Stefano Franscini

Stefano Franscini (born Oct. 23, 1796, Bodio, Switz.—died July 19, 1857, Bern) was a Swiss statesman and reformer whose maxim “Democracy is not so much respect for the vote of the majority as for the thought of the minority” expressed his faith in education and in the importance of public opinion. Franscini was born into a peasant family in the canton of Ticino and in 1819 went to the seminary at Milan, Italy. At the...