POLITICS AT GENEVA 299 



exerted in this country by the Calvinist oligarchy of Geneva 

 really amounted to. Englishmen have at no time needed to go 

 abroad to learn the love of liberty. If the religious refugees who 

 returned to their country from Geneva in the days of Elizabeth 

 brought back with them some fresh experience of a Republic, 

 they brought back also a narrow and ungenial view of life, a bitter 

 sectarianism which infected English Puritanism and hastened the 

 downfall of the Cromwellian government. If the Pilgrim Fathers 

 owed in part their virtues to the teaching of Calvin, their failings 

 the cruelties and bigotry that marked their early attempts at 

 organising a community must be laid to the same account. 



In 1543 the franchises won by the citizens in 1387 were under 

 Calvin's rule moulded to the purposes of a self-righteous and 

 largely clerical oligarchy, resolute in refusing to suit itself to new 

 conditions and meddlesome to the point of absurdity in matters 

 of dogma and morals. As has already been shown, a committee, 

 under the control of the Venerable Company of Pastors, exercised 

 up to 1770 an intolerably minute supervision over the private 

 lives of the inhabitants. The Genevese citizen could not call 

 his house, his table, or even his clothes, much less his soul, his own. 

 But for the rest the administration under the old aristocracy 

 seems to have been honest, capable, and economical, and every 

 traveller noted the striking contrast between the condition of 

 the inhabitants of the town and its territory and that of the 

 peasantry of Savoy immediately outside the frontier. Education 

 was not altogether neglected, and there were schools limited to 

 boys for all classes. Further, to ensure the perpetuation of 

 the order he created, Calvin founded an ' Academy ' the studies 

 of which were carefully framed so as to provide a succession of 

 presbyters and pious magistrates imbued with sound doctrines 

 and a proper contempt for free thought and worldly indulgences. 

 The Academy was placed under the control of the Venerable 

 Company of Pastors, the members of which, should occasion 

 arise, were always at hand and ready to advise and admonish 

 their colleagues of the lay Councils. 



Meantime, the existence of the Republic, surrounded, as we have 

 seen, by powerful neighbours, was apt to be precarious. In 1602 

 it was attacked in force by the Duke of Savoy. His assault was 

 repulsed, and the Genevese, proud of the one feat of arms in their 



