POLITICS AT GENEVA 295 



work on French literature outside France, 1 seems to me to apply 

 so exactly to my own case that I am tempted to quote the passage 

 here : 



4 Why not have put in the front of these volumes a brief account 

 of the constitution and political history of Geneva ? We should have 

 been glad of a summary sketch of the quarrels and the civil wars 

 between the different classes, of the strife between the citizens and the 

 bourgeois, between the members and rulers of the State on the one 

 hand, and on the other the unenfranchised crowd constantly demand- 

 ing civil rights. These disputes between the High and the Low Town, 

 between patricians and plebeians, reproduced in many of their features 

 those of the Greek and Roman republics. A few pages in which were 

 presented clearly and accurately the vicissitudes of the city-state up to 

 the moment when it was swallowed by the French Revolution, would 

 have informed and relieved our minds.' 



Even at the risk of becoming tedious, I feel bound to act on 

 the great critic's suggestion, and to offer such a brief summary 

 of the Genevese Constitution, its origin and growth, as may 

 assist my readers to realise in outline the part played by de 

 Saussure during the revolutionary period. It is not my object 

 to follow closely the kaleidoscopic movements of constantly 

 shifting party combinations, to record in any detail the alternate 

 victories and defeats of the patrician oligarchy in their protracted 

 struggle to keep hold of the reins of government. That task may 

 be left to local historians. My intention is to refer to these events 

 only in so far as they affected the life and fortune of a single actor 

 in them. 



In order to understand the successive political episodes in which 

 de Saussure was called on to play a part, it is essential, in the first 

 place, to distinguish the classes into which, about 1760, the in- 

 habitants of Geneva were divided, and to enumerate the various 

 bodies which constituted and controlled the State. 



In 1781, according to an official census, the population of the 

 Republic amounted to 24,700, of whom 8000 were adult males. 

 Of these only 3000 were entitled to vote in the General Assembly ; 

 in practice the number voting seems seldom to have exceeded 

 1600. This enfranchised class was divided into citizens and 



1 Le Dix-huitieme Siecle a F Stranger : Histoire de la Litterature Fran^aise 

 dans les divers pays de F Europe depuis la mort de Louis XIV. jusqu'a la Revolution 

 Franyaise, par A. Sayous (Paris, 1861). See vol. i. pp. 400-457. 



