Schwitz, and Furtz of Uri, to put in execution the measures they had concerted for the delivery of their country. And here we perceive that power of combination which a people possess who act under the influence of the higher sentiments. The whole inhabitants of the several cantons, we are told, were secretly prepared for a general revolt, and the design, which was resolved upon on the 17th of September, 1307, was executed on the 1st of January, 1308. " On "that day," says Coxe, "the whole people rose as with one ac"cord, to defy the power of the house of Austria, and of the "head of the empire." They surprised and seized the Austrian governors, and, with a moderation unexampled in the history of the world, they conducted them to the frontiers, obliged them to promise, on oath, never more to serve against the Helvetic nation, peaceably dismissed them, and thus accomplished their important enterprise without the loss of a single life.

The future fortunes of the people of Switzerland may afterwards be the subject of our consideration. "Never did "any people," observes Russell, "fight with greater spirit for "their liberty than the Swiss. They purchased it by above fifty "battles against the Austrians and they well deserved the prize "for which they fought; for never were the beneficial effects of li"berty more remarkable than in Switzerland." In the mean time I shall confine myself to a few insulated traits of character, indicating, in an eminent degree, the possession of the higher sentiments, which we have all along predicated to be necessary to the acquisition and enjoyment of freedom. The first I shall notice is their conduct in regard to the assassins of Albert, the great enemy of their liberties, who, at the very moment when he was on his march to invade their country with a powerful force, was assassinated by his nephew, with the assistance of four confidential adherents. After the deed was committed they escaped into the cantons of Uri, Schweitz, and Underwalden, not unnaturally expecting to find an asylum among a people whom Albert was preparing unjustly to invade; "but the generous natives," says Coxe, "detesting so atrocious a deed, though committed on their inveter

"ate enemy, refused to protect the murderers," who all subsequently suffered the punishment due to their crime.

I cannot pass over in silence the celebrated battle of Morgarten, in which, for the first time, the Swiss encountered and defeated the whole force of Austria. Leopold assembled 20,000 men to trample, as he said, the audacious rustics under his feet; but the Swiss beheld the gathering storm without dismay. To meet it and to dissipate it, 1400 men, the flower of their youth, grasped their arms, and assembled at the town of Schweitz. Veneration and all the higher sentiments were manifested when they proclaimed a solemn fast, passed the day in religious exercises, and chanting hymns, and kneeling down in the open air, implored the God of heaven and earth to listen to their lowly prayers, and humble the pride of their enemies." They took post on the heights of Morgarten, and waited the approach of the enemy. If ever there were circumstances in which they might have relaxed their rigid virtue, it was at the time when their liberties and their very existence were at stake; but even at this moment they disdained to recruit their ranks from those whose lives had been sullied by the violation of the laws. The petition of fifty outlaws, that they might be permitted to share the danger of the day with their countrymen, was, therefore, unhesitatingly rejected. The victory was complete. Besides those who fell in the battle, not less than fifteen hundred, most of whom were nobles or knights, were slain in the rout; and Leopold himself with difficulty escaped under the guid ance of a peasant to Winterthur, where he arrived in the evening, gloomy, exhausted, and dismayed. A solemn festival was decreed to be held in commemoration of the day, "in which the God of hosts had visited his people, and given them the victory over their enemies;" and the names and heroic deeds of those champions who had fallen in defence of their country were ordered to be annually recited to the people.

After this period the surrounding states were eager to join

the Helvetic confederacy, of whom several were still under the dominion of Austria. Lucerne set the first example; oppressed by their rulers, they rose and defeated them, and formed an alliance with the Swiss cantons. In forming this alliance, however, we are told "that both parties observed the most rigid dictates of justice, and confirmed all the rights and prerogatives of the house of Austria." Zurich and Zug, with the assistance of the Forest Cantons, expelled the Austrian governor, and at the commencement of the ensuing year repulsed and defeated with great slaughter an Austrian force in the field of Rutli, and soon after were formally admitted into the Helvetic confederacy; but, actuated by the like spirit of justice with the people of Lucerne, they at the same time reserved in their full latitude all the rights and revenues of the Duke of Austria, though now virtually free and independent.

We shall not for the present extend this sketch of the character and history of the Swiss; enough, I trust, has been advanced to evince not only their freedom, but its causes. They were not free in virtue of their free institutions. The historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in treating of the confederacy of the Franks in the third century, observes, that "the league of the "Franks may admit of some comparison with the Helvetic body, "in which every canton, retaining its independent sovereign"ty, consults with its brethren in the common cause, without acknowledging the authority of any supreme head, or representative "assembly. But the principle of the two confederations was ex"tremely different. A peace of two hundred years has rewarded "the wise and honest policy of the Swiss. An inconstant spirit, "the thirst of rapine, and a disregard to the most solemn treaties, "disgrace the character of the Franks." It was their wisdom and their honesty, in other words, their ample endowment of the sentiments, which were the causes, and not the effects, of the republic established by the Swiss,-causes which had continued to operate for centuries ere their institutions had yet an existence. Nay, so slight, after all, is the connexion between mere forms of government and the actual possession and enjoyment of liberty, that the Swiss had been free for

ages under a feudal administration, though one of all others the least congenial to the spirit of true liberty. We do not state more than the simple truth when we assert, that the Swiss were free under a despotic, and that the Romans were an enslaved people under a republican form of government. The Franks too might call themselves free, and think that they enjoyed liberty, because they enjoyed independence; but where is their liberty now, or rather when had it ever an existence? We observed, that a free people are naturally a peaceful people: this has been eminently true of the Swiss; it has been as eminently the reverse of all those other nations whose character and history we have been employed in considering.

Nor will we now, I trust, be disposed, like some historians, to refer the aptitude of the Swiss for liberty to the natural situation of their country, surrounded with mountains, torrents, and woods; for then, not only must liberty desert the plains for the mountains, but we must believe, if similar causes produce similar effects, that Alpine nations have ever been, and are now free,-a fact contradicted by the whole tenor of history. A mountainous country is, doubtless, one of those circumstances which may favour the assertion of liberty, if the spirit of its people is as free as the air which they breathe; but no fortresses, natural or artificial, will protect a nation of slaves, nor will liberty desert the most unbroken plain, if its inhabitants are sincere in the homage which they yield to her. This we will have occasion to illustrate in our next example, drawn from the case of the United Provinces. But I must reserve this, and the other topics to which I formerly alluded, as the subject of a future paper.

VOL. III.-No X.

252

ARTICLE IX.

Letter to the Author of "A Vindication of the Church of Scotland from the Charge of Fatalism urged against it "in the Phrenological Journal, No VIII., Art. 5th.”

SIR, Though I had imagined, that it was scarcely possible for any one to have misunderstood the scope and meaning of the article "on Fatalism and Phrenology," and particularly the term Fatalism as employed in that article, yet as you, at least, seem completely to have misapprehended it, I shall first advert to the meaning of the term in question, and then make some remarks on what you are pleased to call " A Vindication "of the Church of Scotland," &c. .

Fatalism, then, is used by different writers in different senses. These I briefly alluded to when I quoted Dr. Johnson's definition, and contrasted "a decree of fate" with "predestination." "Certain writers," observes a late author, "un"derstand by fatalism every thing in the world, and the world it"self, as existing by necessity; and all events as results of change, " and not of supreme and guiding intelligence. This fatalism in"volves atheism." "Another kind of fatalism teaches, that there " is no liberty of action,-that man does good or evil according to "his faculties, that he cannot change his character,—that his acts "are irresistible,-consequently that he cannot be rewarded or "punished for them." And there is a third kind of fatalism or necessity, which, by teaching, that we necessarily act according to the influence of motives, in opposition to the dogma of the will's self-determining power, as maintained by Chubb, Hobbes, &c., is the only foundation on which religion and morality can be established. This last kind of fatalism, or necessity, is advocated by President Edwards, and by all Calvinistic divines, and it was my object to defend Phrenology from the two first kinds of fatalism, by shewing that it was fatal in the Hence I observed, that I knew of "no system of human nature which, compared with Phrenology, demonstrates, "with equal clearness, that man is a free agent, or rather, to speak