354 LIFE OF HORACE BENEDICT DE SAUSSURE 



the changes enacted was the abolition of the Military Committee 

 which controlled the garrison of the town, of which de Saussure 

 had ceased to be a member two years previously. In this year he 

 was put on the Council of Sixty, which met occasionally for the 

 management of foreign affairs. No doubt his position and 

 family connection with Necker were thought likely to be of service 

 in the negotiations on hand for obtaining the approval by the 

 guaranteeing Powers of the constitutional reforms. 



The Edit de Reconciliation, carried in the General Assembly by 

 an immense majority, was celebrated in the traditional Genevese 

 fashion. There were processions with bands, rows of youths 

 dressed in scarlet scarves, embraces and salutations, and the 

 inevitable poetical effusions, of which the following couplets may 

 serve as a favourable specimen : 



' Tout change ; un subit orage 



Au lieu de foudre a jet6 



Sur les fers de Pesclavage, 



Les fleurs de la liberteV 



All passes ; sudden showers 



In place of lightning stroke 

 With piles of Freedom's flowers 



Have buried Slavery's yoke. 



Geneva, singularly poor in poets, has always been rich in 

 rhymers. Unhappily, in 1789, men's minds were not in a state 

 to be permanently soothed by feeble rhymes and sham sentiment. 

 The disquiet instigated by emissaries from Paris spread from the 

 streets to the villages of the little State, and the peasants, keen to 

 be relieved, like those of France, from the feudal burdens of their 

 tenures, eagerly joined the agitators of the town. Liberal reforms 

 were enacted, but it was too late. Equality was in the air and 

 anarchy at the gates. The revolutionaries of Paris regarded 

 Geneva as * a nest of aristocrats ' ; the proletariat of Geneva 

 looked on Paris as Utopia. 



De Saussure, we are at first surprised to learn, was one of the 

 relatively small group by whom the Edict was opposed in the 

 Assembly. The reason for his action is, I think, not hard of dis- 

 covery, although it has hitherto been generally overlooked. The 

 celebrated Edict has been described by a Genevese historian, 

 M. Fazy, as a mediocre piece of patchwork, in many respects 



