DOMESTIC TYRANNY IN SWITZERLAND

Evening Star, Issue 14535, 10 December 1910, Page 4

DOMESTIC TYRANNY IN SWITZERLAND

JI was a distinguished Swks lawyer, a Judge in one of the high courts, who dealt a blow to nry fculh in tho outcome of my crucet. Ho had studied law in England ; and, to my amazement, I found ho quite agreed with the old cosmopolitan that in Switzerland no one knows tho moaning of the word "freedom," at least not in the English acceptation of ttio term, 'lb prove that it was so, he told mc of a caee in which ho had once been engaged. An old Swire farmer, who had no children, persuaded the daughter of a cousin living in America to coino over and keep house for him. Tho girl did her work well and made him very comfortahle. At the end of two years, therefore, as ho paid he;' no wages, ho presented her with a silver watch and a hundred francs. This coming to the knowledge of his nephews, who wero his next-of-kin, they promptly cited him, before tho local authorities on a charge of wasting his 6ubstanco; and they applied for a- decree pronouncing him, on the ecore of prodigality, unfit to manage his own aifaiis.

The decree was actually pronounced, although the old man fought against it tooth and nail, and oven offered to underiaJco never again to give anything to anyone. Simply becauso he had ventured to rruikc a little present to a relative who had rendered him groat service, he, togcier with, all his belongings, was handed over by the local authorities to the keeping of his heire. And thero ho would have remained, practically in bondage for tho rait of his days., if he had not appealed to the Federal Court when the Cantonal Court refused to deliver him. The Federal; Court annulled the decree, thus making' him a free man again j but had ho not been more intelligent than mosfc of his kind, had ho not, too, had an American to help him in his battles, tho chances are it would never even have occurred to him |to appeal to the higher Court. Thit> is a point on which tho Swiss jurist insisted strongly.—From ' The Latter-day Swiss,' in tho ' Cornhill Magazine.'