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unanimous resolution, that in future all communications and petitions addressed to it should be in German. The immediate cause of this determination was the presenting to them a reclamation in French, from M. Latour Auvergne, on the subject of the Duchy of Bouillon.

Switzerland. At a sitting of the general Diet of the confederation, on July 15th, heavy complaints were made of the ruin brought upon the Swiss manufactures by the severity of the French government; which had imposed duties upon their entrance into France amounting to a prohibition, and had executed its ordinances with the utmost rigour. This treatment was considered as particularly hard, as practised towards a nation devoted to France, and which lately, in its capitulations respecting troops for its service, had given unequivocal proofs of its attachment to the House of Bourbon. After several discussions on the subject, the whole was referred to the examination of a committee.

On the following day a brief from the Pope was read before the Diet, addressed to the governments of Switzerland, in which his Holiness claimed their intervention for the re-establishment of the Abbey of St. Gall. The deputies of that canton, and those of Lucerne, Basle, Appenzel, Zurich, and Geneva, spoke with great energy against this pretension, as being contrary to that act of the congress which assures an indemnity and honour able rank in life to the late Abbot of St. Gall, and to the constitution of the canton, guaranteed by

the confederation. Eleven deputies rejected the Pope's demand; nine voted for the referendum ; and two deputies reserved their votes; so that the decision was temporarily adjourned. The result is of importance, as affording a test of the influence of the Roman pontiff in the Catholic part of Switzerland.

The multifarious local constitutions in the Helvetic confederacy have offered an example of political contrivance which in modern times is probably unique. It is thus stated in a communication from Lausanne.

The Government of Friburg has published a collection of the organic laws of its Constitution in German and French. The most important part of its contents is that which relates to the Tribunal of Censorship. This tribunal is composed of seven members, who have the singular title of Secrets. They must be of different families, and each must have completed 40 years of age. This tribunal is to assemble as often as business may require, but regularly each year on the anniversary of the Battle of Morat. The duties of the Secrets are performed gratuitously. Their persons are inviolable, and those who offend against them are to be prosecuted criminally as disturbers of the public peace. Their functions embrace two principal objectsthe maintenance of the laws, and the superintendence of morals. With respect to the first, the tribunal watches the administration of the Government. It takes care that the officers who compose the Government, do not overstep the bounds of their au

thority,

thority, that neither public nor individual liberty be compromised, and that no ordinance in opposition with the law be put in execution. For this purpose the tribunal possesses the right of veto, to the exercise of which every authority is obliged to yield. With regard to morals, the tribunal watches the public and private conduct of the members of Government. It is also compe

tent to call upon the members of the grand council to give an account of their conduct, to address suitable exhortations to them. to suspend them, and even to dismiss them, according to the nature of the offence. Finally, this tribunal examines and determines whether the members of the grand council, newly elected, have fulfilled the conditions of eligibility required of them by law.

CHAPTER

CHAPTER XIV.

Sweden and Norway.-Denmark.-Russia.-Ionian Islands.-Turkey.

A

T the end of June, the Prince Royal of Sweden, with his son the Duke of Sudermania, arrived at Christiania to attend the close of the Norwegian Diet, or Storthing, which had been assembled a year before. The Prince Royal delivered a speech on the occasion in French, which was repeated in the Norwegian language by his son. It began with announcing general peace, and confirmed amity with the nearest powers, those of Russia, Prussia, and England. Satisfaction was then expressed with the friendly confidence displayed by the Norwegians towards the Swedes, and the harmony subsisting between the King and the Diet, notwithstanding unfavourable predictions. "You have recently (he said) acquired the faculty of speaking your rights you have discussed your interests and social prerogatives; and we must hope, that happy results will in future be the fruit of your labours." The Prince then touched upon the difficulties and hardships under which nature had destined Norway to labour, and the necessity of encountering them by industry and frugality; and hinted at some provisions against the sufferings of the indigent which remained to be put in practice.

In the reply of the Diet it is VOL. LVIII.

said, "The constitution which guarantees to us a legal liberty; the union of the Scandinavian peninsula under a wise government, which secures our political condition; the bases which we have endeavoured to lay of a part of our internal arrangements, and the measures which we may expect in future, when the national assemblies shall have acquired more experience; make us hope for the future happiness of Norway."

Prince Oscar, son of the Prince Royal, has been appointed Viceroy of Norway.

A new survey of the frontier between Sweden and Norway has been determined on for the ensuing year, to be divided into three divisions, each to be visited by a Norwegian and a Swedish officer. The whole line is estimated at between 7 and 800 English miles, a great part in mountainous and steril regions.

Active measures have been taken for meliorating the condition of Sweden, which, like every other kingdom in Europe, has been reduced to financial difficulties in consequence of the war. Its foreign debt has been partly paid and partly liquidated by the money received for Pomerania and Guadaloupe. Provincial committees have been employed in framing [L]

plans

plans for restricting luxury, by which the use of foreign articles will be much circumscribed. Their importation of late years has risen to the amount of 20 millions of rix dollars, whilst the exports have little exceeded nine millions; a drain absolutely ruinous to so poor a nation. Plans are also in agitation for enabling the national bank to pay off the paper money in specie, which, however, cannot be brought to effect without the sanction of the States, whence a new meeting of the Diet is expected. Of the military conscription, divided into five classes, the first class, amounting to 70,000 men, is to be called out, armed and exercised for annual service. In this number is not included the standing army of nearly 42,000 men, part of which are provincial regiments, raised and maintained by the landed proprietors.

A national bank for Norway has been established at Christiania.

Near the conclusion of the year, reports were spread of great disturbances prevailing among the peasantry of Norway, who were reduced to extreme distress by a dearth, which could not fail of pressing at this period with extraordinary severity, in a country almost always labouring under a degree of scarcity. The inhabitants of the interior are said to have been particularly exasperated against the mercantile population of the sea-ports, to whose interests they supposed themselves sacrificed.

Denmark. Respecting this kingdom, the most memorable circumstance of the year relates to the

transactions between the united duchy of Sleswick and Holstein, and the crown. The permanent Assembly of Prelates and Knights of this duchy, published a collection of their most important acts, two of which are said to have produced an extraordinary sensa tion on the continent. In the first of these, a writ from the royal chancery of the duchy to the permanent committee of prelates, &c. mentions, that their petition of March 7th, and likewise their remonstrances concerning the future condition of the duchies, had been submitted to his Majesty by the chancery, which had thereupon been commissioned by his Majesty to make known to the committee, that the internal management of the duchy must continue, as it had been regulated by the royal resolution of the 6th of September in the last year, and that the King would hereafter determine more precisely the time for carrying into effect any other resolutions, touching the matter in question. This document was dated May 7th.

:

The committee reply, That the permanent committee had received with gratitude the assurances of a new constitution to be given them but that they perceive with deep concern, that the period for the accomplishment of so desirable an object was left indefinite, and to depend upon the future will and decision and will of his Majesty. They feel the more regret on this account, as they have daily opportunities of witnessing the painful anxiety of all ranks on the subject. They also could not forbear to confess that, fully relying on the

royal

royal word, they had been greatly disappointed at having to wait till a protracted period for the confirmation of their privileges. They found themselves grievously frustrated in their hopes by the indefinite line of his Majesty's conduct, which could not, as in other times, have been governed by pending political events.

This is another example of that reluctance in crowned heads, to admit any diminution of their own authority, which has so much retarded the expected progress in the formation of free constitutions for the European states.

Russia. An imperial Ukase was published on January 2d, at St. Petersburgh, which remarkably illustrates the system of religious toleration in the Russian empire, and at the same time exhibits the indelible character of the order of Jesuits. This society, after having been abolished by a papal bull, and expelled from all the Roman Catholic states, obtained an asylum in Russia, under the Empress Catharine II., and was permitted to engage in the education of youth, a task for which its members were regarded as peculiarly qualified. Proselytism being held as the highest of all duties by the church of Rome, it has always been pursued with peculiar zeal by the Jesuits, its most devoted satellites; and the emigrants of that order in Russia could not refrain from exercising the influence they had acquired in that country, in making converts, though the laws of Russia strictly prohibit every native, born and brought up in the established Greek religion, from changing it for any other.

In the words of the ukase, "They have turned aside from our worship young people who had been intrusted to them, and some women of weak and inconsiderate minds, and have drawn them to their church." His Majesty's ideas of this conduct are thus expressed: "To induce a man to abjure his faith, the faith of his ancestors to extinguish in him the love of those who profess the same worship-to render him a stranger to his country-to sow discord and animosity in families

to detach the brother from the brother, the son from the father, and the daughter from the mother -to excite divisions among the children of the same church-is that the will of God, and of his divine Son Jesus Christ our Saviour?" The result of his deliberations are contained in the following articles: That the Catholic church in Russia be again established as it was in the reign of the Empress Catharine II., and till the year 1800: that all monks of the order of Jesuits be immediately banished from Petersburgh: that they be forbid to enter the two capitals. At the same time, that there might be no interruption in the Roman Catholic worship, the metropolitan of that church was ordered to replace the Jesuits by other priests then present, until the arrival of other Catholic monks who had been sent for, for that purpose.

A note of the Russian chargé d'affaires at Hamburg to the Senate of that city, stating the circumstances of the misconduct of the Jesuits, and the measures taken by the Emperor in conse [L 2]

quence.

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