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De Achttiende Eeuw. Jaargang 2005 (2005)

De Achttiende Eeuw. Jaargang 2005

(2005)– [tijdschrift] Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Daniel Tröhler
Switzerland and the Netherlands in the 18th century
The Republican Discourse of Public Virtues1

Prof. Dr. Daniel Tröhler is Professor of Education at the University of Applied Sciences Zurich and Head of rhe Pestalozzianum Research Institute for the History of Education. He participates in the Zeitschrift für pädagogische Historiographie, the Kritische Ausgabe der Briefe an Pestalozzis and the Neue Pestalozzi-Studien, and is a member of the Research Community: Philosophy and history of the discipline of education. Evaluation and evolution of the criteria for educational research (KU Leuven).

In the 18th century, in the midst of a continent dominated by monarchies, Switzerland and the Netherlands were considered to be the republican show states and to be similar politically and in other ways. Both countries were federations of relatively autonomous provinces, or cantons; in both federations there was religious plurality; and in both the United Provinces of the Netherlands and in the old Swiss Confederation Calvinism had an influential position within economically important Protestantism. Historically, both countries had attained autonomy from monarchies by military means - Switzerland in the 14th century against Austria and the Netherlands in the 16th century against Spain - and both received confirmation and formal recognition of their status as independent republics within the political order of states in Europe through the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Society in the Netherlands and in Switzerland developed in the 18th century towards oligarchy, and in both countries this triggered Patriot counter-movements. Both of the republics were taken by the French troops in the 1790s and turned into republics of the French mold - the Netherlands became the Batavian Republic in 1795, and the Old Confederation became the Helvetic Republic in 1798.

Despite these conspicuous parallels there are numerous and, importantly, crucial differences that indicate two very different understandings of republic. My goal here is to demonstrate these differences within what can be called republicanism.2 Rather than focus on the admittedly difficult concept of republicanism or republic itself, I am interested in reconstructing the ideologies of public virtues in the field of tension of politics and economy - and, beyond that, in the issue of education that is associated with public virtues. For it is when we examine the differences between the various discourses of public virtues which we can reconstruct, that the differing republican educations come into particularly clear focus. My primary interest is in the Swiss concept,3 which I develop against the background of its

differentiation from the Dutch concept. I focus on the phase from 1750 to 1790, a time in which crises had become so manifest in the Netherlands that for a long time it could no longer appear as a model republic; this phase preceded the time in which ‘Zwitsersch’ would become the fashion in Holland.4 This comparative approach seems to me to be especially well-suited to articulate the publicly relevant concept of educational discussion in Switzerland.5 First, I would like to present two pertinent examples of differences between the Netherlands and Switzerland. I will then analyze these differences in the context of republican theory discourse, and discuss the differing political visions of the Patriot movements. Finally, I will present the publicly relevant educational concepts.

Two examples of the differences

The first difference can be shown, ironically enough, in the convergence of the two states at the end of the 17th century. This convergence emerged because of the states' common neighbor, France, the prime example of an absolute monarchy and thus the total opposite of a republic. The republican solidarity between the Netherlands and Switzerland was initiated by the Netherlands, which was in permanent military conflict with France. With its establishment of a standing army under Louis XIV, France became covetous of the Netherlands' prosperity. The Netherlander P[i]eter Valkenier was sent to Switzerland to convince the Old Confederation to dispatch their much-wanted mercenaries to the Netherlands in an act of republican brotherhood. The particular difficulties of Valkenier's mission lay in the Swiss Confederation's 1663 renewal of the treaty with France and Louis XIV on mercenaries and the 1674 declaration of Swiss neutrality in the war between France and the Netherlands. Swiss neutrality, however, had little impact on France's practice of acquiring mercenaries from Switzerland, not least because a lot of money was at issue, as Valkenier noted with bitterness. A member of the Confederation Council from Zug told Valkenier that ‘he would recruit for the devil, if the devil would pay him’.6 Two years later, Valkenier put it in a nutshell in typical republican style: ‘France negotiates with money, but we negotiate only with reasons’.7 The reasons that he cites, somewhat pathetically, against the corrupting influence of French bribery, he had already laid out in his 1675 Het Verwerd Europa, which was directed mainly against Europe's greatest ‘confuser’, Louis XIV. In the book, Valkenier also examined the Netherlands' relations with the Old Confederation and proclaimed their alliance on the basis of political and historical arguments that all amounted to Switzerland's obligation to support the Netherlands by supplying mercenaries:

Die Schweitzerische[n] Cantonen und die Vereinigte[n] Niederländer, weil sie beyderseits eine Republicke-Regirung haben, welche von allen Potentaten gehasset und gedräuet wird, müsten sich genau an einander verbinden, und eine die andere in ihrer Freyheit, welche sie lieber haben sollten als ihr Leben, beschützen. Hiezu sind die Schweitzer desto mehr verpflichtet, weil sie den Anfang ihres freyen Staats einem holländischen Graven zu dancken haben, nemlich Ludwig von Bäyern, der zugleich Keyser war, und die Schweitzerische Freyheit, in ihrem ersten Anfang wieder den Gewalt des Hauses Oestreich, mit offendlichen Urkunden hat befestiget’8
Valkenier's efforts turned out to be successful, especially in Zurich, for two reasons: First, many scholars lived in Zurich who had studied in the Netherlands and had become organized in the Collegium Insulanum, founded in 1679, for scientific and political debates. This institution had considerable influence on government business.9 Second, the anti-French reflex was traditionally particularly strong in Zurich. Zurich soon decided to send a so-called ‘defensive battalion’ to the Netherlands, and other cantons soon followed Zurich's example.

This development is much more paradoxical than it seems, and it makes manifest the great difference between the Netherlands and Switzerland. At first glance, the event seems to show only deep agreement between two republics; the one republic sends mercenaries to the other in order to support its resistance against an aggressive monarchy. But the fact that this aid was given in the form of mercenaries, that is, soldiers that can be bought, points up a far-reaching difference.

The difference that I aim to show - the differing political economy - was definitely recognized in the political discussion of the 18th century. This can be seen in the works of one of the most important political theorists of France of the time, Etienne Bonnot de Mably. Taking a position on the individual constitutions of the American colonies, which had since become independent, in 1784 he praised the strongly federal structure of the Confederation, which left the American republics smaller and more clearly structured. According to Mably, the geographical delimitation of the states seemed crucial for the moral basis of the states and made the Americans a shining example, just as the Swiss already were for the Europeans: ‘... vous offrirez en Amérique le même spectacle que les suisses présentent à l'Europe, qui n'est pas assez sage pour les admirer’. Mably praised in particular the Constitution of Massachusetts, because it strove towards not only Enlightenment, but also comprehensive public education of the citizens in virtue, and because it contained sumptuary laws against luxury. In this connection Mably found fault with the dangers of commerce, because the ‘politique d'argent’ simply wakens the passions and becomes a Pandora's box. Luxury and passions were the effect of commerce and ‘detrouisent en un instant les républiques’. For this reason, he called for laws that restrict commerce, because merchants were men without a fa-

therland, and they destroyed the moral standards of the state. The negative example that Mably gives is the Netherlands: ‘Voyez dans quelle dégradation sont tombés les Provinces-Unies des Pays-Bas. Ce n'est plus que l'ombre vaine d'une république’.10

Mably thus idealizes Switzerland as a haven of virtue, whereas the Netherlands is the epitome of decline through commerce. This assessment was not unique, and it agreed, among other things, with the self-perception of the Patriots in Switzerland - which brings me to the second example. In a lecture in the year 1771, the historian Johann Heinrich Füssli11 read an essay to a Patriot circle in Zurich titled Ob der Reichthum einen Staat nicht schüze.12 In the essay, Füssli admits that the Netherlands' prosperity had helped it greatly toward independence, but he maintains: ‘Ich denke doch, wenn die Liebe zu Freyheit, und der Abscheü vor der Spannischen Unterdrükung nicht die ersten Triebfedern in den Holländischen Seelen gewesen wären, so hätten sie sich geduldig unter das Joch geschikt’.13 With this, Füssli deliberately places emphasis on the Netherlands' original priority of patriotism over money in the fight against Spain in the 16th century. At the end of the 17th century, however, this military strength was missing in the fight against France's desire for the riches of the Netherlands. The reason for this decline, in his view, was money, which had made the inhabitants ‘feiger und träger’. ‘[M]oralische und Physische Observationen’ made it clear ‘dass der Progress des Holländischen14 Reichthums, der mit der Üppigkeit und Weichheit pari passu fortgeht, die Nation verzärteln, schwächen, entnerven werde’. According to Füssli, the only reason why the Netherlands had not yet been taken over by the French was that France itself had already deteriorated even more.15

The connection between these two examples, which illustrate the difference between the two republics, is thus clear. In a republican reading, by Mably or Füssli, the Netherlands had lost the political-military strength that had been the basis of their freedom. The reason for this great fall was great wealth. This ‘disabling’ of the Netherlands was said to have led at the end of the 17th century to the need to buy the power of Swiss mercenaries, who could be paid from the riches the Netherlands had produced.

Ideology between virtue and commerce

In his influential study of 1975, The Machiavellian Moment, John G.A. Pocock pointed out one main element of republicanism, or ‘civic humanism,’ which he reconstructs examining

Machiavelli and his career from the English Civil War in the 17th century up to the time of the founders of America: the virtù of the citizen. Machiavelli's understanding of virtue follows the ideal of virtue of the Roman republic, the political-military principle, according to which citizens of republics are concerned not only with political leadership, but also with the defense of their state.16 Patriotism, the virtue of the commoner, for Machiavelli also means courage and bravery in war. In the Discorsi, Machiavelli speaks first of the connection between love of freedom, military success, territorial gain, and wealth, and here both the Netherlanders and the Swiss would agree. But Machiavelli then goes on to say that the reason for the connection is easy to see, for it is not the good of the individual but the common good that makes for a great state. From a military perspective, however, this orientation toward the common good, as Machiavelli writes in his Principe, is precisely not to be realized through mercenaries, but rather through a militia system in which the citizen is also a soldier.17 The ideal is the fearless warrior that can only be a politically, morally, and economically independent citizen of his own state: the militia soldier with political participation. The counterexample to the militia soldier is, however, the mercenary. In the republican perspective, the mercenary represents a deficit in two ways. For one, a mercenary is a warrior who does not fight for the fatherland and its freedom but rather for money, and for another, a country's need for mercenaries reveals the citizens' lack of willingness to fight for fatherland and freedom.18 This shows the political seriousness of Füssli's reproach that wealth had made the Netherlanders cowardly, lethargic, weak, and enervated. In the eyes of the virtue republicans, the reduced virtù of the citizens and the resulting need to hand the defense of the country over to mercenaries was evidence of the deep corruption of the foundations of the republican state.19

This motive of republican, or Machiavellian, ideology points up the difference between the Netherlands and Switzerland that I am interested in: the difference between commerce and virtue. Machiavelli contemplated an agrarian republic. Within the Old Confederation it was primarily Berne that most closely corresponded to this agrarian republicanism and also desired to correspond to it.20 Evidence of this is provided by mintage, with coins depicting Roman symbols of freedom, such as the bundle of rods or the liberty cap, and by the extension of the roadways, which from 1740 were enlarged and brought into line with the Roman model: whereas the Romans had erected milestones, the roads of Berne were lined with hourstones that, like the Roman model, showed distance from the capital city as a constant reminder of the central powers. Inscriptions on gates, bridges, and streets were similarly Roman in decoration. In St. Prex in Vaud, Berne even had a Roman milestone and bridge rebuilt, which carried the inscription ‘Pontes et vias vetustate collapsas olim Roma

nunc Berna restitute’.21 This self-understanding was mirrored in the language and rhetoric of republicanism. Johann Rudolf Tschiffeli, initiator of the ‘Economic Society’ in Berne, which was respected throughout Europe, in a speech praised Rome's greatness as the consequence of pure love of the fatherland and then drew a comparison with Berne: ‘Bern, man spotte weder meiner, noch meiner geliebten Vaterstadt, bey dieser Vergleichung; unser Bern, theuerste Mitbürger! Hat in seinen drei bis vier ersten Jahrhunderten ein grösseres Schicsal als Rom, in dem gleichen Zeitraume, erlebt, eben so grosse Männer erzeugt, grössere Feinde besieget, und seine Gränzen weiter ausgedehnt’.22 These arguments are in exact correspondence with the Machiavellian triad of love of freedom, military virtue, and territorial expansion. Tschiffeli goes on to say: ‘Klug wie Rom’, ‘standhaft wie seine Bürger, ergreiffet Bern, bey gleichen Umständen, die gleichen Massregeln’.23 The founding of the Economic Society in Berne just a few years previously in 1759 should be seen within this context, for, on the one hand, Berne had passed a law in 1747 that prohibited its (patrician) citizens from participating in commercial companies and, on the other hand, the Seven Years War had greatly stimulated Berne's efforts towards autarky.24 Agriculture was to be and to remain the only important basis of the steadfast and virtuous citizens - which, however, did not stop Berne as a political institution from making a lot of money through clever investment politics in warring nations.

The view of commerce as antithetical to virtue is ubiquitous in the 18th century, and it also, and importantly, played a significant role in the debates on American independence. Jefferson, for instance, writes from Paris to John Adams in 1787: ‘I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural;... When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe’.25 Agriculture and virtue stand in close connection.26 In Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, which he also wrote in this period, he targets the actual problem: The ‘man of commerce’ is always dependent on others, the ‘landed man’ in contrast much less so - he is autonomous and therefore the true citizen.27 The merchant's dependency on customers begets subservience, venality, and corruption and suffocates the germ of virtue. Commerce thus stands in opposition to the foundations of a republic, which depends on the essentials of the virtue and manners of a people.28 A land without manners and virtues, precisely because guided by self-interest, will ultimately end in war: ‘... I repeat it again, cultivators of the earth are the most virtuous and independent citizens (...) But the actual habits of our coun-

trymen attach them to commerce. They will exercise it for themselves. Wars then must sometimes be our lot;...’.29

Füssli's lecture of 1771 must be read within the context of this discourse, and only in it does the central problem that we are discussing here become recognizable. Füssli, namely, sees the main problem of the Netherlands' wealth in the fact that it belonged ‘nicht in dem Vatrerlande’, but to ‘Privat-Persohnen’, which in turn reduced the people's devotion to the country and increased the dependency of the country on the goodwill of the rich to donate money, for the country's defense, for example. Füssli writes: ‘Die grossen Handlungs-Gesellschaften sind ein Staat in dem Staat. Sie haben Ihr Interessè, welches sie nicht, wie sie sollten, für das Interessè des Staats ansehn. Dadurch wird die Macht des Staates geschwächt. Man kann nicht sagen, dass die Macht des Staates sich in dem Maasse verhalte, wie die Masse des Reichtums aller Holländer ist. Sie verhält sich nur in dem Masse der Abgaben der Particularen zu den Bedürfnissen des Staates’.30 If we consider that wealth from trade was being equated with corruption and the state was dependent upon these corrupt money makers, the deep discrepancy between the political virtue ideology of the Swiss and the principles of the ‘commercial republic’ in the Netherlands becomes visible. To reconstruct how strongly these ideologies impacted practical politics, I would like to discuss a practical example - namely, poverty.

Natural right democracy or the re-establishment of political virtue

Füssli's speech in 1771 was delivered at a time when in both of the republics, Switzerland and the Netherlands, there was a widespread consciousness of decline and crisis. In both countries, this awareness triggered Patriot movements. Certainly, the fortunes of the two states had been completely reversed within a period of one hundred years: the Netherlands experienced enormous financial problems due to the costs of war and stagnation of the economy, while Switzerland, with mainly Zurich and Berne at the forefront, had amassed great wealth - not least through state loans to the Netherlands itself. As if confirming Machiavelli's theory, the ‘commercial republic’ was poor, and the republic of virtue had become rich. Explanations of the crisis differed accordingly. The Netherlands bemoaned the economic decline, while Switzerland lamented the decline in virtue and republican manners, and along those lines, different - Patriot - proposals for solutions were discussed. It is important to note these differences.

Perhaps the best way to reconstruct the difference in the reform proposals in the Netherlands and Switzerland is to examine a phenomenon that both countries faced equally, namely, the growth of poverty. Both countries reacted to increasing poverty with social-political measures and public educational efforts. Poverty in the Netherlands was one of the greatest domestic problems in the second half of the 18th century. It was particularly grave precisely because in comparison with the other European states, a high percentage of the population lived in the cities and was dependent upon a healthy, that is, a growing economy. In Amsterdam, with approximately 200,000 inhabitants - the population of Zurich at this time was 20,000 - about half of the inhabitants subsisted on the charity of the town government, whereby the town only provided poor-relief to those who were not supported by their religious communities. The town's conditions for receiving poor-relief became in-

creasingly restrictive just at a time when the religious communities could no longer afford to provide sufficient support to the poor.31 Private initiatives to fight poverty became necessary. The most important initiative came from the Dutch Mennonite preacher Johan Nieuwenhuizen, who in 1784 founded the ‘Maatschappij tot nut van't Algemeen,’ which advocated a pedagogical-philanthropic concept with a Christian basis that sought to ‘improve the minds, manners, and societal state of the common man’ and became very successful within a very short time.32

In Europe as a whole, poverty was a phenomenon caused, first, by the rise in population and the associated rise in prices, second, by the consequences of the Seven Years War, and third, by the failures of the harvest in 1771 and 1772. In comparison, the Swiss response was very different from the response in the Netherlands. For one thing, the governments put a great deal of the money that they had made into relieving the problem of poverty. The social systems of the towns of Zurich and Berne were considered to be exemplary in European comparison, and it is in this context that the Bernese patrician Johann Rudolf Sinner's praise of the ‘grande charité des établissements Bernois’ can be understood: ‘... dans cette ville les pauvres sont logés comme des princes et les grands comme des pauvres’.33 Hirzel, the well-known author of Die Wirtschaft eines philosophischen Bauers (1761),34 wrote similarly in praise of Zurich that ‘no city in the world can boast of so much practical sympathy towards all the poor and needy as can our Zurich’.35 For another thing, public education efforts were launched, such as those by the ‘Economic Commission’ of Zurich, which held conversations with farmers, and by the ‘Economic Society’ of Berne, which held a prize competition for essays on pedagogical copies36 and established model estates in the country, which - in con-

trast to the economic structure of the Netherlands - aimed at strengthening the rural population, or making it more industrious in the practice of agriculture. These ‘educators of the public’ were moderate Reformers37 who were closely linked to the established political elite.

The difference that I aim to show lies in the understanding of social coexistence. The Swiss reformers, and not only they, started out from a view of social conditions that finds its most congenial metaphor in ‘family.’ Hans Kaspar Hirzel, who was highly regarded, spoke of the fact that the obedient countryside of the city was ruled with such leniency, love of justice, and lack of self-interest that it seemed much more like the mutual love between parents and children than a relationship between subjects and rulers;38 similarly explicit models were expressed by the reformers associated with the Economic Society of Berne.

The argumentation in the Netherlands was completely different. The Patriot movement there, which emerged after the start of the fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-1784) and took on both strongly nationalistic and militant characteristics, directed its criticism primarily against the monarchical structures that the House of Orange represented and that had led to the rule of the Stadholders. For the Patriots, the House of Orange bore major responsibility for the Netherlands' decline.39 Both Patriot movements looked to representative democracy as the anti-monarchical concept, with the Patriots in the Netherlands finding their arguments in the natural law theories of Grotius, Spinoza40 and Locke, and, most especially, in the contemporary debates on the American Revolution and constitution.41 The natural law justification of democracy is expressed particularly clearly by De Beaufort: ‘Strip the greatest prince in the world of the pomp and magnificence with which he is surrounded, and you will find not the slightest difference between him and the least of his subject.’ De Beaufort's preferred concept of a republic was not one of the common good or virtue for the fatherland, patriotism, but rather a republic based on self-interest.42 This shows that Füssli's interpretation of the relationship between commerce and the state in the Netherlands was not just an outsider's self-interested perspective, but certainly one that accorded with Dutch positions as they were expressed in an influential publication in 1781 by Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Pol, a supporter of the American Revolution.43 Van der Capellen's pamphlet, Aan het volk van Nederland, examined the relationship between the economy and the state and conceived of society as a large commercial company. First, Van der Capellen claimed that state economy and private economy are identical (Füssli called this ‘false identity’): ‘O compatriots, take up arms, all of you, and take care of the affairs of the whole country, that is, of your own affairs.’ Van der Capellen went on to make republican and especially anti-aristocratic statements, according to which the land belongs to the en-

tire Netherlands people, and then he wrote the crucial passage that, in the manner of natural law, equates society with economic undertakings and propagates the principle of the sovereignty of the people: ‘A people is a big society, a “company” and nothing else. The regents, the authorities and magistrates, the Prince, everyone who has a post in this society, all of them are no more than the directors, the administrators, the estate stewards of this company or society and in this quality they are inferior to the members of that society, that is, the whole nation or the whole people’.44

Society compared to a commercial company is the exact opposite of Switzerland's idea of the welfare state and its paternalistic self-understanding. Switzerland's problem was not monarchy, or monarchical structural elements, but rather the aristocracy and their oligarchic behavior. The politically relevant discourse of reform, for this reason, does not so much aim for democracy founded on natural law45 as seek the re-establishment of political virtue, in particular that of the regents. Aristocracy, as long as there was virtue, was completely compatible with a republic - Montesquieu had established this as a doctrine, as it were, in the discourse of the 18th century. It represented a considerably more stable form of the state than the democratic republic. Up until the last third of the 18th century, it was considered to be in danger of becoming plebicized, as the example of Rome had demonstrated clearly.

The Patriot movements in the two countries differed accordingly. In the Netherlands, the organ of the discourse was journals, for there was extensive freedom of the press. For the democratic alliance, there were De Post van den Neder-Rhijn and De Politieke Kruyer; for the Orangist party, there was the Ouderwetse Nederlandsche Patriot under the editorship of one of the leading intellectuals of the Netherlands, Elie Luzac,46 which was distributed through-out all of the provinces. What is decisive, beyond the different positions, is that the debates were led publicly and nationally and that the arguments referred to the different interpretations of natural law. As an irony of fate, the economic interest of the editors had a determining influence on the content of the successful and therefore lucrative journals, as Luzac noted bitterly.47 In stark contrast, Switzerland practiced an extremely strict censorship; national periodicals hardly existed, and certainly there existed none with political content. The most representative German-language publication was the annually published Verhandlungen der Helvetischen Gesellschaft (VHG),48 which came to express the national pedagogi-

cal strivings of the Helvetic Society, whereby national pedagogy was understood as educating the leading classes to show tolerant and friendly behavior as Swiss brothers. For the Swiss reformers, publicity in the national context meant friendly and comfortable conversation among virtuous men of intimate acquaintance, which, precisely, was supposed to prevent the emergence of controversial debates on differences.49 The very few attempts by radical republicans to publish in the media at the local level ended in part in disaster.50 The discursive practice of the Netherlands was just the opposite, where the debates were led by educated citizens in national media. They saw themselves as enlightened, and they represented a type of public ideal virtue that differed from the Swiss ‘communitarian’ or ‘communalist’ ideal, as I would like to call it. Accordingly, they favored a different kind of pedagogy as well.

Publicly relevant education

It is not at all the case that the Patriot discourse in the Netherlands did not utilize the concept of virtue. As in Switzerland, the diagnosis of decline led to the search for shining examples of national virtues in the country's own history. The crucial difference lies in the fact that the Swiss found the ideal model in the alpine freedom fighters of the 14th century, who were said to have been honest, rough, courageous, simple, and authentic, whereas the Netherlanders looked to their Golden Age of the 17th century, which, in addition to simple habits and manners, was characterized strongly by the economic virtues, which played a significant role in the Netherlands' rise to wealth.51 In this regard, there was a difference in the targeted ideal virtue and thus in the educational concept.

To reconstruct this difference, we can take recourse to Montesquieu, who - paradoxically enough - had praised both ideals in his epoch-making work, De l'Esprit des Loix, from 1748. Here Montesquieu referred to the discussions conducted mainly in England at the beginning of the 18th century that had been triggered by the ‘commercial revolution.’ The most striking event had been the establishment of the Bank of England, which set up a system of credits to government, through which there was private investment in the state and thus an opportunity to influence politics. The so-called Real Whigs opposed this capitalization of politics and accused the Early Capitalists of corruption,52 of putting their private passions over and above

the common good. The accused denied any connection between commerce, passions, and luxury,53 and propagated the slogan ‘doux commerce,’ which had been coined by the French aristocrat Jacques Savary in a textbook for merchants in 1675.54 Montesquieu, who after his many years of travel throughout Europe had obviously developed sympathy for England, took over this ideology and put it in an influential form at the start of his chapter on commerce: ‘... partout où il y a des moeurs douces, il y a du commerce; et que partout où il y a du commerce, il y a des moeurs douces’.55 It was not savage passions that arose ftom commerce, as the republicans claimed, but instead - already for reasons of self-interest - agreeable manners, in a context of mutual respect. It was against this background that, after the entry of the French revolutionary troops into the Netherlands in 1795, the Orangist Elie Luzac, who had himself written a history of the Netherlands' mercantile expansion, formulated his critique of the barbarity of terrorizing the people. Against that, Luzac propagated the social manners of educated representatives of the middle class as the epitome of Patriotism, which was characterized not so much by bravery in war as by ‘politeness’ and ‘manners’.56

The Swiss were far removed from such an ideal, as can be seen in a prize competition that was organized in Berne in 1763 by a newly founded group called the ‘societé des citoyens.’ The Society was an association of reformers who used a system of prize competitions in their striving towards ‘Wahrheiten zu Beförderung der Glückseligkeit und der Vervollkommnung der bürgerlichen Gesellschaften’. In 1763, Mably was honored as the recipient of the first prize to be awarded, for his paper Entretiens de Phocion, despite the fact that he had never submitted it to the competition.57 Mably's text is a conversation between Phocion, an incorruptible republican hero, and Aristas, who in the end is a caricature of a person representing the ‘doux commerce’ type. Arista is proud of the immense riches of Athens and is convinced that the dangers of the passions could be tamed by a few light measures. Phocion, in contrast, demands not the taming of the passions, but rather politically relevant virtues as well as institutions, such as the legal regulation of commerce.

In his writing on commerce mentioned above, Montesquieu points out these virtues by speaking of the corrupting impact of commerce on the purest morals (‘moeurs pures’). In the chapter on the commerce of the Ancients, Montesquieu establishes the connection between commerce, wealth, and luxury: ‘L'effet du commerce sont les richesses; la suite des richesses, le luxe; celles du luxe, la perfection des arts’.58 In Book VII (chapter 2), Montesquieu

describes the impact of luxury on the republic: ‘A mesure que le luxe l'établit dans une république, l'esprit se tourne vers l'intérêt particulier. A des gens á qui il ne faut rien que le nécessaire, il ne reste á desirer que la gloire de la patrie et la sinne propre. Mais une Àme corrumpue par le luxe a bien d'autres désires. Bientôt elle devient ennemie des lois qui la gênent’. These passages are found practically word-for-word in a letter written by Johann Jacob Bodmer, the intellectual leader and inaugurator of radical-political republicanism in Zurich, in 1755. In connection with the debates in the Parliament of Zurich on the sumptuary laws, Bodmer concludes: ‘Une ame corrompue par le luxe a bien d'autres desires que l'amour de la patrie’.59 The luxury brought by wealth corrupts the soul and destroys the ‘Esprit d'égalité,’ the spirit of equality that is the foundation of the republic. However, Bodmer, like other exponents of Swiss republicanism, was not a democrat in the sense of rule by the people; the discussions centered therefore on the issue of virtue and education. This can be seen clearly in Bodmer's questioning of the effectiveness of laws against luxury: ‘Qui reprimera ceux qui devroient eux mèmes reprimer? Wenn die Sitten verdorben sind, so werden sie nicht per saltum [at once] corrigiert’ (Bodmer to Zellweger, 16 February 1755). If it is not primarily laws that re-establish virtue and manners, then it has to be education. This places education explicitly into a government-political context - in agreement with Montesquieu.

Following this sentence raising the question of control of the controllers, Bodmer goes on to say, with a choice of metaphor that is not by chance: ‘Was für sentimens, soil ein vater s[einen] Kindern einpflanzen der selbst keine hat, welche auferziehung soll er ihnen geben da er selbst sie nöthig hat?’ The ambition of public education in the context of the discourse on virtue in Switzerland involves essentially four concepts, although they were hardly related explicitly to one another. We find the first three concepts in a presidential speech to the Helvetic Society by Johann Heinrich Schinz,60 who can be called a representative of the Swiss ‘doux commerce.’61 In the speech, Schinz reminds the members of the aim of the society, which was to restore and revitalize a ‘nation’ of ‘private friendships’. He rejects any ‘Vorspieglung von Gelahrtheit’ and the ‘Maske von schönen Sentiments’ and propagates the ‘unverfälschte[n] Triebe einer standhaften Tugend’ (p. 19 f.). The main goal must be to strengthen the ‘soul,’ ‘character,’ and ‘way of thinking’ against luxury and lustful desires in order to ‘spread pure republican principles’ (p. 20 f). Schinz, like Bodmer, also points out that the law can achieve little if manners are corrupt (p. 32 f.). The old Swiss citizens of the 13th and 14th centuries had had to fight against real tyrannies, whereas the current tyran-

ny was ‘our own passions and vices,’ against which the members of the society were obliged under oath to fight together (p. 35). As a first step, Schinz exhorted the members to courageously and faithfully turn their households into havens of the simple way of life; second, their sons were to practice weekly military drill; third, one day they should send these virtual sons to travel throughout Switzerland, to be received and further educated by selected ‘mentors’.62 Schinz explicitly rejected the idea of sending young men on journeys to un-republican foreign countries, for fear of their moral corruption.63

The fourth concept of public education was the issue of a national educational institution, which had been under discussion for many years. As early as 1744, the idea of a national school was proposed by the Lucerne patrician Franz Urs von Balthasar, although his paper was published anonymously by Isaak Iselin only later, in 1758. His draft gave a relatively important role to the transmission of knowledge. Johann Jacob Bodmer developed a counter-proposal for such a school.64 It is typical of Bodmer that his draft did not place priority on the sciences - Bodmer was skeptical of the effect of knowledge on virtue.65 Instead, he emphasized that young men would mix socially with others from all of the cantons of Switzerland. Because Bodmer believed that the Swiss had become somewhat alienated from one another during the course of the 18th century, he proposed the establishment of a ‘Helvetic Common House,’ where young Swiss men would live together for a few months and become closer in a wholehearted way. The highest goal of the institution was to impart to the young men republican principles and sensitivities, that is, to impart to them a love of order, friendship, moderation, the ability to get along together, and deep respect for the fatherland and the law, and it would promote obedience and manners. In addition to social exchange, history was to be of central importance at the school, but only the history of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Swiss. Bodmer believed that through this institution, the Swiss would once again see themselves as those who they really were, namely, ‘sons of a family, children of a fatherland, brothers, uncles, and fathers in relation to the political order’.66

Conclusion

Let me conclude with a remark that looks forward from those times and say that, possibly, all three of the ideologies in the Netherlands and Switzerland that I have discussed were a failure. They failed not only due to the invasion by French troops at the end of the 18th century but also because of the Restoration period that had been furthered by Napoleon and French rule at the beginning of the 19th century. As capitalism developed, the ideology of ‘doux commerce’ would prove to be not particularly gentle, while the idea of public discourse of enlightened and rational citizens was hardly honored historically. On the other side, the elitist, ‘antiquizing’ virtue ideology of Switzerland was not able to keep up with the modernization tendencies. Nevertheless, the two Patriot movements point up a circumstance that still today cannot be ignored. It is a prerequisite to modernity and, with it, the ideology of the rational public: namely, the unavoidable, necessary existence of public virtue.


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