M. P------ has made a most able and
conciliating speech at the Diet. Still there is a good deal of jealousy
rankling in the breast of the Bern _noblesse_ and the _avulsumimperium_ is
a very sore subject with them. I recollect once at Lausanne meeting with a
young man of one of the principal families of Bern, who had been hi the
English service. The conversation happened to turn on the emancipation of
the Canton de Vaud from the domination of Bern, when the young man became
perfectly furious and insisted that the Vaudois had no right whatever to
their liberty, for that the Canton of Bern had purchased the province of
Vaud from the Dukes of Savoy. _"En un mot" (said he), "ils sont nos
esclaves, nos ilotes et ils sont aussi clairement notre propriete que les
negres de la Jamaique le sont de leurs maitres"_
A very harsh measure has lately been passed in the Diet, evidently
suggested by the aristocracy of Bern, which tended to fine and punish those
Swiss officers who remained in Prance to serve under Napoleon after his
return from Elba, and who did not obey the order of the Diet which recalled
them. A very able objection has been made to this measure in a _brochure,_
wherein it is stated that many of these officers had no means of living
out of France and that, on a former occasion, when a number of Swiss
officers were serving the English Government and were employed in America
in the war against the United States in 1812 and 1818, the Diet, then under
Napoleon's influence, issued a decree recalling them and commanding them to
quit the English service forthwith.
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