POLITICS AT GENEVA 309 



The existing Government, whatever its faults, was honest, cheap, 

 and fairly efficient, and had brought prosperity to its subjects. 

 He did not believe that the mere fact of being born in a State gave 

 a man any title to a share in ruling it. Education was, he held, 

 an indispensable condition to the exercise of civic rights. He 

 had a deep distrust of the vague and subversive doctrines preached 

 by Rousseau and embodied in the Lettres ecrites de la Montague 

 which had just come out. He dreaded their effect on an excitable 

 populace. He believed that behind the proposals of the more 

 moderate Representants lurked projects for the overthrow of the 

 constitution, that the ultimate aim of the popular leaders was to 

 do away altogether with the Councils, and to put all power in the 

 hands of the Assembly, acting through the Syndics. He dreaded 

 a raw and flighty democracy suddenly taking the place of an honest 

 and capable, if obstinate, oligarchy. If I appreciate his position 

 rightly, he stood for Reform, not Revolution ; he was the equi- 

 valent of an English Whig. 



From Haller's letters we may glean a sufficient idea of what 

 was the solution present in his mind. It was to meet the demands 

 of the Representants by such moderate concessions as were con- 

 sistent with leaving the reins of government in the hands of the 

 Councils. Haller, who was a sound Tory, prophesied that bad 

 times might be trusted to tranquillise the popular party, and that 

 Geneva might hope for twenty years of relative quiet. But he 

 shrewdly enough added, in a moment of exceptional frankness 

 and foresight, the following warning : 



' It will not last ; your constitution is vicious, your Council [the 

 Senate] has too much power given it by the law, together with the 

 weakness of not being self-electing. There will always be restless 

 spirits ready from time to time to make use of the control of elections 

 in order to impair the authority of the Council. There has never been 

 an orderly democracy. This is an inevitable misfortune for which 

 there is no cure.' 



Haller acknowledged that it was to the interest of the rulers that 

 the people should be granted a legal status for putting forward 

 their complaints. It would, he thought, serve to prove that the 

 magistrates did not aim at tyranny. At one moment he was 

 indignant at the evasions of the Senate, and their failure to show 

 any sort of readiness for concessions. But he was apparently 



