owing to this excellent arrangement.  If men and women were born servants, it might a little infringe on their natural rights, to be sure; but as even a von Erlach or a de Bonestetten would have to respect the regulation, were they to don a livery, I see no harm in a livret.  Now, by means of this little book, every moment of a domestic’s time might be accounted for, he being obliged to explain what he was about in the interregnums.  All this, to be sure, might be done by detached certificates, but neither so neatly nor so accurately; for a man would pretend a need, that he had lost a single certificate, oftener than he would pretend that he had lost those he really had, or in other words, his book.  Besides, the commune gives some relief, I believe, when such a calamity can be proved, as proved it probably might be.  In addition, the authorities will not issue a livret to any but those who are believed to be trust-worthy.  Of course I sent the man a character, so far as I was concerned, for he had conducted himself perfectly well during the short time he was in my service.

A regulation like this could not exist in a very large town, without a good deal of trouble, certainly; and yet what is there of more moment to the comfort of a population, than severe police regulations on the subject of servants?  America is almost—­perhaps the only civilized country in which the free-trade system is fully carried out in this particular, and carried out it is with a vengeance.  We have the let-alone policy, in puris naturalibus, and everything is truly let alone, but the property of the master.  I do not wish, however, to ascribe effects to wrong causes.  The dislike to being a servant in America, has arisen from the prejudice created by our having slaves.  The negroes being of a degraded caste, by insensible means their idea is associated with service; and the whites shrink from the condition.  This fact is sufficiently proved by the circumstance that he who will respectfully and honestly do your bidding in the field—­be a farm-servant, in fact—­will not be your domestic servant.  There is no particular dislike in our people to obey, and to be respectful and attentive to their duties, as journeymen, farm-labourers, day-labourers, seamen, soldiers, or anything else, domestic servants excepted, which is just the duties they have been accustomed to see discharged by blacks and slaves.  This prejudice is fast weakening, whites taking service more readily than formerly, and it is found that, with proper training, they make capital domestics, and are very faithful.  In time the prejudice will disappear, and men will come to see it is more creditable to be trusted about the person and house, than to be turned into the fields.

It is just as difficult to give a minute account of the governments of the different cantons of Switzerland, as it is to give an account of the different state governments of America.  Each differs, in some respect, from all the others; and there are so many of them in both cases, as to make it a subject proper only for regular treatises.  I shall therefore confine the remarks I have to make on this subject to a few general facts.