constitutional or centralist party, ed from that alliance, and voted for the who had just put down by force of arms enlargement of the Federal authority. the Sonderbund, or attempt of the Fribourg and Lucerne, on the contrary, Catholic cantons to form a distinct con- have adhered to the vote of last year, but federacy of their own. There was a very the Tessin, on the other hand, has for bitter reaction in some of these cantons the first time become completely Federeven against the Jesuit intrigues which alist. So that the minority of 1873 behad produced the civil war and the con- comes a majority of 321,876 against 177,sequent humiliation of the Catholics. Soo, and the accepting cantons are — counting Basle for two-fifteen and a half | decided step forward in the path of formagainst the seven and a half. The new ing Switzerland into a Federal Republic Constitution thus approved of is eminent- instead of the Federation of States the ly a compromise; but it is not the less a cantonalists desired to keep it. | slaves. It may be anticipated that the subject will receive immediate attention at the hands of the new Parliament, and that steps will be taken to carry out the recommendations of Sir Bartle Frere. If this is not done, all our work will have to be commenced de novo, and the 105,000l. already spent by the late Government in preparing ships for this service become money lost. It should never be forgotten that the treaty is valueless unless we ourselves see that its provisions are carried out. It must still take years before the slave trade can be entirely abolished, and reckoned absolutely among the abuses of the past. În the meantime the trade of Zanzibar is rapidly increasing, and new sources of revenue being discovered. A concession in favour of a German mercantile house to work the guano on three islands south of Zanzibar has been signed, and this is only one of the first effects of the new stimulus given to trade. Academy. FROM private_advices received from Zanzibar, we learn that, as might have been expected, the long delay, occasioned at home by the successive prorogations of Parliament, in taking any decisive or more extended measures for the enforcement of the Anti-Slavery Treaty lately signed by the Sultan, has encouraged a partial renewal of the slave trade, which, it cannot be too often repeated, has only been scotched, and not killed. It appears that the Arabs are now transporting slaves by the land route along the coast, and again fitting out caravans for the purpose of slave hunting in the interior, hoping, without doubt, that they may find means and opportunity for shipping them from one or other of the ports along the coast. A missionary who had met caravans of slaves on the mainland, and had stopped to question one of the slaves, had been shot in the head by the Arab slave dealer, and his life was in danger. Captain Elton, who had been despatched by Dr. Kirk, previously to the latter's departure from Zanzibar, on an overland journey of inspection from Dar-es-Salaam to Kilwa, had been menaced on two or three occasions by leaders of slave caravans, and had himself counted no less than 4,000 slaves the Grand Duke is in receipt of a letter from THE Weimar Gazette states on authority that proceeding in one month on their way northwards. And, lastly, a dhow had been captured Dr. Rohlfs, dated February 5, in which the with 100 slaves on board, but she did not sur- able to secure a large number of admirably learned traveller announces that he has been render before she had fired upon the men-of-finished photographs of the magnificent rocky war's boats attacking her, and had lost one or more of her own crew. scenery of the Oasis of Dachel, in the Libyan These incidents are very significant, for it is desert, and that he has, moreover, made an innot difficult to discover the reasons of this re-teresting discovery of several ancient tombs. newed vitality in the trade, and of this active In one of these, seven dead bodies were found Dr. Rohlfs and daring hostility on the part of the Arabs. covered over with a single mat. Immediately after the signing of the treaty, with a mat, a wooden image, and some urns, has removed one of the mummies, together the measures taken by Dr. Kirk, coupled with with the view of bringing them to Germany, if the extraordinary activity and watchfulness of our small squadron on the coast, were so and in the meanwhile they have been deposited, the consent of the Khedive can be obtained; effectual that the Arab slave dealers were with other objects of interest, in a house at fairly frightened into believing that the game was really at an end, and that these initiative Gasr, the chief station of Dachel. The native measures could but be the forerunners of other servants assert that the recent rains must have and still more severe repressive proceedings. destroyed the entire settlement, and as the Last year there were but 1,000 slaves exported the sun, it is not improbable that long conhouses at Gasr are built of clay, hardened in northwards, against 20,000 the preceding year, tinued wet may have had a destructive effect and of these 1,000 no fewer than 217 were captured by the Sultan, who has done, and is still upon them. doing, his duty most loyally. But the Arabs have begun to notice that we have in no way followed up our first vigorous policy: the constant boat service on the coast, than which nothing is more trying, has greatly exhausted the energies of the crews, who did such good service last year, and slaving Arabs have again plucked up courage, and commenced to run THE winter in Iceland has been more severe than any since 1822. The west coast has been invaded by quite unusual numbers of polar bears, unwilling visitors, drifted thither on floating ice from Greenland. Academy. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor when we have to pay commission for forwarding the money; nor when we club the LIVING Age with another periodical. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Gay. |