Democrats and Aristocrats 273
Early in his life he came to share in the generous and humanitarian sentiments
of his time. His doctoral dissertation at Basel, dated June 4, 1776, began with an
introduction on the dignity and the rights of man, in the course of which he re-
gretted that Negroes in the West Indies should wet the earth with their tears to
give Europeans a better breakfast.^62 With Iselin and his other friends he hailed the
American Revolution for its promise of a new era.^63 It seems significant that, while
we have his letters from 1770, it is not until the American Revolution that we find
him taking any political attitudes, that is, thinking in terms of action to bring
about expected change.
His political development was slow, and natural for a man in his position. He
was no literary sentimentalist, no combative doctrinaire, and no rebel. Being what
he was, he entered the governing council at Basel in his twenties, and was presently
elected Oberzunftmeister, or Uppergildmaster, which amounted to a kind of associ-
ate mayor. He knew and said that Basel was a tight little aristocracy, with a sover-
eign council that chose its own membership from a narrow circle, “democratic”
only in that commercial employments did not “derogate.” Yet he did not propose
to do anything about it. “I adore my wife and idolize my son, now four months
old,” he wrote to a friend in 1781; “I like my garden, my birds, my rabbits and my
chickens far more than things that are so avidly striven for in the great capitals. All
I ask is to go on with my present existence in peace until my son is grown up, and
then die.”^64
In 1785 he received a long letter from a man named Bonstetten, one of a dis-
satisfied group at Bern. They were trying at Bern, said Bonstetten, to build up a
network of correspondents throughout Switzerland to exchange political ideas and
factual information. For example, where at Bern in 1680 there had been 500 regi-
mentsfähigen families, or familes qualifying to hold office, there were in 1780 only
230; and of 200 men now in the Bern council 57 were childless and 90 had only
one son. What were the facts in the other Swiss republics? Bonstetten said that
they needed men of the standing of Ochs, “a man of position, rich, well regarded,”
to give them leadership and to attract coworkers. Remember, he concluded, that
we are all Swiss.^65
Ochs replied with a sympathetic exchange of letters, which, however, soon died
(temporarily) “for want of interesting events.” He and some others organized a
reading club at Basel. It had two rooms, one for reading and one for conversation,
open every day from one to eight o’clock, with magazines, newspapers, maps, and
pamphlets. In 1787 there were 75 subscribers, and the chief magistrates of the
town and all the professors at the University belonged.^66
Basel adjoined Alsace, where Ochs’ sister and brother- in- law lived, and he was
excited by the French Revolution, by “representative democracy” (as distinguished
from direct democracy and aristocracy), and by the “sublime” proclamation of the
62 Korrespondenz, I, 93 n. 2. “Hominis dignitas, jura eius, mediaque illa servandi, haec sunt ob-
jecta, quibus meditandis pauca incumbunt.”
63 See above, Chapter IX, p. 180.
64 Korrespondenz, I, 123–24.
65 Ibid., 157–61, 167, 173.
66 Ibid., 195.