44 



EMPLOYMENT OF THE PLEBISCITE [342 



cessfully opposed his plans. "'Ecclesiastics and laymen, 

 merchants, the military, proprietors and commoners, all in- 

 habitants of Geneva, without exception and distinction, took 

 seat, equal before the law, in that sovereign assembly ' and 

 with unanimous voice resisted the abdication which was to 

 be imposed on them.''^<* Here we seem to have the first 

 case on record where the whole population of a city, with- 

 out exception and without distinction and all equal before 

 the law, assert their own will in matters of allegiance; to 

 all appearances a case of plebiscite answering the strictest 

 tests of ihe present day champion of popular rights. 



Still, the principle underlying the refusal of the people of 

 Geneva to be annexed must be sought less in the insistence 

 on the popular right of self-determination than in the con- 

 sciousness of an established privilege. " It was a matter of 

 franchises which Geneva had received in the fourteenth 

 century from Fabri, one of its prince-bishops, privileges 

 which were not subject to revocation by Fabri's succes- 

 sors."" Even in this case, then, the question of policy was 

 the stronger motive governing the choice of the means to 

 the end. 



In his £tude sur la reunion dc MontpcUifr an domaine 

 royal (75^9),^^ A. Molinier discusses the complicated feudal 

 relationships of Montpellier. Describing the passing of 

 this barony in the year 1236 as an arricrc-ficf under the 

 suzerainty of the Bishop of Maguelonne to Jayme I, King 

 of Aragon, Molinier does not refer to a plebiscite or to any 

 other mode of expression by the populace. Nor does it 

 seem that the inhabitants had any voice in the assumption of 

 suzerainty in 1293 by the King of France over the feudal 

 lordship of the bishop. 



In the year 1341 Don Jayme, King of Majorca, who had 

 come into the arriere-ficf rights of Montpellier, solicited the 

 support of the inhabitants of the fief against the King of 



0" Solicre, p. 15. 

 »i Ibid. 



52 A. Molinier. fitude sur la reunion de Montpellier au domaine 

 royal (1349) in Revue historiquc, 1884, vol. xxiv, r>i. 249-302. 



