POLITICS AT GENEVA 303 



time the fatal flaw in the Genevese constitution the Garantie 

 the power of the Government to appeal for foreign armed aid 

 against its own townspeople was left untouched. 



These political conditions produced frequent contests of a 

 shifting and confused character. At one moment the strife was 

 between the citizens and burghers the members of the General 

 Assembly on one side, and their aristocratic rulers the Senate 

 and the Great Council on the other, each party constantly striving 

 either to enlarge or to maintain its own powers and privileges. 

 Here the Councils had the advantages that they elected one 

 another, and that the initiative in bringing forward any new 

 proposal rested solely with the Senate. These governing bodies 

 thus formed together an exclusive oligarchy ; they were, in fact, 

 a large family party, the composition of which is illustrated by 

 the constant recurrence of the same names in their lists. At 

 another moment the struggle lay between the General Assembly 

 and the unenfranchised classes, who were yearly growing in 

 numbers and prosperity. The latter kept up a perpetual agitation 

 for the removal of their disabilities and for admission to the full 

 rights of citizenship. 1 From time to time the two Councils or 

 the General Assembly made alternate advances towards these 

 outsiders in the hope of strengthening their own hands in the 

 retention or pursuit of power. 



The political history of Geneva during de Saussure's lifetime 

 consists therefore in a struggle for supremacy between these 

 warring elements, the aristocracy the old families of the Upper 

 Town, clinging tenaciously to privileges, thanks to which, they 

 were convinced, the town had enjoyed at their hands for over two 

 hundred years an, on the whole, economical and competent rule ; 

 the members of the Assembly, impatient of a control which left 

 them with only a shadow of political power ; and a growing class 

 of small tradesmen and artisans, men with specific and very 

 practical grievances of their own. 



This political and social unrest was going on and spreading up 

 to the time when, stimulated by the French Revolution, it broke 

 out in the last decade of the eighteenth century in riot and blood- 



1 According to the popular leader, Cornuaud, out of 7000 adult males 5000 

 were without votes. See Esaie Gasc, Citoyen de Geneve, sa Politique et to. Theologie 

 (Paris, 1876). 



