CHAPTER XV 

 THE LAST YEARS 



IN January 1793 de Saussure, as a member of the Civil or 

 Administrative Committee, was busy in preparing a scheme 

 for establishing the Constituent Assembly. In combination with 

 Etienne Dumont, a moderate Radical, who was a friend of 

 Mirabeau and had spent some time in England, he sent to 

 one of the Genevese Clubs an argumentative letter, urging 

 that in the proposals to be laid before the citizens for the 

 election of the Constituent Assembly the number of members 

 should be fixed, or at any rate only a limited choice between two 

 or three alternative figures offered. He was at pains to point 

 out that unless this course was followed, the result was likely to 

 be a prolonged series of meetings and debates and a consequent 

 delay which might prove a serious danger to the State. The 

 suggestion was obviously a practical one, and it was acted on. 

 De Saussure's action in this instance fully bears out Dumont's 

 expressions in a letter written probably a year earlier to Reybaz, 

 the Genevese Agent at Paris. ' Messieurs de Saussure and Bertrand 

 rally to the democracy and to all it involves for the sake of the 

 independence [of Geneva], and out of weariness of a system which 

 has harassed them.' 



Early in the same month we find de Saussure, acting as a 

 member of the Provisional Committee, adding his signature to 

 a despatch to Lord Granville, the British Minister for Foreign 

 Affairs, in which, after an allusion to the close ties that united 

 England and the Genevese Republic, the writers declare that the 

 recent troubles in the State have resulted in the formation of a 

 Committee charged to draw up and promulgate a constitution, 

 which it is hoped may satisfy all parties and lead to a permanent 

 settlement. A month later the Committee nominated a list of 

 240 names for a Constituent Assembly, from which, according to 



365 



