poor countries, like Uri, the monks cannot
undergo the hard Struggle of plying scythe
and tending flocks amidst snows and frosts.
They exist in a good measure by voluntary
contributions; which monkish produce has
rather increased than declined in value,
whilst the wants of all men have increased.

The same rule of property which prevailed
of old, prevails still. This is, that property
in land, and the consequent division of it, is
confined to the valley; while he that owns a
certain portion of the ground of the valley, is
entitled to send a proportionate number of
cattle to the hills. The reason assigned for
this apparent monopoly is specious. Cattle
can only be nourished in the valley in winter,
and unless a man have the means of feeding
his cattle in winter, there is no use in his
being able to feed them in summer. Were
they to be allowed to buy in spring and sell
in autumn, and to avoid the winter keep,
the valley would thus be deprived of the
power of keeping its herds the year through,
and thus maintaining its permanent stock and
wealth. So reason the Swiss economists.

The poorer people, who are without land,
are, however, permitted to keep goats, and
to send them to the mountains; accordingly,
there are numerous flocks of this more
plebeian kind of property, the produce of
which, if not toothsome or saleable, is
still wholesome and profitable in the
maintenance of a family. It has been mentioned
how the poverty of the soil in Uri, and its
inability to afford rent, has driven from the
region—or, indeed, never allowed to rise
within it—that class which lives upon rent.
But here another peculiarity arises; for the
poverty and division of the soil has created a
marked distinction between two classes—the
proprietor and the non-proprietor of land.
This would not be so much felt, were there
many families of artisans; but the poverty of
the region forbids the formation of this class,
too. The artisans hie to the town on the other
side of the lake, from whence, on market-day,
the good farmers of Uri can bring home shoes,
or utensils, or any item of his non-agricultural
wants. It is a dogma of Free Trade,
that this procuring of their shoes and nails
from the other side of the lake is advantageous
to the men of Uri. This, however, is what
the political economists of Uri can never be
brought to agree to; and gladly would they
re-set up their guilds and corporations of
tailors, smiths, and shoemakers at Altorf, if
they knew how to manage it.

The distinction between the two classes of
havers and non-havers of land, has given
rise to terrible feuds, and, indeed, almost to
civil war, in the neighbouring canton of
Schwytz. This war is carried on between
the party of the Horns and that of the Claws.
The Horns, of course, comprise the owners of
horned cattle, and of the land required to
support them. The Claws mean the owners
of goats, and families who durst not vest their
savings with larger cattle, that they are
forbidden to send to the mountain pastures.
They, therefore, confine themselves to goats,
and " such small deer." In Schwytz — which
is a semi-open country, and where there are
considerable towns, as well as artisans, nay,
some manufacturers — the party of the Claws,
reinforced by a large body of townsmen, who
felt themselves marked with a stigma, and
excluded from the range of their own
mountains, mustered very formidable; indeed, so
formidable, as to commence and bring to
accomplishment a kind of revolution. But
this very revolution, as is often the case, led
to an aggravation, not an alleviation, of the
evil complained of. It produced a total
separation between town and country
districts; and this, if it put an end to hostilities,
put also an end to anything like real
compromise. The Horns enforced their law in
the mountains and adjoining valleys, whilst
the repeal of such a by-law in the open
country was of neither use nor result.

In our large societies, in towns and kingdoms,
the great interests of life — marriage,
population, and provision — are left to chance,
to Providence, and to selfishness. In small
and patriarchal communities, like those of the
Swiss mountains, authority interferes. The
landlord is the poor-law guardian. He can
give a roof, or refuse a roof; and without not
only a roof, but considerable space for storage
and for animals beneath it, a family in the
mountains cannot live through the winter.
The William Tells of the present century,
therefore, are lords of all they survey, and are
the Gesslers of their villages—at least in the
respect paid them, and sometimes in the
authority they exercise—quite as much as
the Austrian bailiff of old time. And yet all
is done in the name of the republic.

I resided for a week in the wooden
establishment of one of these peasant-lords of
Uri. It was more like Noah's Ark than a
house. All the animals of Swiss creation
entered by a large folding-door and a wooden
causeway into the mansion, in November, and
there abode for several months. The noise of
them, as they moved and masticated,
sometimes came like subterranean thunder through
floor and rafter. The human inmates,
involved in a thick and hot atmosphere of
steam, were as restless and as noisy, and as
much given to eat and drink, as their herds.
It, however, was to all intents an inn, though
it had no sign; but guests came and went,
and slept and baited, and paid their reckoning
in some shape or another. The period was
one of great excitement. The Liberals—
masters of all cantons and cities of the
plains, except Lucerne — were meditating an
attack upon it, whilst the men of Uri and the
other mountain cantons were as determined
to fly to its defence: so that on the mount
the sword was sharpening as well as the
scythe; and the rifle was taken down, cleaned,
contemplated, and used with that tender