than their territorial belief. In a ride of two or three hours from the canton of Bafil into that of Soleure, and over a branch of the canton of Berne into that of Lucerne, we found ourselves alternately on Catholic and Protestant ground. In whatever cause originated thefe whimsical boundaries of their geographical religion, which heretofore lighted up fo often the flames of civil diffention, it is foothing to obferve, that fince the beginning of the prefent century, the Swifs have discovered that the fword is not the most perfuafive weapon of religious controversy. Two religions, that of the Roman church, and the affemblage of dogmas of the fixteenth century, called the Helvetic confeffion, are the exclusive religions of the Helvetic confederacy. Hume has fomewhere observed, that the hatred of Polemics is most inveterate, where the points in dispute are the least remote; it is not therefore therefore surprising that civil diffentions in Switzerland should have been carried to fuch excefs, fince the faith, for which both parties contended, is conceived in the fame fpirit of intolerance, and buried in the fame labyrinth of incomprehenfibility. CHAP. CHAP. VII. Canton of Bafil.-Rights of the Burghers of Bafil.Degraded State of the other Claffes.-Pecfants. Serfs.-Comparative View of French and Swifs Peafantry before the Revolution.-State of French Peafantry fince the Revolution.-Manufactures in the canton of Bafil-Singular Restrictions on the Laborious Claffes.-Jews.-Citizens in France.-Toleration.-Defence of the Jews by a French Catholic Bishop.-Religious Toleration in Turkey.—Whimfical Perfecution of the Jews at Bafil.-Reflections and Apoftrophe of a Jew. OF the forty thousand inhabitants, which compofe the population of the city and canton of Bafil, the burghers forming the fifth part of that number alone enjoy, or fancy they enjoy the rights of equality. The people of Bafil are divided into two distinct claffes, that of the burghers, consisting of eight thousand perfons, and that of the other inhabitants; which last class increases creases in the fame proportion that the first diminishes from year to year, and now amounts to about feven thousand perfons. This latter clafs is in a ftate of complete degradation, excluded from all political rights, can exercise no trade, and the individuals of which it is formed are confidered merely as ftrangers, to whom the privilege is granted of living in the town, placed, for the most part, under the immediate responsibility of the manufacturer or artizan by whom they are employed, and who is bound to take fuch measures refpecting them, as shall prevent their becoming burdenfome to the ftate. When perfons of this clafs are born in Bafil, when even their parents have been natives of the city for feveral fucceffive generations, they acquire not one further prerogative from thefe circumftances; and the admiffion of a few of thefe individuals to the the right of burghers, is always attended with fo many obftacles, that the instances. in which it takes place are extremely rare. Few of this clafs attain confiderable wealth, yet the increase of their number, their perfeverance in remaining in this humiliating condition, while they are forced to fupport the load of heavy taxes from which the burghers are exempted, and receive no other benefit from the government than perfonal protection and fafety, prove, however, that they at least enjoy fome advantages of which they were not before poffeffed, and give a strong idea of the wretchedness of their fituation in the countries which they have forfaken. What is remarkable enough in this celebrated land of freedom, where the us, that' poet tells "Even the peasant boafts his rights to scan, All |