The Diet is held this year in Bern and it is now sitting.  I have met with
the two Deputies of the Canton de Vaud, MM.  P----- and M-----.  I am glad to
hear from them that the animosity existing between the two cantons of Bern
and Vaud is beginning to subside.  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.  This they refused to do and continued to serve.  No notice whatever was taken of this act of disobedience, when they returned to their native country on being disbanded in 1814, and they were very favourably received.  Why then, says the author of this pamphlet, is a similar act of disobedience to pass unnoticed in one instance and to be so severely punished in another?  Or do you wish to prove that your vengeance is directed only against those who remained in France, to fight for its liberties, when invaded by a foreign foe, while those who remained in America to fight against the liberties and existence of the American Republic you have received with applause and congratulation?  Is such conduct worthy of Republicans?  O, fie!

Such an argument is in my opinion convincing for all the world except for an English Tory, a French Ultra or a Bern Oligarch.

The Arsenal here is well worth seeing; here is a superb collection of ancient armour, much of which were the spoils of the Austrian and Burgundian chivalry, who fell in their attempts to crush Helvetic liberty.